I have been writing professionally as a public affairs officer since 1997, but academic writing is a different genre that I have not been doing a lot since my undergraduate days. For the past 23 years, I have been writing news releases, speeches, briefing notes, web articles, and media response lines. These written products are somewhat different from academic writing as the communication objective for these pieces is to simplify complex ideas and present them in a clear and concise form as possible – sometimes the goal is to be able to present a complete idea as short as a response line in bullet form. On the other hand, academic writing follows a rigid format and technical style, and it has to be “clear, concise, focused, structured and backed up by evidence” (University of Leeds Website). It is for this reason why I think that it is important to take MAIS 606 Academic Writing for Graduate Students as early as possible in the MAIS program because the writing techniques that we will learn from this course will help us succeed in our academic endeavours.

What I appreciate in our first forum discussion is the sharing of online writing resources. Personally, I find the Purdue Owl website to be one of the best online resources because this website provides the tools and guidelines needed in order to meet all the criteria in the Writing Rubric. As explained in thing website, “these OWL resources will help you with the writing process: prewriting (invention), developing research questions and outlines, composing thesis statements, and proofreading” (Purdue Writing Lab). So, it is a one-stop resource centre that can help us successfully complete a writing task from planning to product finalization. In fact, under the general writing menu of the website, it thoroughly explains the writing process and provides tutorials on academic writing, writing style, and grammar. What’s more, the website has step-by-step guides on all citation styles including: MLA, APA, Chicago, IEEE, AMA, and ASA. Moreover, it has practical tips on how to avoid plagiarism and recommendations on how to hone one's graduate writing skills.

According to the assignment instructions, MLA is the required style for MAIS 606’s discussion fora and blog posts, therefore, it is important that we carefully read the MLA style guide in the Purdue Owl website. Of note, a specific content of this website that I really like is the examples that we can use as templates, which can help us get the correct format for our academic paper. A sample MLA file can be found in the following web link:

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/documents/20190822MLASamplePaper.pdf

Given all these features of the Purdue Owl website, I am convinced that it is the best one-stop writing resource on the web.

In addition to the Purdue Owl website, I also appreciate the proofreading checklist shared by one of my classmates in our discussion forum. I agree that “proofreading is a necessary evil” (Proofreading Checklist for the Basic Essay) because mistakes affect the clarity of a written piece. Quality control is a crucial part of the writing process and any mistake, even how simple it is, can affect the readability of work. In some cases, a grammatical mistake or a spelling error can affect the sense of an idea being articulated or the factual accuracy of the product. For example, verb-tense mistake can affect the concept of time and can lead to miscommunication. What's more, a misspelled name constitutes a factual error and thus affects the quality of an article. I remember that when I took the basic military public affairs course, a factual error was an automatic reason for the failure of written assignments.

For me, academic writing is both a technique and a skill. MAIS 606 will give me the techniques that I need to learn how to write scholarly. We can learn the techniques by taking the course, but it takes effort and practice to acquire the skills. Hence, the onus is for me to practice rigorously through blog posts and active participation in our weekly fora in order to develop my skills.

Works Cited

“Proofreading Checklist for the Basic Essay.” The WriteAtHome Blog Proofreading Checklist for the Basic Essay Comments, blog.writeathome.com/index.php/2013/04/proofreading-checklist-for-the-basic-essay/.

Purdue Writing Lab. “MLA Formatting and Style Guide // Purdue Writing Lab.” Purdue Writing Lab, owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_formatting_and_style_guide.html.

University of Leeds Website. “Academic Writing.” Library, University of Leeds, 30 June 2017, library.leeds.ac.uk/info/14011/writing/106/academic_writing.