Introducing the PowerPapers Blog!

Welcome to PowerPapers' very own blog! This is the place to get tips on all sorts of issues related to academic writing and research, academic writers, researchers, and clients, and academia in general.

Jon here, and I'm thrilled to be part of this blog! Soon you'll meet Kate, my partner in crime, who'll be sharing this space with me.

What better way to kick off this blog than to talk about the definitions of academic writing and research? I say definitions because really, these are two separate things.

Academic Writing

First, let's discuss academic writing. Put simply, this is anything from a term paper to a dissertation, with book reports and case studies thrown in for good measure. The common element is that they all fall under the auspices of academia, meaning that whatever is written needs to be supported with citations from scholarly and/or relevant sources (because not all sources which are relevant are scholarly).

Academic Research

This is where the research comes in. If you're writing a master's thesis about feminism and Jane Austen, you can't stumble on a high school girl's blog about “Pride and Prejudice” and think you've found a source you can quote; not unless you are also doing a sociological study of blogs and what they say about current US culture. No: research is all about the hard, grinding work of going through scholarly, peer-reviewed journals in your disciplinary area(s) and finding relevant articles; it is about looking through book lists and finding texts which will fit in with your thesis; and this is just the beginning! Next you have to read, understand, and take notes on it all.

And Writing Yet Again

This brings us around full circle to writing. Once you're done with the research part, it's time to put it all down in words; another thing that's easier said than done, as we all know.

Of course, it's all far more complicated than this. A five-page essay on Obama's current policy on the removal of troops from Iraq for a 300-level political science class will be researched and written far differently than a five-page essay on the ethics of U.S. military involvement in Iraq for an introduction to philosophy class. And so on and so forth.

This is where model papers come in handy! Kate's going to talk about these next time, but in the meantime, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach us any time at www.powerpapers.com/page/contact.