Academic Writing Issues #7 — Writing the Perfect Sentence

The art of writing ultimately comes down to the art of writing sentences.  In his lovely book, How to Write a Sentence, Stanley Fish explains that the heart of any sentence is not its content but its form.  The form is what defines the logical relationship between the various elements within the sentence.  The same …

Thoughts on My Online Persona

Social media provide a wide open space for social exchange and personal expression.  This openness is both its strength and its weakness.  Anything is possible, and in practice nearly everything does indeed take place online.  For anyone entering into this space, you have to choose your online persona.  Now that I've been posting on this …

Peter Rossi: The Iron Law of Evaluation and Other Metallic Rules

This post is a classic paper by Peter Rossi from 1987 (Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Volume 4, pages 3-20) which addresses a chronic problem in all policy efforts to change complex social systems.  The social organizations of modern life are so large, so complex, so dependent on the cooperation of so many …

Research Universities and the Public Good

This post is a review essay of a new book called Research Universities and the Public Good.  It appeared in the current issue of American Journal of Sociology.  Here's a link to a PDF of the original. Research Universities and the Public Good: Discovery for an Uncertain Future By Jason Owen-Smith. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University …

Academic Writing Issues #6 — Mangling Metaphors

Metaphor is an indispensable tool for the writer.  It carries out an essential function by connecting what you're talking about with other related issues that the reader already recognizes.  This provides a comparative perspective, which gives a richer context for the issue at hand.  Metaphor also introduces a playful characterization of the issue by making …