I’m a liberal when it comes to most things—except (as my students will know) fonts, formatting, and grammar. So why am I a fully signed-up member of the Grammar Police (or should that be ‘grammar police’)? Well, aside from my various OCDs (yup, that’s Oxford Comma Disorder), it’s a way that you, as a writer, can make sure that your beautiful, brilliant, creative writing is seen in its best possible light—not detracted by missing apostrophes and torturously convoluted sentences. So here are over 25 top tips for those of you writing essays and dissertations—at all levels—based on years of marking and encountering the same issues time after time. All of these tips are aligned with the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th edition), which provides an essential set of guidelines and standards for writing papers in psychology-related fields. There’s also a checklist you can download from here to go through your draft assignments to check everything is covered. (And just to say, by way of disclaimer, listen to your tutors first and foremost: if they see things differently, do what they say—they’re going to be the ones marking your papers!)
Puncutation
Apostrophes. You just would not believe how many students working at graduate, Master's, and even doctoral level dont know when to put apostrophe's and when not to. Check out the rules on it—it takes two minute's on the web (try this site)—and you'll never drive your marker's crazy again (whose this Roger’s bloke that students keep writing about?).
Single (‘ ’) or double (“ ”) quotation marks? For UK English it’s single; for US English it’s double. The only exception is when you give quotation marks within quotations marks, in which case you use the other type. So, for instance, in UK English you might write:
Charlie said, ‘I’ve often told myself, “buck up, don’t be stupid,” but I do find it hard.’ On the other hand, Sharon said…
And while we’re at it, make sure those are ‘curly marks’ (or ‘smart apostrophes’), and not the symbols for inches (") or feet ('), which are straight.
One space after a full stop. Not two. That’s for when we had typewriters.
Colon (:) before a list, not semi-colon (;), and definitely not colon-dash (:-).
Write out numbers as words if they are below 10 (except if they are to do with dates, times, or mathematical functions; or at the start of the sentence). So, for instance:
‘Across the three cohorts there were over 500 participants.’
‘In this study, six of the young people said…’
Think where you’re putting your commas. They’re not sprinkles: something you just liberally and randomly scatter over your text. So check where you’ve put them, and that they meaningfully separate out clauses, or items, in your writing.
And, while we’re at it, a comma before the last item in a list (after ‘and’). This is known as an ‘Oxford comma’, and is recommended by the American Psychological Association (APA) to improve clarity. So, for instance, you’d write that ‘Across the counselling, psychotherapy, and psychiatric literature…’ rather than ‘Across the counselling, psychotherapy and psychiatric literature…’
Watch out for over-capitalising words. In most cases, you don’t need to capitalise—you’re not writing German (unless, of course, you are). Most words don’t need capitalisation (e.g., ‘person-centred therapy’, not ‘Person-Centred Therapy’), unless they are ‘proper nouns’ (that is, names of specific one-of-a-kind items, like Fritz Perls or the University of Sussex).
Key terms should be italicised on first use. Say you’re writing an essay about phenomenology, or it’s a key term that you’re going to define subsequently. The first time you use the term, italicise it. For instance, ‘Person-centred therapy is based upon a phenomenological understanding of human being. Phenomenology was a philosophy developed by Husserl, and refers to…’. An exception to this is that, if you want to introduce a term but without any subsequent definition (perhaps it’s not that central to your essay), put it in quotation marks. For instance, ‘Transactional analysis is based on such concepts as “ego states” and “scripts”, while Gestalt therapy…’
Quotations AND CITATIONS
Reference your claims. Whenever you state how things are, or how things might be seen, reference where this is from. Typically, a paragraph might have four or more references in it. If you find that you have several paragraphs without any at all, check you’re not making claims without saying their source. If it’s your own opinion, that’s fine (particularly later on in essays, for instance in the discussion), but be clear that that’s the case.
If you give a direct quotation, give the page number of the text it’s from (as well as the author(s) and date).
If a quotation is more than 40 words (a ‘block quotation’), indent it.
Otherwise, treat direct quotations as you would other text. So you don’t need to italicise it, put it in font size 8 or 18, use a different font colour etc. The same for quotations from research participants: use quotation marks and treat as block quotations if over 40 words, but otherwise leave well enough alone.
The page number comes between the close quotation mark and the full stop (if the direct quote is in the text). For instance: Rogers (1957) said, ‘The greatest regret in my career is that I didn’t develop pluralistic thinking and practice’ (p. 23). The only exception to this is with block quotations, in which case the page number comes after the full stop. Stupid, I know, but there you go.
In text citations for papers with 3 or more authors only need the first author now from first citation onwards, with ‘et al.’: e.g., ‘Cooper et al. (2021) say…’
Paragraphs, Sentences, and Sections
One paragraph, one point. Don’t try and squeeze lots of different points and issues into one paragraph. Often, a good way to write paragraphs is with a first sentences that summarises what you are saying in it, then subsequent sentences that unpack it in more detail.
Keep sentences short. In most cases, it doesn’t need to be more than three lines or so. If it’s longer, check whether you can break the sentence down into simpler parts.
Keep sentences simple. You don’t normally need more than two or three ‘clauses’; and if you’ve got more, for instance, like this sentence has—with lots of commas, semi-colons, and dashes in it—you can see how it starts to get more difficult to follow, so try and simplify.
Make sure you give clear breaks between paragraphs. So that the reader can see where one ends and the other begins. For instance, have a line break, or else indent the first line of each paragraph.
Headings should stand out. That’s what they are there for, so make sure they are different from the rest of the text. For instance, do as bold and centred. Also, if you are using different levels of headings (for instance, headings, subheadings, and sub-subheadings), make it really clear which are which, with higher levels more prominent in the text.
Don’t forget page numbers. If you want your assessors to be able to give feedback, they need to be able to point to where things are.
General writing
Use acronyms sparingly. ‘The AG group felt that ACT was superior to CBB on the TF outcomes…’ Unless you’ve got the memory of a child genius they’re a nightmare. If you do use them, make sure you explain what they are on first use.
Avoid jargon/overly-casual terms. ‘The therapists in the study seemed quite chilled; but, for future research more groundedness and heart-centredness could possibly help.’ Enough said!
Avoid repetition. Saying something once is nearly always enough. You don’t need to repeat it again and again. It gets tedious. Especially when you say things over and over again.
Be consistent in the terminology that you use. For instance, if you are doing an interview study with young people, don’t switch randomly between calling your participants ‘young people’, ‘adolescents’, ‘teenagers’, ‘clients’, and ‘participants’. Choose one term and stick to it and; if you do use more than one term, be consistent in which one you use when.
Use footnotes/endnotes sparingly. It can be frustrating for a reader to jump between your main text and then subtexts written elsewhere. So try and include everything in your main text if you can (for instance in parenthesis).
Don’t assume your readers know what things mean. ‘When it comes to measures based on normative, formative indicators…’ What? You don’t know what ‘normative’ and ‘formative’ mean (and it’s not a music group, though the name ‘The Normative Formatives’ is pretty cool!). The point here, as above, is to spell things out so that the reader knows what you are talking about. If it’s brief you could do that in parenthesis in the sentence. If not, give it dedicated sentences.
Check the spell and grammar checkers. Those wiggly blue and red lines underneath your writing (on Microsoft Word) do mean something. Sometimes it’s just the software being over-sensitive, but it’s always worth checking and seeing what it’s picking up. If you’re software doesn’t do spell and grammar checks, it might be time to upgrade. You need something or someone else to give this a thorough check through before submitting any piece of work.
Make your file names meaningful. And finally, if you are sending out documents for assessments as digital files, give it a name that is going to mean something in someone else’s system. ‘Essay.doc’ or ‘Berne version 3 final’ is really not going to help your assessor know which is your submission—particularly in the midst of tens or hundreds of others. So make sure your surname is in the file title (unless the submission needs to be anonymised), and add a reference to the specific assignment: for instance, ‘Patel case study 1’. Adding a date of submission, or completion, is also very useful, though I would suggest always doing this in the format ‘year-month-day’ (rather than ‘day month year’), so that computers store more than one version of the file in the correct order (assuming the files are sorted alphabetically). So that gives you a file title like ‘Patel case study 1 2020-03-10’ and, with a name like that, it’s unlikely to get mixed up with anything else.
With many of these ‘rules’, the main thing is to be consistent. For instance, most markers won’t mind if you use double quotation marks rather than single, or italicising all your quotes, but the key thing is to do it all the way through. It’s when it’s changing that it gets confusing, because the reader thinks you might mean something by it, when in fact it just means you weren’t thinking about it. But how do we know?! Bear in mind, in particular, that your marker may have several assignments to work through, so anything that can help make their life easier is likely to be worth it. And the great thing is, once you get into these habits, they’ll stick with you for next time. As your academic level progresses, there will be more and more expectation that you’ll get these things ‘right’. So use the checklist to go through your first few assignments, and also ask a peer to scrutinise it using the checklist, and once you’re finding that you’re addressing the issues from the start you can stop using it.
Last thing, and I’ve already said this (so much for avoiding repetition!), but for a brilliantly concise and comprehensive guide to academic writing, go to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (now in its seventh edition). Keep it by your writing desk, your bedside, your toilet…. it’s an invaluable investment in terms of getting through your assignments, because it gives you a consistent and clear set of guidelines on everything from referencing to headings to writing style.
Actually, sorry, really really last thing, and I couldn’t end this blog without saying it because my students won’t recognise me. Times New Roman 12 point. That’s all you need. No Comic Sans, no Bahnschrift Light SemiCondensed. Just one, nice, clear font all the way through.
Keep it simple and let the glorious light of your creative genius through. Good luck!
Acknowledgements
Photo by Lovefreund