Linda Mcphee Consulting

Last modified: 04/10/2019 International courses and workshops for researchers writing for refereed journal publication Great writing is not primarily about grammar or even about word choice. It’s about structure, and more specifically about putting information where readers have been trained to see it. However, this is not what most people are taught. Writers are often handed a lot of “rules” that do little or nothing to improve their writing. You probably know them: Avoid passives. Vary your language. Shorten sentences. Paragraphs must have an explicit topic sentence, 3 supporting sentences and a concluding sentence. Jargon sounds academic. Data equals thinking. Write the way you talk. Fix your grammar and you’re fine. Word choice is everything. Sentences should be under 29 words long. Never start a sentence with but, however or because. Never split infinitives. And so on… These are both disempowering and (in the main) untrue, yet many teachers continue to dish them out. This course is different – really different. In the 10-week course, five class sessions are concerned with structures that will help participants produce a first draft. The next five sessions cover, in detail, a dynamic system for altering that first draft, making it understandable to others without following any of the above ‘rules’. The intensive 5-day course begins with a first draft, and consists of morning group sessions based on that draft, followed by afternoons revising (first for structure and content, but in the last three days also for readability). A selection of topics will be omitted from the 5-day course. The course continues with email support as needed until the article is submitted to a refereed journal (and through the entire revision and acceptance process)