This document provides advice on various aspects of academic writing such as the pre-writing stage, introductions, conclusions, paragraphs, quotations, and punctuation. It discusses planning ideas and questions to consider in the pre-writing stage. It also offers tips for writing introductions, conclusions, and paragraphs as well as introducing and formatting quotations. Finally, it provides guidance on using punctuation like commas, semicolons, colons, dashes, and parentheses.

1. College: ISFD N°41
Subject: PDCE IV
Teacher: Saubidet Stella
Student’s name: Micaela Benitez
ADVICE ON ACADEMIC
WRITING

2. Index
3- Pre-writing stage.
4-Pre-writing stage.
5-Advantages on planning and overplanning risks.
6- Introduction.
7- How to write an introduction.
8- Conclusion.
9- How to write a conclusion.
10- Paragraph.
11- Paragraph methods.
12- Topic sentences.
13- How to make a paragraph flow.
14- Quotations.
15- Introducing a quotation.
16- Introducing a quotation.
17- Long quotation.
18- Long quotation.
19- Modification of the quote.
20- Modification of the quote.
21-Punctuation, comma.
22- Semicolons and colons.
23- Dashes and Parentheses.
24- Bibliography.

3. In this stage you organize your ideas, this stage allows you to pay attention to
sentence-level issues when you sit down to write your paper.
When you begin planning, ask the following questions: What type of essay am I
going to be writing? Does it belong to a specific genre?
You built the outline: meaning the organization, in order of appearance, of the
ideas.
The creation of the plan, you have to have in mind what you want to include in
your piece so when searching for information you have a notion of what you are
looking for.

4. Pre-writing
stage So in a shit of paper, or computer you write your ideas, then decide the order in
which you are going to develop them.
After you write the essay you develop the reverse outline: Once you finished
writing, you read your essay and on the margin you put the arguments/ ideas
developed in each of them and see if there is repetition or something that is
irrelevant.
The planning starts when you think is appropriate to do it but be careful that
overplanning and no planning are counter-productive. On one hand you do not
have enough time for research and in the other hand you do not have much time
to write and give the important information and evidences that support your
ideas.

5. Advantages on planning Overplanning risks
★ Logical and orderly arguments.
★ Allows you to avoid repetition.
★ Thorough paper.
★ Drafting the paper is easier and allows you
to concentrate on grammar, word choice
and clarity.
★ Not enough time to write and revise.
★ Thanks to the depth investigation you are
not able to include all your research and
also you can lose your point.
★ writing style that lacks spontaneity and
ease
★ You can not discover new ideas in the
process of writing.

6. A well-built introduction should identify your topic, provide essential context
and indicate your focus. Also it has to engage your readers’ interests.
1. You may start by the introduction but you have to be aware that you may
compress it later.
2. You can write your introduction in any other stage and also you can edit
it while writing and adapting it to the essay you are writing.
3. The length of you introduction depends of the length of your essay and
the complexity of it.
4. You must go to the point, nor less or much.
5. Your thesis statement should be at the end of the introduction.

7. How to write an introduction
1. Statistics that illustrates the seriousness of the problem you will address.
2. Quote an expert.
3. Mention the misconceptions your thesis will argue against.
4. Give some background information for understanding the essay.
5. Write something that allows you to exemplify the reason for choosing the topic, either a
personal anecdote or a narrative.
6. If your paper is more about technical subjects such as science you must explain some of
the key technical terms so that the reader will be able to understand the point.
To avoid pitfalls:
1. Do not provide dictionary definitions, especially of words the audience already knows.
2. Don’t repeat the assignment specifications using the professor’s wording.
3. Do not include depth information that belongs to the analysis in your paragraphs.

8. Conclusion
A strong conclusion provides a closure to your essay. And add stimulus for future
thoughts.
1. A conclusion is not only a summary of your points. It is a reminder of how the
evidence contributed to your thesis.
2. This involves critical thinking. It tries to convey a closing thought about the
implications of your arguments.
3. A good last sentence leaves your reader with something to think about.
4. Generally a one paragraph conclusion is enough. But this as the introduction
should reflect the length of the essay.

9. How to write a conclusion
1. If your essay deals with a contemporary problem, you should address to it telling the
reader what will happen if they do not attend the problem.
2. Recommend a specific course of action.
3. Use an expert quotation or opinion to have credibility on the conclusion you have
reached.
4. Give a starling static, fact or visual image to drive home the ultimate point of your paper.
5. If your essay is encourage to personal reflection, express your conclusion with a relevant
narrative derived from your personal experience.
6. Pick up the anecdote you wrote in your introduction and add further ideas that derives
from the body of your essay.
7. In a science paper, mention worthwhile avenues for further research on your topic.

10. Paragraphs
A paragraph is a sentence or group of
sentences that support an idea. This adds an
idea at a time to the development of your
arguments.
Paragraphs of only one or two sentences long
make your writing look simple.

11. Paragraph methods
To have a good development in your paragraph you should have these points
into account:
- Illustration paragraph: to support the arguments use examples and quotes.
- Definition paragraph: defines a term related to the subject.
- Analysis or classification paragraph: analys each part or component
separately.
- Comparison or contrast paragraph: express the key similarities or
differences. You have to make your intentions clear to the reader. This
might take two paragraphs.
- Qualification paragraph: acknowledge that what precedes may not be true
or allways applicable.
- Process paragraph: involves a straightforward step-by-step description.
This often follows a chronological order.

12. Topic sentences
This is useful to
achieve a
paragraph unity.
States the main
point of the
paragraph. And
it’s relate to your
thesis.
If you read them
you will be able to
point out all your
essay’s arguments.
● They are usually at the beginning of the paragraph. But,
sometimes you can find it after one or two sentences.
● The topic sentence makes an abstract point and the rest
of the paragraph elaborates that point with examples and
evidence.
● The relation with the thesis helps strengthen the
coherence of your essay
● Use the topic sentences to show how your paragraph
helps to the development of your arguments.
● If the Topic sentence just restates your thesis then your
paragraph is irrelevant or your sentence needs
improvement. If you have many of this then your essay
will be repetitive.
● Your topic sentence must do more than establish the
connection between the thesis and the paragraph.

13. How to make a paragraph flow
To let a paragraph move from idea to idea within and between paragraph here are
some strategies:
1. Show connections.
2. Deliberate repetition: repetition of word or use of synonyms without the
repetition of an entire idea. You have to avoid making the same point, that you
made in the topic sentence, at the end of the paragraph.
3. Strategic use of pronouns: IT, THEY and THIS keeps the focus on the ideas.
4. Specialized linking words: to put ideas together.
Reinforcement: also, in other words, in addition, for example, moreover, more
importantly.
Change ideas: but, on the other hand, however, instead, yet, in contrast,
although, nevertheless, in spite of.
Conclusion: thus, therefore, ultimately, in conclusion, finally.

14. Quotations
● Your essay should be on your understanding of the topic so if you use too much
quotes you will crowd out your own ideas.
● To quote one of your resources you have to have in account this points:
- Language is particular or memorable.
- If you want to confirm your credibility.
- A passage worthy for further analysis.
- To argue with someone’s opinion.
● If you find something interesting but it is no worth to quote you can use
paraphrasing or summarizing.

15. Introducing a quotation
You can introduce quotations with short introductions:
● After the introductory sentence you should put a colon.
Arendt writes: “we must turn to Roman antiquity to find the first justification of war . . .”
● If your write an incomplete introductory sentence then you put a
comma.
As Hannah Arendt points out in On Revolution, “we must turn to Roman antiquity to find
the first justification of war, together with the first notion that there are just and unjust
wars” (12).

16. ● You can blend the quotation with your own words using that.
Arendt writes that “we must turn to Roman antiquity to find the first justification of
war . . .”
● This are some verbs that will help you introduce a quote:
argues,writes, points out, concludes, comments, notes, maintains,
suggests, insists, observes, counters, asserts, states, claims,
demonstrates, says, explains, reveals
Introducing a quotation

17. Longer
quotations
● If the quotation is longer than four lines you should use a block
quotation and an introductory sentence.
-Although Dickens never shied away from the political controversies of his time, he never, in
Orwell’s view, identified himself with any political program:
The truth is that Dickens’ criticism of society is almost exclusively moral. Hence his lack of
any constructive suggestion anywhere in his work. He attacks the law, parliamentary
government, the educational system and so forth, without ever clearly suggesting what he
would put in their places. Of course it is not necessarily the business of a novelist, or a satirist,
to make constructive suggestions, but the point is that Dickens’ attitude is at bottom not even
destructive. . . . For in reality his target is not so much society as human nature. (416)

18. ● For poetry you want to quote it as it is in your source, but if
you quote it as part of your paragraph you should use slashes
to indicate separation.
-In the opening heroic couplet of The Rape of the Lock, Pope establishes the
unheroic nature of the poem’s subject matter:
What dire offense from amorous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things. (1-2)
-In Eliot’s The Waste Land, the symbols of a mythic past lie buried in “A heap of
broken images, where the sun beats, / And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket
no relief” (22-23).
Longer
quotations

19. Modification
of
the
quote
● If you modify your quote by taking out information use an
ellipses: three periods surrounded by spaces.
In The Mirror and the Lamp, Abrams comments that the “diversity of
aesthetic theories . . . makes the task of the historian a very difficult one” (5).
● Between sentences a full stop a space followed by an ellipses,
so there would be four dots.
Of course it is not necessarily the business of a novelist, or a satirist, to make
constructive suggestions, but the point is that Dickens’ attitude is at bottom
not even destructive. . . . For in reality his target is not so much society as
human nature. (416)

20. Modification
of
the
quote ● To add or change information, you have to write it between square
brackets.
Gertrude asks her son Hamlet to “cast [his] nighted colour off” (1.2.68).
● Exclamation and question marks must go inside the quotation if
it corresponds to the author and outside if they corresponds to
your analysis.
Bewildered, Lear asks the fool, “Who is it that can tell me who I am?” (1.4.227).
Why is Lear so rash as to let his “two daughters’ dowers digest the third” (1.1.127)?
● Do not include a period before closing the quotation mark,
even if there is a period there in the original
● Use single quotation marks within quotation.
When Elizabeth reveals that her younger sister has eloped, Darcy drops his
customary reserve: “‘I am grieved, indeed,’ cried Darcy, ‘grieved—shocked'”
(Austen 295).

21. Punctuation
● After many introductory phrases are optional, when the
introductory phrase is short you can omit it, but if the sentence
is longer a comma will help the reader recognize the main
clause.
● When the introductory phrase includes a participle.
● After an introductory clause.
● Joining two independent clauses with a conjunction although
they are short.
● Joining simple sentences do not use a comma.
● Between elements of a list with three or more elements also
before “and”, “or” and the last element.
● Clauses that are not essential to the sentence.
Punctuation
provides you
with
considerable
control over
meaning and
tone.
Commas

22. ● To relate two independent
clauses into one sentence.
● To separate list elements that are
long or complex; in particular,
when that list have internal
commas.
● The sentences following the colons
expand on an idea or answer a
question.
● The colons are preceded by a full
independent clause and followed
by an independent clause, phrase
or word.
Semicolons Colons:

23. ● They are similar to the commas
and colons.
● What is between dashes is more
important information than the
information between commas.
● Introduce interrupting material.
● Are modest when replacing
commas or dashes.
● Act like a footnote but within the
text.
● It can enclosure full sentences.
Dashes: Parenthesis:

24. Bibliography
● University of Toronto (n.d). Organizing an Essay. Last visited: May 24th, 2021.
Available at: https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/planning/organizing/
● University of Toronto (n.d). Introductions and Conclusions. Last visited: May 24th,
2021. Available at: https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/planning/intros-and-conclusions/
● University of Toronto (n.d). Paragraphs. Last visited: May 24th, 2021. Available at:
https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/planning/paragraphs/
● University of Toronto (n.d). Using topic sentences. Last visited: May 24th, 2021.
Available at: https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/planning/topic-sentences/
● University of Toronto (n.d). Using Quotations. Last visited: May 24th, 2021. Available
at: https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/using-sources/quotations/
● University of Toronto (n.d). Punctuation. Last visited: May 24th, 2021. Available at:
https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/revising/punctuation/