This post is a classic commencement address by David Foster Wallace from 2005. Here's a link to the transcript. Enjoy. This is Water David Foster Wallace Greetings parents and congratulations to Kenyon’s graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, … Continue reading David Foster Wallace — Commencement Address
This post is an essay by Julia Fisher from the Atlantic. Here's a link to the original. It's about reading and writing. Here point is in the title. Here's how she puts it in her intro: In my high-school English classes, I often tell my students that they write their papers backwards: They devise a thesis and … Continue reading Julia Fisher — My Students Write Their Papers Backwards
This post is an essay by Steven Mintz, published recently in his Substack, which I highly recommend. Here's a link to the original. It's the story of how the 1930s produced a distinct and new American voice. Not in the ornate cadences of the 19th century, nor in the provincial slang of earlier popular culture, but … Continue reading Steven Mintz — The Decade That Discovered a Distinct American Voice
This post is an essay by Chris Sibben, which appeared recently in his Substack Mere Orthodoxy. Here's a link to the original. In it he addresses what for me is the key challenge that artificial intelligence poses for education. AI illuminates a problem at the core of the educational enterprise, which is the danger that education … Continue reading Chris Sibben — A Hollow Crown: AI and the Formation of Students
Good writers tell stories. This is just as true for academic writers as for novelists and journalists. The story needs actors and actions, and it needs to flow. A sentence is a mini-story. Each sentence needs to flow into the next and so does each paragraph. When readers finish your paper, they need to be … Continue reading Academic Writing Issues: Failing to Tell a Story
One of the most prominent and dysfunctional traits of academic writing is its heavy reliance on what Helen Sword, in the piece below, calls "zombie nouns." These are cases when the writer takes an agile verb or adjective and transforms it into an imposing-looking noun with lead feet. Just add the proper suffix to a … Continue reading Academic Writing Issues: Zombie Nouns
One of the most characteristic and annoying tendencies in academic writing is the excessive use of signposting: here's what I'm going to do, here I am doing it, and here's what I just did. You can trim a lot of text from your next paper (and earn the gratitude of your readers) by just telling … Continue reading Academic Writing Issues: Excessive Signposting
This post is a recent essay by Steven Mintz about how to teach students to write effectively. It appeared in his Substack, which I strongly recommend. Here's a link to the original. It's a natural follow-up to my last post. "The Five-Paragraph Fetish." He talks about the difference between teaching writing based on rules compared to … Continue reading Steven Mintz — Learning to Write Like AI, and Then Beyond It
This is a piece I published in Aeon years ago about the persistence of the five-paragraph essay, which has evolved into the five-chapter dissertation and the five-section journal article. Formalism reins supreme. Here’s the link to the original. It's now a chapter in my book, Being a Scholar. The Five-Paragraph Essay Writing essays by a formula … Continue reading The Five-Paragraph Fetish
This post is an essay by historian Steven Mintz, recently published in his Substack. Here's a link to the original. I strongly recommend that you check out his posts, which are both prolific and memorable. Here he weaves together two arguments around Shakespeare's historical plays. One is about the power of his language. The other … Continue reading Steven Mintz — When Words Still Mattered: Shakespeare, Language, and the Birth of Historical Consciousness
