Dr. HD’s Writing Guide

Welcome! This writing guide is provided as a helpful compilation of resources for students, not as an endorsement of or advertisement for any university, individual, or site. This is essentially a free copy of the advice I regularly use and provide to students in one centralized location. I hope you find it helpful!

Start below with Three Essentials of Writing and Graduate Level Writing Advice. Use the navigation dropdown in the menu above for more writing advice by topic.

Cite While You Write Properly cite sources from the start, including in a messy first draft to avoid plagiarism and other issues. Learn more about academic integrity here.

Says who? and So what? Says who? helps ensure you’ve given proper credit to sources. So what? helps determine if the information you are including is relevant and supports your point. Learn more about these questions here.

Save space for editing well. Review your work against the assignment guidelines and rubric. Create space between your first draft and editing. Try to create a cycle of write - walk way - edit - walk away again - edit again - and submit. Giving your brain a break allows you to reset and find errors you might miss originally or when in a hurry. Learn more about writing and editing well here.

Prepare in advance. Start each week reviewing the assignments and reaching out to me early in the week with questions so you’re prepared. Do your best to submit high quality, on time work each week.

Plan your writing assignments via outlines. All writing assignments need a clear intro, body, and conclusion. Even short reports that are formatted in a business style need strong organization, clarity, and the “bookends” of an intro and conclusion.

            A solid post on outlining found here

            Good advice on writing intros and conclusions found here

Be extremely careful about AI tools and plug ins. Some universities or programs allow you to use tools to help with grammar or even explain content or organize your work. You are nearly always forbidden by policy to allow AI to write for you (that includes letting Grammarly completely rewrite sentences and paragraphs!).

Any use of AI must be acknowledged and properly cited. And here’s a little more advice from me.

Cite while you write. Connect the dots and cite your sources as you go – when you think you’ll go back and add them later, you’re at high risk of unintentionally plagiarizing.

Expect to include scholarly sources. Graduate level writers should be adding scholarly work to writing by default. We use sources – beyond the course textbooks and course materials – to show how we know what we claim as true in our writing. Use of sources demonstrates you know how to connect theory to practice. That is a vital part of graduate school. So even if an assignment doesn’t say “this requires 6 scholarly sources,” assume you need to include some level of research effort in your work.

Many assignments also will benefit from supplemental/popular sources like newspaper articles, business magazines (like Forbes), or sites like HBR. But keep in mind much of HBR is more like a business blog (and supplemental) rather than a published journal article or academic book.

Quote less, paraphrase more (but know the difference). More mature writers will rely more on source synthesis and paraphrasing than quoting. Learn more here.

Make editing a habit. Give yourself time to proofread, spellcheck, and to step away before a final edit and submitting. Here’s some advice on editing well.

Use your resources! Writing Centers, Libraries, and other academic resources at universities provide guidance, tutoring, resources and more. Reach out to your professors if you if need help connecting to those resources.

Writing Research Papers at the Graduate Level: A 9 Step Routine, Juan Balcazar at Medium

Purdue OWL - Graduate Writing Overview

UNR - Graduate-level writing

More advice for grad students found here.