Collaborating across differences: Cover letters to facilitate writing feedback

The first three articles in this series, “Building relationships with co-author agreements,” “Reflect on writing habits in co-author processes,” and “Keep writing communication simple with the 5 Ps,” covered strategies for building trust and shared understanding among co-authors. In this final installment on collaborating across differences, we explore feedback techniques for co-authors that reinforce trust and understanding among writers to support positive writing productivity.

Of the techniques we cover in our collaborative writing workshops for faculty and graduate student co-authors, the feedback cover letter is one of the most valued by participants.Its popularity is due to its simplicity as well as the letter’s facilitation of clear communication across a feedback exchange that can often feel awkward, befuddling, or even risky for submitting and reviewing authors alike.

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Join the Copyright Alliance and Copyright Society for panel on ‘AI Authorship and Copyrightability’

On Tuesday, March 14 at 4 p.m. ET, the Copyright Alliance will join the Copyright Society to host a free webinar titled Exploring the Impact on Copyrightability When Creating New Works Through AI.

The panel will feature experts who will explain the different types of AI authorship under U.S. copyright law, the potential pathways for asserting copyright ownership in works created using generative AI tools, and policy issues that impact the authorship analysis—including incentivizing the use of AI technologies and protecting the rights of human authors.

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Friendship and writing desire: both last

Always craving more writing time (aside from the procrastination), I’ve chosen to keep up or reconnect with only a very few friends. And I realize an essential characteristic of real friendship: time doesn’t matter. However long the moments, weeks, or years between contacts, real friendship knows no steel-banded boundaries of time, distance, erratic mobile phone connections, or sporadic emails.

I recall a friend of twenty years ago, and I still cherish our many calls and visits. When we both moved, our interests diverged and contact ended.

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Incorporating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion into Textbooks

The need to address diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) extends to the materials we use to teach students. For authors, it can be tempting to relegate DEI discussions to feature boxes or individual chapters in a textbook—“add-on” features that may unintentionally convey exceptionalism. DEI should be as much a part of a manuscript as proper sentence structure and organization; it should exist within and throughout the narrative and encompass how the reader experiences the text, including visuals and accessibility. It is our responsibility to accurately reflect our diverse world.

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Confronting the anxiety of academic writing: Reconceptualizing writing to clarify your ideas

The first article in this series, based on Rachael Cayley’s October 19, 2022, TAA webinar, “Confronting the Anxiety of Academic Writing,” considered the importance of taking academic writing anxiety seriously. The second discussed Cayley’s suggestions for tackling the intellectual and practical difficulties associated with writing.

In this third article, we delve into the first of Cayley’s three principles for reconceptualizing writing: using writing to clarify your own thinking. In subsequent posts, will discuss the other two principles: committing to extensive revision and understanding the needs of the reader.



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