Writing!

[JockNerd]

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As one of those people who never had to write much in college, let me tell you it sucks. I haven't gotten had any of my formal writing graded here yet (its all due at the end of the semester) but its nerve wracking knowing some of my classmates wrote more per class than I did for my entire degree. I'm banking on the fact that I was a decent writer in high school....I definitely became a worse writer during college. Hopefully the fact that for the first time in my life, I'm actually inspired to TRY for classes, it will pay off.

And if you can't tell from my post lengths - berevity is definitely a concern🙂

I was writing this as a reply to another thread but thought it would work better as its own topic, so here we go.

I've mentioned this a million times before, but if you haven't done it yet Ollie, read Strunk's The Elements of Style. Here's an online version of the full text of the original edition http://www.bartleby.com/141/

Writing improves with practice writing and reading other good stuff. Daryl Bem is one example I know of a great writer in psych (though I don't buy his EBE at all!). Can others share researchers they think have writing skill?

I was a writing tutor in undergrad, and so few students are able to write passably. Writing well is even more rare, and writing with style is almost never seen. If I can give you one piece of advice, here it is: learn what the difference between passive and active voice is, then go through your papers and get rid of all the passive voice and then never write using it again (unless of course if it's necessary to the sentence).

 

[chaos]

I have to say, being able to write with style gets you farther than it probably should. I've always been much more gifted at writing than other academic pursuits like oh, say, studying, and I've gotten As on papers that honestly don't deserve them if you take a closer look, just because I can manage a clean, professional, and occasionally clever style. I don't even think I'm a fantastic writer, it's just that so many undergrads are so weak in writing (having been a TA, I've had plenty of experience). In fact, I offered to help a classmate rewrite her term paper in a neuroscience class. In terms of content, her paper is much more thorough and well-researched than mine. In fact, I'll be honest, I wrote the entire damn thing without reading any of the articles...abstracts are my friend. If you look carefully at my paper, it shows. The difference is, my classmate writes kind of awkwardly, and didn't do her APA formatting right. Her paper got an 82, mine got a 98.

The good news is, it's a lot easier to develop good writing habits than good study habits, haha. I think if you read some good academic writing, both research articles and books, you start to unconsciously mimic the syntax and style after a while. A few tips off the top of my head: turn 'which' into 'that' wherever you can. Parsimony is essential. Cut out words mercilessly wherever you can. I'm not too fond of this one, because I like long elegant sentences, but most teachers seem to like papers that read like telegraph messages with transitional phrases between paragraphs 🙄 . Although, from your first post I suspect you're beyond these tips and are probably a better writer than you think.

 

[psychanon]

If you haven't read it, check out Bem's article (1995) in Psych Bull about writing a review article for Psych Bulletin. Also, I have a book called Guide to Publishing in Psychology Journals, edited by Sternberg. I can't say I've used it much, but when I do flip through it, it seems really useful, especially for those of you who feel that writing is a weakness-- it talks about how to write about design effectively, how to write up results, picking a title, etc.

One of the things that I found out from one of those sources is that you're not supposed to use the word "while" as a synonym for "although," which I used to do all the time. Actually, I still do it sometimes-- I just think it sounds better in certain situations! But you're not supposed to.

Another tip, which I think some people have trouble with: don't be afraid of using the first person! Historically, people saw using first person as being too informal, but these days it's seen as preferable to the passive voice, which is really the alternative. So it's OK to say things like: "Our study," and "we/ I predict"... and it's much better than saying "It was predicted..." etc.

 

[Ollie123]

Good advice all🙂

I've been meaing to pick up Strunk's book and keep putting it off, but I will definitely pick up the Guide to Publishing in Psychology Journals - that sounds right up my alley🙂

Honestly, I don't think I'm a TERRIBLE writer. I've seen what my classmates in undergrad would turn in and sweet zombie jesus....
Most of my sentences are comprised of actual words, and occasionally even a noun and verb organized in a logical fashion. Its more just a matter of "scientific" writing - throughout high school and college I've never had to "try" writing. The only papers I'm proud of are the 5 page paper I wrote in 25 minutes my junior year of HS (which was as much a typing feat as a writing one) and the 15 page paper I didn't have a topic for until 9PM the day it was due for my English general education class in college😉 Clearly neither is something I take pride in how well written it was, so much as I can take pride in my ability to produce something that wasn't a complete abomination despite incredibly poor time management.

I don't do the carefully planned outline, or 25 drafts. I sit down, vomit words on a page, make sure it isn't completely incoherent as I go along, and usually get either A's or B's. Don't know what to expect from grad school though since well...standards are a LOT higher when almost everything is expected to be at least in the ballpark of publishable quality writing even if its not truly publishable (due to topic choice, etc.). Its nerve wracking!

I guess the main thing I'm wondering is exactly how thorough you folks research review papers before you sit down and start writing. Do you have a full list of references and write a paper around them? Or do you start with a topic in mind and a few broad papers and track things down as you go? I've always done the latter, and then searched as I was writing and either added citations, or deleted things when I really couldn't justify the statement, but I'm not sure if that is good or not.

Hopefully in a few weeks, I'll have done this for the first time and it will be smooth sailing from then on, but I'm having a ROUGH time getting started on this first real paper. We've had students turn them into pretty impressive things (e.g. published in top-tier journals) and while that isn't a requirement, its an aspirational goal and I figure at this stage, if I'm going to write a paper, I might as well try and do SOMETHING with it.


Lastly - on a related note - what are your standards for publication. Are publications ever seen as a bad thing if say, you only get it into more obscure journals? Obviously, publishing exclusively in say "Journal of Null Results" would probably get you laughed at by most colleges, but if you have 1 or 2 published in obscure journals, would that work in your favor since you have another publication or two, or would it be a matter of "Wow, they really put some garbage out there"?

Thanks for starting this thread by the way🙂

 

[chaos]

Yeah, that's one thing I'm worried about if I do get into grad school. I've always assumed I'm a pretty good writer because I always get nice comments about my writing style on my papers, but now that I think about it, the fact that like 92% of the undergrad psych population at my school can't correctly differentiate between 'its' and 'it's' on a better-than-chance basis might mean that the teachers are just glad to see something that isn't glaringly bad, and that my writing is actually not really near a professional level. If anything, I tend to be too conversational in my papers...or worse, try to be funny. I made a joke in a research paper once. The professor was like, you still get an A, but never do that again.

 

[PhDshallsee]

JockNerd, I tutor at my school's writing center, and that is my FAVORITE book to pull off the shelves! I'm shocked someone else recommends it. Most people have no idea it exists, they're very stuck on Hacker!

 

[JockNerd]

I guess the main thing I'm wondering is exactly how thorough you folks research review papers before you sit down and start writing. Do you have a full list of references and write a paper around them? Or do you start with a topic in mind and a few broad papers and track things down as you go? I've always done the latter, and then searched as I was writing and either added citations, or deleted things when I really couldn't justify the statement, but I'm not sure if that is good or not.

One thing I have going for me in my primary research area is that I did a massive directed readings course in my undergrad on my topic area of interest, and read most of the influential work that was written on that topic (for example, that long post I made about sexual orientation change therapy was mostly pulled out of my mind from a review I wrote for that course). This is really important, because it sets up the framework for anything you want to do. Being able to coherently see the separate threads of research and look for places where you can tie things together is great.

Other than that... snowball your reading. Read a review, read the papers that review cites, go another layer down, and another. It's a lot of work, so you have to know how to get a good skim of a research article (pick out important citations from the lit review and look them up, don't just go by what the authors of the paper you're reading say; look at the methods and see how they looked at things and ho you'd do it better; look at the results and see what makes sense and what the authors didn't really prove so well as they say; look at the conclusions and see where they suggest the research can go). Most importantly, if your research area has points of contention, read research and theory on BOTH SIDES.

I wouldn't make a contention and then look for support. That sounds a bit dubious to me. If you're going to make a contention, you should know why you believe it, and ideally you should have that idea clear before you start (esp. if the idea is important to your research). Having a discussion with a colleague who can push you to deeper thought (my adviser is great for this) can really help solidify what it is you're really going for and how you can work with it.

Make outlines and revise drafts. I know people who hand in whatever spews from Word and it's total arrogance to assume that whatever you type is gold (Ollie, I'm not accusing you of that, I was reading that your quick writing was more for convenience 🙂). My honours thesis went though 10 revisions and I cut almost ten pages from it. Again, Strunk is your Bible here! Omit needless words! Words should work together to make sentences, sentences together to make paragraphs, and paragraphs together to make the paper, without unnecessary clutter everywhere.

On standards of publication: In my adviser's lab, all research is directed from conception to the top-tier journal in our field. If your research idea isn't suitable to that, you're going to work on something else that is. 🙂

 

[Ollie123]

Yeah....definitely not assuming everything I type is gold. More like I assume everything I write is a steaming pile of dung, but the delightfully low educational standards of this country have allowed me to pass and indeed, even thrive by some standards, despite having no real clue as to what I'm doing😉 My speed writing is just a point of pride because the point of classroom writing for me has always been to get an "A" and never anything beyond that, so if I can do that in 30 minutes when it takes someone else a week, I like to think I'm efficient instead of just a slacker😉

That's a great suggestion for layering reading. I definitely don't do that often enough, and it wastes a lot of time since 1) I'm not getting as much out of papers higher up in the chain if I don't look at their basis and 2) I waste a lot of time sifting through the extraneous junk PsycInfo gives you when searching.

And sorry, didn't mean to imply I'm making completely unfounded contentions and then tracking down obscure papers to say "See, I'm right! So and so in the Zimbabwe journal of brain stuff says so!". More like I try and get my thoughts down on paper first, and then go back and look at where my arguments need more support and pull some papers from that area to read. Frankly, trying to manage 40+ citations at once and organize that into a coherent paper has not worked for me in the past, but maybe its just a matter of inexperience and something I need to learn. Just not sure what is acceptable or uancceptable (or if there even is such a thing as long as the end product is acceptable).


As for publications...yikes. If something gets rejected, do they drop it completely or will they then try for other journals? That makes a big difference in my eyes. Obviously I'd love to publish everything I write in Science, Nature, JAMA, Abnormal, etc. but I'd hate to not publish results from a study just because it wasn't quite at the Abnormal level.

I'm already getting a few things out in specialty journals, but like....not everything I do will be Journal of Abnormal-worthy, and that seems like a bit too lofty a goal even for a dreamer like me😉

 

[a7dk]

Excellent thread! If I may add a suggestion, Bem has another article called "Writing the Empirical Journal Article" (2003) which I love. I have a pdf of it if anyone would like a copy. Also, I'm pretty sure it's Google-able. (I think I just made that up!)

 

[psychanon]

And sorry, didn't mean to imply I'm making completely unfounded contentions and then tracking down obscure papers to say "See, I'm right! So and so in the Zimbabwe journal of brain stuff says so!". More like I try and get my thoughts down on paper first, and then go back and look at where my arguments need more support and pull some papers from that area to read. Frankly, trying to manage 40+ citations at once and organize that into a coherent paper has not worked for me in the past, but maybe its just a matter of inexperience and something I need to learn. Just not sure what is acceptable or uancceptable (or if there even is such a thing as long as the end product is acceptable).

this is what I meant when I posted in the other thread. You know certain things are true-- that women are more vulnerable to depression than men, that stressful life events predict depression, etc.-- without having to look them up. You're not flying blind. It just really slows you down to have to find every single citation that you're going to use beforehand, especially since you may not even know what path your argument will take before you write. A lot of times when I write, I construct supplemental arguments as I go along, sometimes because I think of things I haven't thought of before, and other times because I realize that I need to bolster my argument.

It's usually good to start with an outline. I've never been a big outline person, so I don't spend much time on mine, but it helps a lot to come up with a skeletal framing of your arguments-- then you can be sure that the literature supports your main points before you start writing (but again, no need to come up with every last thing-- you'll flush it out and see what works for you).

Another tip is to not get too caught up in critiquing the quality of your writing as you go along. It's easy to get caught up in finding the perfect word or revising sentence structure, but often if you just leave it and tell yourself you'll come back to it later, you'll realize later that it was OK all along. There's always time for revision later on, but you'll never have something to revise if you don't get a draft down.

As for the quality of journals thing--- It doesn't just depend on the quality of your research idea and your writing, but on your data-- both in terms of the quality of your data (how big a sample, best measures, is it a good sample for your research, is it longitudinal [i.e., if you're studying depression, is it a clinical sample with SCIDs done by Ph.D. clinicians or college students doing the BDI?]) and whether or not your data support your hypotheses and add to the literature. These factors are not always in your control, especially as a grad student. So, obviously you want to be able to get into the best journal that you can, but there's nothing wrong with having some mid-tier journals on your vita. I don't think it's good to publish something just anywhere, but certainly not everything can get into j. abnormal (and if you held out for that, you'd have a very short vita).

 

[phd2006]

...
A few tips off the top of my head: turn 'which' into 'that' wherever you can. Parsimony is essential...

Please, do not use "that" -- in fact, in most cases this word can be removed from the sentence completely. Using the assertive voice, "that" and "which" should very rarely be used.

As Chaos said - parsimony!!

Also, if in doubt, for a course most profs or the TA will review 1 draft of your paper (note: a coherent draft) if given enough 'advance' time in respect to the due date of the final draft.

 

[JockNerd]

about the citations: ok, that sounds different from what I was hearing. I'm writing a paper about gender conformity right now, and I wrote "Higher levels of gender conformity in men have been associated with (look that up)," because I know I've read about negative health and relationship outcomes being correlated with gender conformity. But I'm not going to stop writing and look up five references right then. I thought you meant something different 😛

The pubs: everything is written with the *intention* of getting into the top journal (i.e. it's something that would publish; something that fits their mandate). If it gets rejected we would move down one tier.

 

[psychwanabe]

There's great advice flying around on this thread. I'll just add a couple of things:

JockNerd talked about snowballing, which is certainly one of the better ways to build your references and support for your thesis. I would take it one step further though. Along with looking up those articles that were cited in the main pub you're working with, be sure to check forward and see who cited your main article after it was written. PsychInfo certainly has a good mechanism for this as do other search engines. This way you can see who already replicated the study you're interested in, what they did, what they found, etc., as well as who already expanded the topic.

I have never used outlines. I know that it's supposed to be a good idea, but for some reason the process just doesn't work for me. I start with a topic and a couple of main articles that are at the core of my subject. To get to that point I have almost always spent a lot of time on PsychInfo. (FYI: it's very helpful to meet with your librarian and get them to teach you the best ways to search. I thought I was pretty good at it and then I got to grad school, met with the librarian and realized that I was not fully utilizing the tools that were available to me, like RefWorks, my new joy in life). Then I spiral out from there beginning with the lit review. As you write the review, you refine your own points and are able to move into the rest of the paper with (relative) ease.

About drafts: I have never understood how someone can write something and review/revise without printing it out and letting it sit for a day or two. I always shoot to have papers done a good week before they are due and then I spend that week revising. The most effective method of reviewing papers that I have ever found is to read them out loud. I have caught more run-on sentences, awkward phrases, and errors that way than any other way I have ever tried. I am also all about it being on paper. I don't know why but I don't catch mistakes as well on the computer screen as I do on a piece of paper.

Don't forget about setting up Word to catch passive voice, # of spaces after end of sentence punctuation, etc. That saves a ton of time. 😀

 

[yikes]

How do you get word to catch the passive voice?

 

[JockNerd]

Just set word to flag it under grammer check customization, and then enable the on-screen underlining (I think grammar mistakes show up underlined in green?)

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

About drafts: I have never understood how someone can write something and review/revise without printing it out and letting it sit for a day or two. I always shoot to have papers done a good week before they are due and then I spend that week revising. The most effective method of reviewing papers that I have ever found is to read them out loud. I have caught more run-on sentences, awkward phrases, and errors that way than any other way I have ever tried. I am also all about it being on paper. I don't know why but I don't catch mistakes as well on the computer screen as I do on a piece of paper.

Don't forget about setting up Word to catch passive voice, # of spaces after end of sentence punctuation, etc. That saves a ton of time. 😀

Great advice. I learned to print out everything and edit from there. I've done some professional writing/editing, and we were required to do hardcopy edits, and then do track changes....which allowed for a closer examination of the work. Also reading a document backwards can help catch mistaken words or words that are 1-2 letter off (mirage--> merge, those---> these)

-t

 

[psychwanabe]

Just set word to flag it under grammer check customization, and then enable the on-screen underlining (I think grammar mistakes show up underlined in green?)

Yep! It's a lovely thing.

BTW, I didn't have to enable underlining...it just does it.

 

[psychwanabe]

Great advice. I learned to print out everything and edit from there. I've done some professional writing/editing, and we were required to do hardcopy edits, and then do track changes....which allowed for a closer examination of the work. Also reading a document backwards can help catch mistaken words or words that are 1-2 letter off (mirage--> merge, those---> these)

-t

I had English profs give me that advice but I never had the patience for it! 🙄

 

[psychanon]

like RefWorks, my new joy in life

Is RefWorks like EndNote? I am definitely an EndNote convert. At first it drove me crazy, but now that I've figured out its kinks, I don't understand why everyone doesn't use it.

Track changes in another indispensable tool, especially when you have multiple co-authors-- they can all make their edits and comments, and Word will keep track of who said what and allow you to reject changes, etc.

 

[psychwanabe]

Is RefWorks like EndNote? I am definitely an EndNote convert. At first it drove me crazy, but now that I've figured out its kinks, I don't understand why everyone doesn't use it.

I've never used EndNote, but yes I think they are the same. RefWorks also has this lovely tool called "WriteNCite" (or something like that) that uses RefWorks to insert the citations for you as you write your paper (I haven't used this myself, only had it demonstrated but I am already hooked). Then it will create a works cited page for you based on what you inserted into your document. All of these are taken from your RefWorks account, in which you can set up multiple folders for all the different papers for which you are collecting articles. It is an absolutely fabulous tool for a researching grad student.

And yes, I realize that in the writing thread I just wrote a terrible paragraph. Just call me tired and needing to get back to studying for tomorrow's exam.

Based on my description, am I correct that EndNote is the a similar tool? I wonder which is better?

 

[psychanon]

I've never used EndNote, but yes I think they are the same. RefWorks also has this lovely tool called "WriteNCite" (or something like that) that uses RefWorks to insert the citations for you as you write your paper (I haven't used this myself, only had it demonstrated but I am already hooked). Then it will create a works cited page for you based on what you inserted into your document. All of these are taken from your RefWorks account, in which you can set up multiple folders for all the different papers for which you are collecting articles. It is an absolutely fabulous tool for a researching grad student.

And yes, I realize that in the writing thread I just wrote a terrible paragraph. Just call me tired and needing to get back to studying for tomorrow's exam.

Based on my description, am I correct that EndNote is the a similar tool? I wonder which is better?

Yes--sounds almost exactly the same. Endnote calls it "Cite While You Write"-- totally same deal. I love not having to do a reference section at the end, or check if I've cited a multi-author paper earlier in the paper and need to use "et al.". And if you ever need to change citation formats, it takes two seconds. For example, I was writing an NIH grant, and halfway through I decided to use numbers [1] instead of APA style (Smith, 2001) to save space-- that would've been a huge pain without a program, but it took all of three seconds. It is also great to have your references all together in a library-- once you start writing multiple papers, you will find it to be a lifesaver. The best thing you can do is to export citations directly from PsycInfo or another database-- that way, you don't have to type (or worry about typos), you get the abstract in your library, and it leaves a link in there so you can go to full text.

Endnote does have some kinks, so be prepared for frustration, but once you learn them, it makes life so much easier. I haven't heard of the folder thing in Endnote, but maybe it's a function that I'm not aware of. I'm not sure if one program is better than the other-- they sound similar-- my university has a site license for EndNote, so I could get it for free, so that was the basis of my decision.

 

[psychwanabe]

Yes--sounds almost exactly the same. Endnote calls it "Cite While You Write"-- totally same deal. I love not having to do a reference section at the end, or check if I've cited a multi-author paper earlier in the paper and need to use "et al.". And if you ever need to change citation formats, it takes two seconds. For example, I was writing an NIH grant, and halfway through I decided to use numbers [1] instead of APA style (Smith, 2001) to save space-- that would've been a huge pain without a program, but it took all of three seconds. It is also great to have your references all together in a library-- once you start writing multiple papers, you will find it to be a lifesaver. The best thing you can do is to export citations directly from PsycInfo or another database-- that way, you don't have to type (or worry about typos), you get the abstract in your library, and it leaves a link in there so you can go to full text.

Endnote does have some kinks, so be prepared for frustration, but once you learn them, it makes life so much easier. I haven't heard of the folder thing in Endnote, but maybe it's a function that I'm not aware of. I'm not sure if one program is better than the other-- they sound similar-- my university has a site license for EndNote, so I could get it for free, so that was the basis of my decision.

Interesting. My grad school has RefWorks but I've seen that you can export to EndNote as well. RefWorks has the same features being able to accept exports from different databases. Another valuable tool is that you can click on the link to open the article from your file in RefWorks. So if you don't have the paper copy with you, you can still access the document.

One thing you have to be careful of is that the citations are not always perfectly APA style. You get them as they were put in, i.e., subject to human error. So you still have to check, but holy cow is it a timesaver.

Gotta love technology.