ABSTRACT

Berger’s slim, user-friendly volume on academic writing is a gift to linguistically-stressed academics. Author of 60 published books, the author speaks to junior scholars and graduate students about the process and products of academic writing. He differentiates between business writing skills for memos, proposals, and reports, and the scholarly writing that occurs in journals and books. He has suggestions for getting the “turgid” out of turgid academic prose and offers suggestions on how to best structure various forms of documents for effective communication. Written in Berger’s friendly, personal style, he shows by example that academics can write good, readable prose in a variety of genres.

chapter |9 pages

Introduction

Mission Impossible?

part I|62 pages

The Writing Process

chapter 1|9 pages

The Academic Writer's Toolkit

chapter 2|11 pages

The Writing Process

Ideas and Research

chapter 3|8 pages

The Writing Process

Outlining, Drafting, and Revising

chapter 4|17 pages

On Structure and Style

chapter 5|12 pages

Composing Strategies

part II|82 pages

Genres of Academic Writing

chapter 6|7 pages

Writing Effective Memos

chapter 7|9 pages

The Art of the Academic Letter

chapter 8|9 pages

Readable Reports

chapter 9|7 pages

Proposals That Persuade

chapter 10|10 pages

Writing a Journal Article

chapter 11|19 pages

Writing an Academic Book

chapter 12|7 pages

Notes on Other Writing Genres

chapter |6 pages

Coda