Tweed Resources

Scroll down for original resources in three categories:

TOOLS & PRINTABLES: Compendium of Academic Verbs, Critique Me cover-page template, Writer-at-Work door tag

DISSERTATION-TO-BOOK GUIDES: Step-by-step guides to revising a dissertation into a book manuscript (new editions coming soon!)

WRITING PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION: Computer wallpaper and printable posters to motivate writers

 

Tools & Printables

 

Tweed’s Ever-Expanding Compendium of Academic Verbs

PDF of 250 verbs useful for discussing scholarship (state, advocate, problematize, elucidate, etc.)

 

 

Critique Me

A customizable form to use as a cover sheet when sending drafts to friends and colleagues for feedback

Scholarly Resolution Form

Fill in this certificate to solidify your scholarly resolutions. Any time of year is a great time to think about the reasons for a goal, break it down into steps, decide on resources to consult, and commit to rewarding yourself for achieving it.

Writer-at-Work Door Tag Template

PDF, 3 to a page (give extras to friends and colleagues)

Dissertation-to-Book Guides

New editions of the dissertation-to-book guides are forthcoming! Sign up for Tweed’s newsletter, Annotations, to be notified when they are available.

Keep me posted

TweedWPA

Tweed establishes the Writing Progress Administration to put writers back to work! Initiatives include recasting writing as public work, skill-building, and professional training. Authors are the backbone of a critical and informed society and therefore deserve relief—even if it takes the form of computer wallpapers and printable posters.

Below is a smattering of the WPA’s pro-writer propaganda; visit the blog for all WPA productions.

And don’t forget about the Tweed blog!

One-Question Survey about Getting Your Manuscript Published

by | Apr 8, 2014 | publishing

When your academic book is coming together, do you know how to get it in the hands of an interested publisher? It’s not as easy as sending out complete manuscripts to your favorite university presses without any forewarning (in fact, please don’t do that!), but it’s a manageable process if you know ahead of time what will work and what press editors expect to see from you (and in what order). I’d like to know what you want to know. What aspect of author-publisher relationships is most mystifying to you? Perhaps you don’t know how to make that initial contact, or maybe you’ve been offered a contract but don’t understand what it means. Did the publisher send your manuscript out for reviews, but you haven’t heard about it in months? Have you been asked to find your own indexer and don’t know where to start? Are you wondering about the etiquette of sending inquiries to multiple presses? Whatever your question, you can email, message, or tweet me anytime. And now I’ve made it easy to pose anonymous questions about soliciting publishers—just fill out this one-question survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TZCMNQW The more I know about your concerns related to placing your research with a press, the better the content I can release for you. I’ll tackle your most resonant concerns as soon as I can. In the meantime, you do know about Tweed’s dissertation-to-book guides, right? The fourth and fifth installments deal specifically with contacting press editors and proposing your book to publishers. Thanks for your... read more

Research Dreams Come True: A Personal Note

by | Apr 3, 2014 | frivolity

This spring, my main squeeze, Rich, completed a course of study in economics. He now has four degrees to my mere three. To celebrate, he had the idea that we should take a trip—something significant but eminently feasible. He suggested Iceland, somewhere that he had already visited briefly and that I had long dreamed of exploring. I can’t pinpoint the earliest spark of my Icelandic fascination (perhaps it began with Björk, whose Debut album became a favorite of mine in the early nineties). But I do know when I first took a disciplined look at the small island nation. In my freshman year of high school, my honors world-history class required an in-depth investigation of a country, any country. I picked Iceland. I remember being nervous that one of my classmates would choose it before I could, but when my number was drawn from the hat, the tiny Nordic nation was still available. The research required was deeper than I’d done before. My sources went beyond encyclopedias; I remember using LexisNexis and microfiche at the library. I ended up citing the Los Angeles Times, the Economist, OECD documents, and Ms. magazine. According to the original WordPerfect files my father miraculously dug up for me, the resulting paper was 30 pages in length, plus appendices that included images and, I recall, Icelandic currency. It must have been my first “multichapter” work, with each of eight chapters homing in on a different issue facing Iceland at the time. Bringing the paper along with me on the trip we took last month brought everything full circle. It was oddly moving to introduce my almost-twenty-year-old attempt at scholarship... read more

The Tweed Philosophy on Subheads

by | Mar 10, 2014 | guides, style, tone

Section headings, a.k.a. subheads, can be powerful tools for the academic writer. Without them, chapters in scholarly books and journal articles would be huge, undifferentiated blocks of text. Subheads can announce topics, they can transition for us, they can display wit, and they can scaffold. Perhaps that’s why it’s tempting to rely on them a bit too much. As an editor, I have seen pitch-perfect subheads, but I have also seen them overused and haphazardly phrased. (I sometimes wonder whether ineffective subheads are left over from much earlier drafts and are simply out of place in the revised material.) Clearly, subheads can be powerful, and they can strengthen already strong manuscripts. They can’t, however, make up for deficiencies in argumentation. So to use subheads well, we must implement them judiciously and conscientiously. So how do we strike that balance—employing subheads strategically without basing too much of our organizational strategy on them? Let’s start with The Chicago Manual of Style‘s take: 1.53 Subheads—general principles Subheads within a chapter should be short and meaningful and, like chapter titles, parallel in structure and tone. It is rarely imperative that a subhead begin a new page. The first sentence of text following a subhead should not refer syntactically to the subhead; words should be repeated where necessary. For example: SECONDARY SPONGIOSA The secondary spongiosa, a vaulted structure. . . not SECONDARY SPONGIOSA This vaulted structure . . . So subheads should be brief, informative, and parallel in structure. And running text should not immediately refer to them. I would take this advisement a bit further: the first part of a section following a subhead should act as if the subhead... read more

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