A Broadsheet for the Examined Mind
Dispatches, close readings, and revision notes filed under Academic Writing.
A working guide to MLA 9: paper formatting, author-page citations, quotation mechanics, the nine core elements, and model Works Cited entries for books, articles, websites, films, lectures, and more.
A working lexicon for academic writing: turpitude, laconic, apodictic, and other words that earn their keep, with brief glosses, model sentences, and usage traps — plus a wider list for the margin and a test for deciding when a plain word is the better one.
A practical guide to analysis verbs: how to match the verb to the evidence, the confidence ladder from notes to establishes, the difference between imply and infer, thirty-six verbs in six families, reporting verbs, and the overclaiming habits that make examiners distrust a sentence.
A practical guide to the essay proposal: what it is for, the six moves of the opening paragraph, how to write a title and thesis that promise a real argument, the research plan and working bibliography, and the common failures that turn a proposal into a summary.
A practical guide to writing thesis statements that do real intellectual work: the claim-and-reason formula, the counterargument clause, scope control, and the pressure test that separates a thesis from a table of contents.
