How to improve your writing: A guide for PhD students and academics

Good applicable points. Other than structure I find that tone is also an important yet underrated aspect of academic writing. Of course some disciplines might enjoy more liberty than others but I find that many academics writes in a needlessly boring style. When I began writing my PhD dissertation I would also feel obliged to write in a style where I would distance myself from the writing and strive to make myself invisible as the author of the text in some misunderstood attempt at objectivity. When I read through my dissertation around a 100 pages in I found it to be terribly boring and felt like it could have been written by someone else. So, I decided to scrap the whole thing and start over and write it in a more personal style with humor and excitement and I hoped that it would not be dismissed as being less scientific. It was much more fun to write and edit the new version and at the defense it turned out that the assessment committee really valued the personal style of writing. One even said that it had been such a joy to read and that it would make assessment work much more delightful if more dissertations would feature creative and unique styles of writing.

Thank you so much for your lecture, Dr. Hayton! I will apply the skills you taught us in Portuguese! Greetings from Macau! :)

Writing up my PhD thesis now. Many thanks.

16:07 Stress among PHD Students 20:00 Structure 9:40 How to show what you know 28:00 The process...use a mind map to guide the writing 48:14 Q&A e índice de lo visto

He missed “crying under your desk” in his process section

So extensive guidance. Glad to listen to this video. Lots of important tips and the speaker has immense patience.

I want to thank you for posting this video. It has got many information that I find valuable.

Your talks are so good, wow!!! Well done. I am in my first semester of my Master's degree in Genetics and now I am writing my research proposal, this is so helpful. THANK YOU!!

Hi Hayton, I wish, i knew this at the time of my grad school. I was literally struggling with writing at that time .I stuck myself confronting three things 1. Knowledge of particular discipline on given topic. 2. Research methodolgy (worrying about the research principles) 3. How to structure my ideas ( the most frustrating part). Thank God i saw your videos. it will surely help in my academic career. May Allah bless you.

You are the best! Been a fan since "... Without Going Insane". 👍👍👍

Really liked the fundamental problem around 8:10 - made me feel a bit better about the current tangle!

It is great to witness wisdom in a testimony, masterclass talk. Metacognition talks help a lot. Thank you for the inspiration.

Eulissa Harvey I totally agree, one should have details. For me, gathering details gives me the the oportuinity to communicate effectively.

Powerful presentations

Your lectures are extremely helpful, thank you for posting these! Believe it or not, writing has been my favorite part of my undergraduate degree so far. I'm sure these tips will help me improve!

For introductions - a way to get around that: Write a sentence: "in this article we present..." ("This research will... " !) and complete the sentence stating what you are going to do in the article. That sentence will contain a number of key words and concepts (these are related to the "situation, problem, current knowledge on the topic, and the approach you have chosen to address it). Find these items, they must be explained in your introduction. This will basically select what you need to explain (avoid irrelevant information), and also force you to put the things in a meaningful order. It is kind of writing your intro "backwards" - but by doing that, you have a clear focus when you write your introduction.

Thanks for your useful tips

Thank you, Dr. Hayton, It's a great video. I will try to apply in Indonesia. Cheers!.

Thank you so much professor.

Best presentation on improving writing I've come across - thanks for sharing your lecture