Type of Talk: Graduate Student Colloquia

S

peaker Name: William Cook

Speaker Affiliation: Department of Compu

ter Sciences The University of Texas at Austin

Date: November 2 2

006

Start Time: 5:30 p.m.

Location: TAY 3.128

Host:
GRACS

Talk Title: GRACS Seminar: Effective Writing

Talk Ab

stract:
To be a successful graduate student you must be proficient in a

number
of different skills including research time management technic

al
knowledge writing and speaking. Most people get to grad school beca

use they are good at two or three of these. But to get your degree
you u

sually need to learn the others.

In this talk I will discuss effecti

ve writing. The talk is based on
the books by Joseph Williams. I use the
original Style: Toward Clarity and Grace but there is a shorter version

too called Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace. These are the best book

s on writing that I know; much better than Elements of Style.

The r

eason this book is great is that it teaches you how good writing
is stru

ctured how to identify bad writing and how to fix problems so
that you
can turn bad writing into good writing. It also gives you rich precise vo

cabulary to discuss problems and solutions in writing. I''ll try to make th

e talk entertaining and include some exercises at the end so you can apply

what you have learned immediately.