OK, so sue me. I love this piece. There are so many gems here, where does one start? Overqualifying? Writing to Impress? Dazzling with Data? Ignoring Your Audience?
The sins are many, but so are the fixes, thank heaven above! And, all are explored here in this text, which, thankfully is available to you from now on as you write. My favorites, if you didn't yet guess, are writing to impress and overqualifying. To me, these are the gravest sins of academic writers, whether just beginning our careers (as some of us are in this class) or well into them. We all fall prey to these two pitfalls now and again. Sometimes these two bloom from the garden of our minds, where that little voice resides... you know the voice... the one that says, "Hey, this doesn't sound very intelligent, now does it? Let's spruce it up a bit with extra phrases, some $2 words... hmmm.... a bit more, then. Now that's writing! Go! Turn it in before it melts into air!!" We all have that voice in our heads, the one that criticizes and second guesses... but we can't let that voice write our papers. No way. When you find yourself overqualifying or writing to impress, stop yourself. Reset, and start writing again. You can allow the critic back in during the editing process, and now you know what to ignore, so you can really get to revising well.
Remember, "If I understand your main point and I learn something from your writing, I am impressed. If you're busy 'sounding intelligent' and I fail to grasp your main idea, I am not so impressed."
Did I tell you how much I love this piece?
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