Course: Writing and Editing: Word Choice and Word Order

Teaching Style My approach to teaching focuses on three things: Creating an engaging conceptual vocabulary people can use and share. Providing plenty of opportunities for low-stakes practice. Helping people apply …

Professor Patrick Barry is a clinical assistant professor and the director of digital academic initiatives at the University of Michigan Law School. His teaching and research focus on creating a …

This self-assessment can be found in Appendix A of Good With Words. [Note: I give the assignment below to students at the beginning of the semester. But it works as …

In Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights, the psychologist Gary Klein suggests that two things are required to improve performance: reducing errors and increasing insights. He …

Welcome to “Writing and Editing: Word Choice and Word Order,” the first course in the four-course Good with Words: Writing and Editing series. This series of courses targets the writing …

By the end of Week 4, you will be able to: Write with originality and produce sentences nobody else can write Move beyond empty, conclusory statements and instead “earn your …

By the end of Week 3, you will be able to: Arrange a complex set of information in a reader-friendly way Recognize the Rule of Three and use it to …

By the end of Week 2, you will be able to: Use syntax strategically Flip the emphasis of a sentence by changing word order Recognize the costs and benefits of …

For more on how “to write good sentences, you need to read good sentences”: Read Chapter 9 of Good with Words: Writing and Editing (“Good Sentences”) The Nigerian-American writer Teju …

By the end of Week 1, you will be able to: Become more deliberate about “the words under the words” Start to improve by both reducing your errors and increasing …