Better Writing in Psychology and Beyond

Better Writing in Psychology and Beyond equips students with tools, observations, insights, and exercises to help them write more effective in the discipline and more generally.

The text opens by viewing the current status of reading and writing in larger society. In later chapters, the author describes the natural history of speaking and the sociocultural history of reading and writing. Students are encouraged to consider their personal history of learning to read and write on the way to ultimately developing their own voice. The text situates the use of the American Psychological Association (APA) style in context as a formal standardizer of clarity, logic, and structure for the published literature in psychology and related disciplines. In stepwise fashion, students identify a narrow psychological topic of personal interest, search the existing literature to garner sources, and compose a substantive outline before authoring a literature review in multiple drafts that increasingly adhere to the APA style while demonstrating newfound scholarly proficiency. Activities throughout the text provide students the opportunity to practice new skills for writing better.

The revised first edition reflects changes to the text according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition, released in 2020.

Better Writing in Psychology and Beyond is an ideal standalone or supplementary text for courses in the discipline and in related ones, especially courses requiring more than incidental writing.