How to Learn to Write Like a Machine

I spent the past few weeks on two projects to help improve students’ academic writing. The first was an intensive course I already mentioned in an earlier post (a post, incidentally, that led to a data set I’m now crunching and will report back on later this month). In it, a colleague and I presented lessons in topics like clarity, concision, and coherence, and helped the students workshop early drafts of their master’s theses.

I’d like to think that the students’ writing will be better for the ...