Central and East European Studies
We've put this Central and East European (CEES) writing skills site together because how you write will impact on your degree grade. In addition, since your first introduction to a potential employer is likely to be through an on-line written submission, writing skills impact directly on your employment prospects. In other words, developing good writing skills is crucial to success at university and beyond.
With this in mind, we've packed the site with information, examples and writing exercises derived from real student essays generated from within this subject area. If your essay marker has attached a writing skills action sheet to your marked work, you'll see that the categories on the action sheet directly reflect the site. The action sheet is designed to help markers point out specific problems in specific pieces of work. However, you can also use the site when writing your essay, or at any time.
When you click into a category, you'll find a blue question mark. Click this first. The page that pops up will give a comprehensive explanation of the exercise topic, and also examples specific to CEES. Reading this page will not only save you time, it will give you a better understanding of CEES's writing and referencing requirements.
There are four different styles of exercise: wordclick, multiple choice questions, select the problem and freetext. Detailed instructions are provided at the top of each exercise. Though the exercises are presented in a numbered list, you can access them in any order.
We hope you enjoy the site and find it useful.
If you want to download a copy of the action sheet, click on the link below.
CEES action sheet for improving writing skills
A. PunctuationPunctuation, which covers apostrophes, colons, commas (in other words, everything in written language that is not a letter or a number), plays a key role in making sure that everything you write is clear and unambiguous, i.e. that the reader cannot misinterpret your comments.
The rules that govern punctuation vary from country to country, and over time. The University of Glasgow uses current British English convention, so you should too.
When you click on a topic, you'll see a blue question mark. Click on this before you start the exercises.
3. Commas and run-on sentences
B. Formatting
At university, you are part of a community of academics and good academic practice demands that you format your work (e.g. font, line-spacing, page numbering) according to the course guidelines. Formatting also includes understanding how capital letters work. Randomly used capitals drive markers mad. Click into 'capitals' and never make a mistake again.
C. Starting and finishing
First and last impressions are always important, so the opening and closing lines of your essay need careful consideration. Do you know what constitutes a strong opening? Can you recognise a good closing line? This section offers some practice and ideas.
D. Sentence construction
Poor sentence structure and clumsy phrasing lead to confusion and ambiguity. Reading your work aloud is a good way to test whether what you have written is clear. If you stumble over your own writing, your reader will stumble too.
Every sentence must have a subject and a verb. If you're not sure what this means, you need to click on 'sentence fragments' without delay.
E. Word choice and writing style
It is important to write concisely, i.e. not to use 50 words where 10 will do. Reaching the essay word limit through repetition, rambling or paragraphs littered with 'thus it can be seen that this is due to the fact that' or similar will impact on your grade.
Equally, make sure you use the right word or phrase in the right context. Do you know the difference between 'economic' and 'economical', and 'government' and 'governance'?
Finally, choose the right writing style for the right audience. An academic essay is not a personal letter or email, so you must tailor your language accordingly.
11. Wordiness: how to be concise
12. Is this the right word or phrase?
F. Evidence
If you make assertions, when must you also provide evidence? Click into this section for more information.
G. Referencing
In Central and East European history, you can use either the footnote system of referencing or the Harvard or author/date system. Whichever you choose, please be consistent.
Take a note of the required referencing information as you do your reading. Trying to find references again later is a nightmare. Click into 'bibliography', then click the blue question mark to find all the details you'll need.
N.B. Not acknowledging your sources, whether you quote directly from them or use and expand ideas you find in them, will lay you open to charges of plagiarism (see below).
15. Referencing within your text
H. Proof reading
So many writing mistakes can be rectified before a marker ever sees what you've written. All you have to do is spend 10 minutes reading your work aloud. Somehow, the act of reading aloud forces you to notice careless errors, e.g. singular/plural mismatches or spelling errors. In this section, you'll find text incorporating various mistakes, all of which careful proof reading would have picked up.
17. Careless errors you should notice
Academic Writing Skills Tutorials by the University of Glasgow are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.