Best Books on Academic Writing?

[Charlotte]

Anyone have any favorite books on becoming a better writer, writing more, writing in academia, general advice, etc.? Amazon has several listed, but it's a little harder to identify which are good. Thanks in advance!

[Puget]

Just posted this on another thread:

With my grad students, I've used a book called The Writing Workshop by Barbara Sarnecka (which she has made freely available: https://osf.io/n8pc3/). It's aimed at the sciences, but might be helpful for yours too as a lot of it is about productivity. The chapter that we refer to most often is on overcoming writing resistance. She uses some really good metaphors and humor (there is a friendly resistance monster that thinks it needs to protect you from writing), and has gotten them to talk openly and without shame about writing resistance and brainstorm how to overcome it.

[Charlotte]

That looks like a great resource, Puget. Thank you!

[glendower]

I'm still fond of Booth, Colomb and Williams, The Craft of Research (several editions now, but I'm still on #2). Though aimed at undergrads, it's surprisingly useful for profs.

[darkstarrynight]

I just finished this one and it is fantastic!
Sword, H. (2012). Stylish academic writing. Harvard University Press.

[hmaria1609]

I remember reading assigned chapters from The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. in high school.
This classic writing book was reissued with updated material last year.

[Charlotte]

These look great, thanks everyone!

[adel9216]

Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks by Wendy Laura Belcher

[hungry_ghost]

Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks by Wendy Laura Belcher

+1

And also: Zerubavel, Eviatar. The Clockwork Muse: A Practical Guide to Writing Theses, Dissertations, and Books. Harvard UP, 1999.

[rota1234]

Eric Hayot. The Elements of Academic Style
Wendy Laura Belcher. Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks.
Thomson and Kamler. Writing for Peer Reviewed Journals.
Germano. From Dissertation to Book.
Germano. Getting It Published.

[Hibush]

Robert Day's How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper has levelheaded guidance from an experienced editor. Some of the advice is timeless and some obsolete, so you have to know which is which (similar to Strunk and White).
The 1994 fourth edition is on the Internet Archive.
The 2016 Eighth edition with Barbara Gastel is in print. Gastel is a professor of science communication at a med school, which is a great perspective.

[mamselle]

It's now awhile ago, but I recall being frustrated with the earlier Germano, because he kept saying, "fix your dissertation so it isn't a dissertation any more,, but a book," which sounded like fine advice until I'd gotten to the end and he still had not distingushed between the two, nor suggested steps for turning the one into the other in any clear way that I could discern.

I liked Zerubavel, not only for his temple-building name, but because it seemed to me that his suggestions about versioning and moving sentences around made sense and ventilated the writing process, as well as the written product, more.

M.

[glendower]

My reaction to Belcher was similar to Mamselle's take on Germano: too much "don't do this, don't do that" and not enough "here's what you should do."

[jw-dog]

Schimel - Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded.  Geared toward the sciences, but funny, short digestable chapters.  Does a good job differentiating writing for publication vs writing for grants. 

[adel9216]

Any recommendations of books on how to develop a good qualitative research proposal ?