My English professor assigned a 'tone analysis' paper, and at first I was annoyed. Then I started really paying attention to how authors create tone, and it transformed how I read and write.
Using the DIDLS method (Diction, Imagery, Details, Language, Syntax) helped me see what was happening...
I struggled with conclusions until I learned the 'circle technique' from a writing workshop. The idea is to return to something you mentioned in your introduction—a question, an anecdote, a statistic—and show how your paper has transformed or answered it.
For a paper on climate anxiety, I...
For years, I tried to write abstracts first because they appear first in the paper. It never worked—I didn't know what to summarize before I'd actually written anything. Then a mentor gave me the best advice: write the abstract last. After the whole paper is done, you actually know what you're...