During this last full week of Academic Writing Month (AcWriMo) 2017, we focused on sharing ideas. In this post, we share some of the top posts of the week including information on a new publishing company, what makes a good article title, how to express authorial presence, manuscript drafting advice, student reading patterns and OER, and tips for finishing your book. Paulo Coelho reminds us that “Writing means sharing. It’s part of the human condition to want to share things – thoughts, ideas, opinions.” This week, share your ideas and, as always, write.

New publishing company opens in Oxford

Berg Kaufman Publishing was a natural progression for Cecilia Berg and Don Kaufman, both retired from Miami University.

What makes a good research article title?

Your title is your first opportunity to draw in readers, so you must ensure that it makes an impact. Compared to the work you put in to the full paper, the title may feel like an afterthought, but creating a good title is essential to maximizing the reach of your article.

Helping students express authorial presence

We have all read the thesis or dissertation chapter where there is no frame narrative, no explanatory container. In such cases it can feel like the writer has done a good job of marshaling sources but has not yet figured out how to talk about them. Sometimes it is impossible to discern the author’s stance or even what they did or aim to do.

Manuscript drafting: Why is subject-verb agreement important?

In academic writing, grammar and sentence construction is of paramount importance. While this is also true for informal pieces of writing, grammar mistakes in academic writing can instantly reduce the credibility of the author. Therefore, it is important to ensure that subjects and verbs always agree with each other. The relationship between subjects and verbs lie at the heart of grammatically correct English writing. Subject-verb agreement unifies a sentence and makes it easier to understand.

If a textbook falls in the forest…

One of the oft-heard objections to Open Educational Resources (OER) is that students retain more information from a printed page than from a screen. Therefore, the argument goes, we shouldn’t sacrifice a superior learning tool to save money.

5 top tips for finishing your book

Completing a manuscript is one of the most exhilarating moments in a writer’s life, and getting to that moment is also one of the greatest challenges. To help make sure you cross that finish line and have a working manuscript, here are our five top tips.

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