Resources for Dissertation Writers & Advisors

This page offers materials and resources on academic writing and scholarly publishing for graduate students. It encompasses diverse topics ranging from effective writing strategies to crafting literature reviews to most commonly used academic phrases and ensuring accurate grammar and punctuation. Discipline-specific guide books about literature review are also available in our collection. Reach out to your subject librarian to locate the titles.  

Setting concrete daily goals for your writing project helps. Here are some examples of such goals*:

• Write at least 200 words
• Print the first draft I finished yesterday, read it, and revise it
• Make a new list of project goals and write them on my whiteboard
• Write the first three paragraphs of the general discussion
• Add missing references and then reconcile the citations and references
• Reread chapters 22 and 24 from Zinsser (2010) to recharge my writing batteries
• Finish the "Setting Goals" section that I started yesterday
• Brainstorm and then make an outline for a new manuscript 

Source: Silvia, P. J. (2007). How to write a lot: A practical guide to productive academic writing. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

• Creative Strategies Toolkit Handout (from FSU Reading Writing Center)

• Academic Phrasebank (from Univ. of Manchester) 
  Phrases presented in this resource have been taken from authentic academic sources. Find a list of phrases to use for various language functions such as "being critical," "compare & contrast," "explaining causality", etc.  
   
• The Elements of Style (by W. Strunk, Jr.) 
  A classic reference guide for writing in plain English, addresing the lowdown on the most common rules and principles that people tend to mess up.

• Grammarly 
  An automated grammar checker and editor. A free version is available. 

• Online Writing Lab (OWL) 
  From Purdue Univ.
  Provides very detailed what and how to do to format your paper in proper publishing styles. 
   
• The Writer's Handbook 
  From UW-Madison

• Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students
  From Penn State Univ.