I Work At A Writing Center - Tumblr Posts

Word Counter - Not only does it count the number of words you’ve written, it tells you which words are used most often and how many times they appear.

Tip Of My Tongue - Have you ever had a word on the tip of your tongue, but you just can’t figure out what it is? This site searches words by letters, length, definition, and more to alleviate that.

Readability Score - This calculates a multitude of text statistics, including character, syllable, word, and sentence count, characters and syllables per word, words per sentence, and average grade level.

Writer’s Block (Desktop Application) - This free application for your computer will block out everything on your computer until you meet a certain word count or spend a certain amount of time writing.

Cliche Finder - It does what the name says.

Write Rhymes - It’ll find rhymes for words as you write.

Verbix - This site conjugates verbs, because English is a weird language.

Graviax - This grammar checker is much more comprehensive than Microsoft Word, again, because English is a weird language.

Sorry for how short this is! I wanted to only include things I genuinely find useful.

Everything You Need To Know About MLA Format

General Format:

8.5 x 11 inch paper

Double spaced

Times New Roman font

12 pt font

Only one space after each period

1 inch margins on all sides

Indent the first line of each paragraph by half an inch

Use a header that includes your last name and page number in the top right hand corner

The First Page:

In the upper left hand corner:

Your Name

Your Instructor’s Name

The Class Title

The Date (Day Month Year)

The title of your paper should be one double-space down and should not be bolded, italicized, or underlined

The beginning of your paper should start one double-space down from the title with the first line indented by half an inch

What to Italicize and Quote:

Book titles are italicized

Play titles are italicized

Poem titles have quotation marks

Article titles have quotation marks

Chapter titles have quotation marks

In-Text Citations:

When you know the author’s last name

(Last Name Page Number) or

(Last Name Paragraph or Line Number)

When you don’t know the author’s last name

(Book Title Page Number)

(Article Title Page Number)

Remember to italicize the book titles and put the article titles in quotation marks

Works Cited Page:

Begin your Works Cited page on a separate page at the end of your research paper. It should have the same one inch margins and header as the rest of your paper

Label the page “Works Cited” (do not italicize or put in quotations) on the top of the page and center it

Double space all citations but do not skip spaces between entries

Indent the second line of a citation by half an inch

List sources in alphabetical order

If the source has more than one author, the first given name appears in last name, first name format and the following authors appear in last name, first name format separated by commas. The last author’s name should be preceded by an “and”

Citing Print Sources:

Book or Poem:

Last Name, First Name. Title of Book or Poem. City of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication. Print.

Magazine or Newspaper Article:

Last Name, First Name. “Title of Article.” Title of Periodical Day Month Year: pages. Print.

Journal Article:

Last Name, First Name. “Title of Article.” Title of Journal Volume.Issue (Year): pages. Print.

Citing Web Sources:

Whole Website:

Name of Site. Sponsor or Publisher, date of resource creation. Web. Date of access. 

Web Page or Web Article:

Last Name, First Name. “Title of Article.” Name of Site. Sponsor of Publisher, date of resource creation. Web. Date of access.

Online Journal Article:

Last Name, First Name. “Title of Article.” Title of Journal Volume.Issue (Year): pages. Web. Date of access. 

Note: Don’t forget to indent the second line in the citation. I did not indent the examples because the indents on tumblr mobile and tumblr desktop differ starkly and I figured this was probably the less confusing way to write the information needed for a citation (trust me)

Unknown Information in Citations:

If the author is unknown, begin citation with the title

If the publisher is unknown, write “n.p.” in its place (no quotation marks)

If the publishing date is unknown, write “n.d.” in its place (no quotation marks)

I hope this guide is as useful for me as it it for you!

Academic Writing Resources

General:

The Five-Paragraph Essay

Using Punctuation Marks

Deadly Sins Checklist

Formatting Your Paper

Writing About Literature

Basic Essay

Revision Checklist

Planning and Organization

Editing and Proofreading

Latin Terms

Essay Structure

Tips on Introducing Quotes

Academic Writing Tips

Introductions:

Introductory Paragraphs

Introductions

Writing an Introduction

Preparing to Write an Introduction

Introduction Strategies

The Introductory Paragraph

Writing Effective Introductions

In The Beginning

Introductions and Conclusions

The Introductory Paragraph

Writing Introductory Paragraphs

How to Write an Intro

Body Paragraphs:

Paragraph Development and Topic Sentences

Transitions

Transitions

Transitions

Four Components of an Effective Body Paragraph

Writing Paragraphs

Paragraph Development

Body Paragraphs

Body Paragraphs

Strong Body Paragraphs

Body Paragraphs

Writing Body Paragraphs

How to Write Body Paragraphs

Writing the Body

Writing Body Paragraphs

Body Paragraphs

Body Paragraphs that Defend a Thesis

How to Write Body Paragraphs

The Perfect Paragraph

Topic Sentences:

Topic Sentences

Writing Topic Sentences

Topic Sentences

Topic Sentences

The Topic Sentence

Paragraphs and Topic Sentences

The Topic Sentence

Topics, Main Ideas, and Topic Sentences

Writing a Good Topic Sentence

Good Topic Sentences

Conclusions:

Writing Effective Conclusions

Introductions and Conclusions

Conclusion Paragraphs

Conclusion Strategies

Conclusions

Tips for a Strong Conclusion

The Concluding Paragraph

Ending the Essay

Types of Conclusions

Writing a Strong Conclusion

How to Write a Conclusion

Writing Conclusions

Guide to Conclusions

Thesis Statements:

The Thesis Statement

Thesis Statements

Writing a Thesis Statement

Thesis Statement

Tips and Examples

Writing a Thesis

Writing the Thesis

How to Write Your Thesis

The Thesis

Thesis Statements

Guidelines for Writing a Thesis

Thesis Statements

Thesis

Thesis Statements

The Thesis

Create a Strong Thesis

How to Write a Thesis

Developing a Thesis

Guide to Writing Thesis Statements

Thesis Statements

Citing:

When to Cite

APA Documentation

MLA Documentation

Suggestions for Citing Sources

Research and Citation Resources

Citation Information

MLA Guidelines for Citing Poetry

MLA Style for Poetry

How to Format Your Paper

Argumentative Essays:

Argumentative Essays

Argument

Argumentative Essays

Persuasive or Argumentative Essays

Argumentative Essay

Argument/Argumentative

Argumentative Essays

How to Write a Good Argument

How to Write an Argumentative Essay

Writing Conclusions to Argumentative Essays

Argumentative Essay

Persuasive Essay Writing

Writing Concluding Paragraphs

Constructing the Argumentative Essay

Writing About Poetry:

Writing About Poetry

Writing About Poetry

Writing About Poetry Q & A

Poetry Explications

Writing About Poetry

Writing About Poems

Explicating a Poem

Writing About Poetry

Writing a Thesis Paper About a Poem

How to Start a Poetry Introduction

Poetry Essay Structure

Poetry Explication

Expository Essays:

Structure of a General Expository Essay

Expository Essay Examples

Sample Expository Essay

Expository Writing

Expository Essay Model

Elements of Expository Essays

Expository Writing Information

Expository Essays

Writing Expository Essays

How to Write an Expository Essay

Tips on Writing an Expository Essay

Expository Essays

Essay Map

Writing Expository Essays

How to Create a Strong Expository Essay

Expository Essay Writing

The Expository Essay

Research Papers:

How to Write a Research Paper in Literature

Writing a Research Paper

The Research Paper

How to Write a Research Paper

Five Paragraph Research Paper

Sample Research Paper

Writing a Research Paper

Tips for a Research Paper

How to Write a Research Paper

Writing a Scientific Research Paper

Writing Research Papers

Research and Writing

Research Papers that Rock

How to Write an Effective Research Paper

College Application Essays:

Application Essay Tips

Application Essays

Tips

10 Tips

Application Essays

How to Write a College Application Essay

Tips for an Effective Essay

Do’s and Don’t’s

College Application Essay

How to Write a College Application Essay

Narrative Essays:

Narrative and Descriptive

Narrative Essay Writing

The Personal Essay

Narrative Essays

Narrative Essays

Writing Narrative Essays

Narrative/Descriptive

Narrative Essay

Writing a Narrative Essay

Tips on Writing a Narrative Essay

Guess who is now in charge of “meme Mondays” for my job’s social media?

Just completed and submitted the final version of my Extended Essay !!! °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖° 

So I compiled lists of words that I found super super useful in making it easier for me to finish any essay !! Here is a masterpost of some sort with transition words + key vocabs grouped together for easy access as well as an IB IOC ‘cheat sheet’ I used for my english LAL orals last year (though most commentaries follow a similar structure so its generalisable) ~

Good luck with your essays !!!

… oops just realised I forgot to bullet point one of the lists 

Hi! So I recently discovered removing the word 'that' from 90% of my writing actually made it more fluid and hardly impacted the readability. Tiny achievement but very proud of myself as a novice writer ^.^ I was wondering if (other than the up/down one) there were any other tiny tricks for removing superfluous words? Thanks!

Great question! Honestly, there are hundreds, but here are a few to get you started.

Words You Can (Usually) Safely Cut from Your Writing

That

Then

Start

Begin

Suddenly

Down

Up

Kind of

Really

Just

Basically

In general, look out for adverbs (actually, really), “hedging” words (kind of, sometimes), and ambiguous words (nothing, everything, someone). Some can be cut; others will need to be revised or swapped out. “That” is a classic offender. “Then” can usually be changed to “and.” It’s only necessary to qualify that an action was “started” if the action gets interrupted, otherwise it can be cut. (”She started to cry” becomes “She cried”).

I have a detailed, exhaustive list of words like this (with explanations!) in my book The Complete Guide to Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, which will be done soon :)

Nice to hear from you & hope this helps!

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The Literary Architect is a writing advice blog run by me, Bucket Siler. For more writing help, check out my Free Resource Library, peruse my Tumblr Post Guide, or get The Complete Guide to Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. xoxo