Invitation to Writing Workshop Conducted by Frank Azevedo

Invitation to Writing Workshop Conducted by Frank AzevedoGood writing is clear, concise, coherent, and careful. These four criteria might be calledwriting’s four big Cs. Writing that fails to meet even one of these four criteria probably will notbe favorably reviewed by readers, especially a unique class of readers: professors, academicadvisors, prospective employers, customers and prospective customers, colleagues, and (for youfuture academics) editors and reviewers at top peer-reviewed professional journals.In the writing workshop, you will learn how to revise carefully and thereby to achieve clarity,concision, and coherency in your writing. First, you will learn writing principles and then youwill learn to apply them in analyzing the bad writing of others, including the bad writing of a UScollege writing instructor with a PhD in English who is “a professor of English and Director ofthe Writing Lab at the College of Charleston (SC),” and who “teaches graduate andundergraduate courses in writing.” The piece of writing that you find at this link(http://emil.uwc.utexas.edu/praxis/?q=node/119) contains many writing errors, perhaps noneworse than the one (a misplaced modifier that conveys an unintended meaning) in the followingparagraph:During spring, writing lab directors are undergoing their own ritual. They are gatheringnames of students from faculty who have been nominated for the job of tutor,interviewing these prospective consultants, and, finally, making job offers to the best andthe brightest in order to secure the new crop of tutors for the fast-approaching fall.Directors can now catch their breaths, assuming that training can wait until the fall.Azevedo Editing Service – +47 90047921 – Skype: fazmassas – frankazevedofaz@hotmail.com 1

Please come to the workshop prepared to identify and to fix that error, and to identify and to fixother errors in the woeful writing of a US college writing instructor with a PhD in English.You have already learned an important first lesson: You must not trust someone to help you withyour English-language writing just because their mother tongue is English and they have animpressive title. You must know enough to understand when you are being helped by and whenyou are being hindered, or worse, cheated by someone who claims to be a writing expert.Please email to me 3 weeks before the workshop a double-spaced sample of your writing (fourpages or more in Word). The writing should be what you consider your best writing, that is, afinal draft that you could proudly present to professors, prospective employers, customers andprospective customers, colleagues, or (for you future academics) to the editor and reviewers of atop peer-reviewed professional journal. The group will analyze it to determine whether thewriting is clear, concise, coherent, and careful. You will emerge from the workshop experiencewith a much better understanding of how to meet these four criteria in your future writing.Azevedo Editing Service – +47 90047921 – Skype: fazmassas – frankazevedofaz@hotmail.com 2