Writing for social scientists : how to start and finish your thesis, book, or article

Resource Information

The work Writing for social scientists : how to start and finish your thesis, book, or article represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Swedenborg Library, Bryn Athyn College. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Writing for social scientists : how to start and finish your thesis, book, or article

Title remainder

how to start and finish your thesis, book, or article

Statement of responsibility

Howard S. Becker ; with a chapter by Pamela Richards

Creator

• Becker, Howard Saul, 1928-

Contributor

• Richards, Pamela

Subject

• Communication in the social sciences
• Social sciences -- Authorship
• Academic writing
• Sociology -- Authorship

Language

eng

Summary

Students and researchers all write under pressure, and those pressures -- most lamentably, the desire to impress your audience rather than to communicate with them -- often lead to pretentious prose, academic posturing, and, not infrequently, writer's block. Sociologist Howard S. Becker has written the classic book on how to conquer these pressures and simply write. First published nearly twenty years ago, Writing for Social Scientists has become a lifesaver for writers in all fields, from beginning students to published authors. Becker's message is clear: in order to learn how to write, take a deep breath and then begin writing. Revise. Repeat. It is not always an easy process, as Becker wryly relates. Decades of teaching, researching, and writing have given him plenty of material, and Becker neatly exposes the foibles of academia and its "publish or perish" atmosphere. Wordiness, the passive voice, inserting a "the way in which" when a simple "how" will do -- all these mechanisms are a part of the social structure of academic writing. By shrugging off such impediments -- or at the very least, putting them aside for a few hours -- we can reform our work habits and start writing lucidly without worrying about grades, peer approval, or the "literature." In this new edition, Becker takes account of major changes in the computer tools available to writers today, and also substantially expands his analysis of how academic institutions create problems for them. As competition in academia grows increasingly heated, Writing for Social Scientists will provide solace to a new generation of frazzled, would-be writers. - Publisher

Member of

• Chicago guides to writing, editing, and publishing

Cataloging source

DLC

Index

index present

LC call number

H61.8

LC item number

.B43 2007

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

Chicago guides to writing, editing, and publishing