Writing Across the Social Sciences

Basic Writing Skills

These resources are presented to you in order to assist you with some of the basic writing skills such as grammar, punctuation, word choice, etc.

If you have challenges in these areas, use the resources below, or better yet, get help from writing tutors available at the College.

Resources

Attending to Grammar

Grammar on the Purdue OWL website

Grammar in College Writing

Fragments and Run Ons
If instructors have ever returned your papers with "frag", "S.F.", "R.O.", or "run-on" written in the margin, you may find this handout useful. It will help you locate and correct sentence fragments and run-ons.

Word Choice
This handout can help you revise your papers for word-level clarity, eliminate wordiness and avoid clichés, find the words that best express your ideas, and choose words that suit an academic audience.

Conciseness
The goal of concise writing is to use the most effective words. Concise writing does not always have the fewest words, but it always uses the strongest ones. Writers often fill sentences with weak or unnecessary words that can be deleted or replaced. Words and phrases should be deliberately chosen for the work they are doing. Like bad employees, words that don't accomplish enough should be fired. When only the most effective words remain, writing will be far more concise and readable

On Paragraphs

Introductions and Conclusions