Why do we, as scholars, write? In the simplest terms, it is to communicate our ideas and knowledge to others. But sometimes knowing too much gets in the way of clear communication. This phenomenon is called the curse of knowledge––the difficulty of imagining that other people don't know what you already know.

When writing about the political system established in the Soviet Union, which was adopted by and imposed on countries throughout Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, and beyond after World War II, should we capitalize the term or not? That is, should we write about Communism or communism?

Quotations are the lifeblood of research writing in the humanities and the qualitative social studies. Pick up any book in these fields, and you'll find quotations, lots of them. If you want to know why to use quotations or how to punctuate or alter them, just have a look at your favorite style guide. All the major scholarly manuals cover...

Writing about two or more nouns in the possessive case can be tricky. For example, if Amanda and Heidi authored a paper together, should we say, "Amanda's and Heidi's paper" or "Amanda and Heidi's paper"? It's an important question, especially in academic writing, where precision matters. You want to make sure you're attributing the right...

I had an idea for my first blog post. But it had nothing to do with AI, ChatGPT, or anything technology related. My goal was to write about what adjective should be used to describe the political systems of the Eastern Bloc countries that existed from roughly 1948 to 1989. Were they Communist (or communist)? Or were they socialist?...