If you want people to read your writing, it has to be readable. In Academic Writing as if Readers Matter, Leonard Cassuto offers academic writers a direct, practical prescription for writing that will be read and understood: Take care of your reader. With a wealth of examples from the arts and sciences, this short, witty book provides invaluable advice to writers at all levels, in all fields, on how to write better for both specialized and broad audiences.
Good academic writing depends on connecting with readers, earning their time and attention. Cassuto offers tips and advice on how to sharpen arguments and make complex ideas compelling. He addresses the workings of introductions and conclusions, transitions, signposts, paragraphs, and sentences—all the building blocks of academic writing. He also shows how storytelling and metaphor can make your prose more engaging than you thought possible. And he explains the proper use of that most dangerous of tools: jargon.
This book can make any academic writer—including you—into a better writer. That means becoming a better communicator of the ideas and discoveries you want the world to grasp. For the sake of readers inside the academy and beyond it, Academic Writing as if Readers Matter shows how and why you have to make your writing connect with the people you’re writing for.
Leonard Cassuto is professor of English at Fordham University. He writes a regular column, “The Graduate Adviser,” for the Chronicle of Higher Education, and his many books include The New PhD: How to Build a Better Graduate Education.
“Elegant, eloquent, useful, and necessary, this book is an exemplary act of intellectual citizenship at a time when it’s more imperative than ever to get across to the public what academics do and why it’s valuable. (This means you, dear professor.)”—Rick Perlstein, New York Times bestselling author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
“This witty and generous book offers a treasury of sound advice, astute analysis, and clear examples of dos and don’ts. Cassuto shows what it takes to welcome readers rather than alienate them.”—Andrew Delbanco, author of College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be
“From its title to its final sentence, I loved Academic Writing as if Readers Matter. Leonard Cassuto has created a small guidebook packed with big ideas that will help all writers—including natural and social scientists—reach broader audiences by clarifying their message. I plan to reread it periodically.”—Christopher Chabris, New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us
“With charm and wit, Cassuto argues that successful academic writing is an act of generosity toward the reader. He provides concrete strategies to help any scholar or student write in a way that genuinely engages readers.”—Rachael Cayley, author of Thriving as a Graduate Writer
“Brimming with invaluable advice and practical tips, this handbook should be read by any academic who wants their book to be read.”—Kevin M. Kruse, Princeton University
“Academic Writing as if Readers Matter will make almost anyone a better writer (it’s already having that effect on me), and that makes it a very rare and valuable thing. Professors and students need to read this book.”—Carlo Rotella, author of The World Is Always Coming to an End
