{"id":184,"date":"2018-02-27T04:16:13","date_gmt":"2018-02-27T04:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesis-doctor.com\/?p=184"},"modified":"2023-01-16T21:40:24","modified_gmt":"2023-01-16T21:40:24","slug":"penn-is-not-a-format-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-thesis-doctor.com\/index.php\/2018\/02\/27\/penn-is-not-a-format-style\/","title":{"rendered":"Penn Is Not A Format Style"},"content":{"rendered":"

Me:<\/strong> What format style does your program require?<\/em><\/p>\n

1st Year Doctoral Student:<\/strong> What do you mean?<\/em><\/p>\n

Me:<\/strong> Academic referencing\u2026 you know, as in, APA style?\u00a0 Chicago?\u00a0 Harvard<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Doctoral Student:<\/strong> Penn!\u00a0 I\u2019m in U Penn!<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was a cold, dark, winter afternoon in early February when D and I met to discuss his writing.<\/p>\n

After nearly three decades of editing professionally for faculty and doctoral students from top universities on four continents, I thought I\u2019d seen it all \u2014 from pedantic writing, to paltry analysis, to what I call \u201cCinderella attempts” to pass off 190,000 words as 80,000 by halving the page and line margins and squeezing the font size from the regular 12 point, to 9.<\/p>\n

For many academics and doctoral students, the biggest problem isn\u2019t about meeting deadlines, but the tendency to be overly verbose: using 1,000 words to explain, when two paragraphs would suffice.<\/p>\n

Then I met D.<\/p>\n

From the outset, it was clear to me that for him, Grad school would be a long and tedious haul.<\/p>\n

He showed four pages<\/strong> of what should have been a 50-page research proposal, written in a non-English language, without a clear thesis or theme, and with no in-text citations or list of references.<\/p>\n

I decided to tackle the easy bits first.<\/p>\n

Academic writing needs citations and references<\/em>, I reminded him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He had no idea what I was talking about.<\/p>\n

I explained, and showed examples from published journals and book chapters.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the academic style used in your program<\/em>, I asked.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(I knew the answer, but wanted to hear his.)<\/p>\n

He was clueless.<\/p>\n

I showed him samples of APA and MLA, and asked if either looked familiar, or if we should be looking at Chicago or Harvard styles instead.<\/p>\n

He frowned, shook his head from side to side, sighed deeply, and rolled his eyes.<\/p>\n

This went on for several minutes.<\/p>\n

Then came the clincher:<\/p>\n

\u201cPenn!\u201d he exclaimed, visibly distressed that I didn’t know the answer.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m in U Penn!\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Punxsutawney Phil was right: it would be a long winter.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2018-2019. Dr. Serene Lim, PhD and The Thesis Doctor. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Me: What format style does your program require? 1st Year Doctoral Student: What do you mean? Me: Academic referencing\u2026 you know, as in, APA style?\u00a0 Chicago?\u00a0 Harvard? Doctoral Student: Penn!\u00a0 I\u2019m in U Penn!   It was a cold, dark, winter afternoon in early February when D and I met to discuss his writing. After […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[5,6,7],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academia","category-editing","tag-doctoral","tag-ivy-league","tag-style-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-thesis-doctor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-thesis-doctor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-thesis-doctor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-thesis-doctor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-thesis-doctor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the-thesis-doctor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-thesis-doctor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-thesis-doctor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-thesis-doctor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-thesis-doctor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}