Writing and Study Skills
Study Skills
Barnes, Rob, Successful Study for Degrees (New York: Routledge, 1995).
Advice from Erasmus to a friend: see below.
Writing Resources
Books
Heffernan, James A. W. and John E., Lincoln, Writing: A College Handbook, 3rd ed. (New York and London: Norton, 1990).
Hacker, Diana, A Writer’s Reference, 5th ed. (Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003).
Johnson, Andrew P., A Short Guide to Academic Writing (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2003). Note: Section Three.
Kane, Thomas, The New Oxford Guide to Writing (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
Rankin, Elizabeth, The Work of Writing: Insights and Strategies for Academics and Professionals (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/John Wiley, 2001).
Williams, Joseph M., Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace (New York: Pearson Longman, 2003).
Online Resources
Olson, Gary A. "Punctuation Made Simple"Purdue University's Online Writing Lab
The Best Ways to Read a Book in College
Advice from Erasmus (1466/9–1536) to a friend, Pieter Gillis
"Good health, believe me, is mainly in your own hands. Most of our ailments take their rise in the mind, and you will find your work less laborious if you arrange your studies on some rational plan. Your library, your letters, and all your notes should be arranged in definite places; and do not be carried away first into one author and then another, but take in hand one good book at a time and do not abandon it until you habe finished it, making notes as you go along of the things that seem worth remembering. Lay down for yourself some definite course of life, deciding what you wish to do at what time of the day. Do not pile one task on another until the earlier one is finished; thus you will make the day seem longer, which is now almost entirely wasted. And since you complain of your memory, I think you may find it useful to set up a kind of journal for each year (it does not take much trouble), and enter in it briefly day by day anything that happens which you would not wish to forget.
But above all I urge you in the conduct of business to follow judgment rather than impulse. If there is anything you do not like, look at once to see if you can put it right or if the wrong can be made less; and you will see this more clearly in tranquillity than if you are upset. If anything can be done, do it; if not, what pray is the use of indignation or laments, except to make things twice as bad with only yourself to thank? I beg you in the name of our friendship, consider your life and health more important than anything. If you can maintain your position in life without harming them, by all means do so; but if not, it is false economy to keep one's possessions intact and lose one's health and peace of mind. Above all, if you have too little concern for yourself, mind you do not prove the undoing of someone else as well; for I shall not regard myself as safe and sound unless you are so too, whom I reckon (as I hope for the love of God) the better part of me. Do not spend too much time on things of no account. Youth speeds by, health can break like glass; they must not be squandered. Some things one ought to look down on, and raise one's spirit to the big things. Seneca and Plato - make them familiar friends; if you converse with them often, they will not let your spirit lie down. A truly great spirit should overlook some wrongs done to it, and to some men's calumnies have neither ears to hear nor tongue to reply. Make the experiment sometimes: discover how much more compliance and intelligent courtesy can do than a spirit headstrong and wayward."