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Writing a Winning Scholarship Application
The fall term has barely started, and already graduate students are writing to me for advice on how to craft their scholarship applications. This blog provides some advice on how to prepare a successful application.
“This” what? Pairing “This” with a Noun
Have you ever read a sentence starting with “this” that perplexes you because you don’t know what “this” refers to? Sentences starting with “this” often confuse readers. The ambiguity occurs when the reader can’t identify the noun “this” replaces. I call “this” with no clear antecedent noun an orphaned “this.” Technically it’s known as a dangling demonstrative pronoun.
Decluttering Your Writing
Do you want to express hard ideas in crisp, powerful sentence? Even better, do you want to engage your readers? In this blog, I want to show you how to “declutter” your sentences, ejecting excess words and stripping the writing of unnecessary complexity. There once was a time when convoluted sentences and long words were the hallmark of academic sophistication. No longer. Writing plainly is the new requirement.
Revealing Your Argument
Students often ask me what the most common problem is in academic writing. They are surprised when I don’t say subject-verb agreement, comma splice, or some other grammatical error. To be sure these mistakes can be annoying—and they will be topics of future blogs—but they are not the biggest problem. That distinction belongs to a paper’s argument or, more precisely, to the lack of it.
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Credentials
For my entire career, I’ve been immersed in academic writing and editing. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in English and a Master of Arts in Library Science, I worked in academic publishing, where I was Acquisitions Editor and later Publisher and Editorial Director for a large textbook publisher in Toronto. In 1999, I established my own business as a project manager and editor of nursing textbooks. In 2012, I completed my credentials for teaching English as a Second Language and then began teaching academic and scientific writing to graduate students at the University of Saskatchewan. Later, I became the university’s Graduate Writing Specialist. In this role, I coached individual students and gave numerous workshops across campus on how to craft theses and dissertations, journal papers, grant and scholarship applications, and statements.
I currently work part time at the University of Saskatchewan as Student Writing Advisor for the School of Environment and Sustainability. I am also Student Writing Advisor at the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, where I teach academic and professional writing courses.