Welcome to the Publish & Flourish Listserv! Current Listserv Archive

TAA's Publish & Flourish Listerv will now be open to all of the association's workshop attendee-members, those of Tara Gray's "Publish & Flourish" workshop, Kenneth Henson's "Grant Writing" workshop, Elizabeth Boepple's "Creating Camera-ready Copy" workshop, and Robert Ginsberg's "Academic Publishing" workshop. The focus of the workshop will remain the same -- to to provide TAA's workshop attendees with ongoing support with their academic authoring pursuits.

The Publish & Flourish Listserv will allow you to maintain contact with Tara, Ken, Elizabeth and Robert, and others who took their workshops across the country. You can ask questions, seek further follow-up on their suggestions, and get input from others who took the workshops.

The listserv will also provide you with information tailored to academic authors: information on citations, answers to knotty grammar questions, and links to essays and other resources on problems and issues like writer's block, copyright, fair use, citation format, and other formatting and editing issues, from our workshop experts and other experts within the TAA community.

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Write in 'plain style'
by Tara Gray

The following excerpt comes from the excellent book by Richard Lauchman Plain Style: Techniques for Simple, Concise, and Emphatic Business Writing (1993:96): "Do not allow dogmatic folderol to interfere with plain style. Do not let nonsense parading as 'rules' interfere with clarity and simplicity. This language of ours is a wonderful instrument, capable of infinite precision and subtlety. But merely that—merely capable. Writers who tread in the minefield of 'don'ts' (e.g. Don't split an infinitive, Don't end a sentence with a preposition, Don't repeat words, Don't let inanimate objects do things) will find needless complexity exploding at every step.

In the United States, there is no consistency in the way English is taught. Teachers disagree about what usages are 'proper' and 'improper.' In seventh grade, Johnny learns never to start a sentence with because; in eighth grade, he learns it's OK to start a sentence with because, but never ever to start with so. In high school he learns never to use parentheses; in college he learns never to use dashes, but to use parentheses. At work his manager (who attended the same college but had a different instructor for composition 101) insists that parentheses are never necessary, that contact isn't a verb, and that however must be always be followed by a comma.

It's hardly surprising that Johnny (now John) lacks confident and hates to write. So does his manager. So does the executive vice president. Everyone has been subjected to a chaos of contradictory rights and wrongs, goods and bads, propers and impropers. Sometimes it's a miraculous that anything gets written at all.

We live, alas, in an imperfect world, and there will always be readers who snort with righteous annoyance when they spot a split infinitive or a sentence fragment. Some readers will snort about exclamation points; others will snort about single-sentence paragraphs. Any reader who is a diehard pedant will find something to snort at. You never know what will make a reader snort, so it's best not to worry about it. We must let these readers snort. Nothing good comes of humoring them. The majority of readers wish merely to understand. . . .

The question is not what Sister Louise said 25 years ago, or what Miss Thompson said in ninth grade, or what Assistant Professor Jones said in freshman composition class. The question is this: What works?"

Good luck with it: if you have any questions or comments about writing, please contact me at tgray@nmsu.edu. I'd love to hear from you and will answer your questions.

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Register for pre-conference grant writing workshop

Kenneth Henson, distinguished professor of education at The Citadel's School of Education, and the author of "Grant Writing in Higher Education: A Step-by-Step Guide," will present a Pre-Conference Workshop on Grant Writing on Thursday, June 21 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The $150 fee includes a boxed lunch, workshop handouts and materials, a one-year membership to TAA, and a copy of Henson's book. To learn more about the workshop and to register: Click here

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TAA Conference to include roundtable discussion on presenting publishable papers

Mary Jo Orzech, interim director of Drake Memorial Library and director of Information Technology Support Services at SUNY Brockport, will moderate a 2007 TAA Conference Roundtable Discussion on Presenting Publishable Papers. Orzech, who has reviewed presentations for the SUNY Conference on Instructional Technology (CIT), the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges 2006 Northwest Region Conference, and reviewed articles for the Special CIT Issue of the Journal of Educational Technology Systems (JETS), will share tips on turning conference presentations into publishable articles, including adhering to length and format requirements, proofreading for spelling, grammatical and other stylistic issues, and allowing sufficient time to prepare the presentation so as not to end up with a hurried finished product. Learn more about this Roundtable Discussion: Click here.

Register for the TAA Conference: Click here

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TAA Conference to include four Academic Track sessions

The 2007 TAA Conference on Text and Academic Authoring to be held at the Hyatt Regency Buffalo in Buffalo, NY June 22-23, will include four Academic Track Sessions: "Publish Your Dissertation as a Book" by Dr. James J. Delaney, Assistant Professor, Chair, in the Department of Philosophy at Niagara University; "Editing a Collective Volume of Papers From a Conference," by Richard Hull, Professor Emeritus, Philosophy, at the State University of New York at Buffalo and editor of several book series; "Secrets of a Scholarly Journal Editor," by Kenneth T. Henson, Distinguished Professor of Education at The Citadel's School of Education and author of more than 300 national and international publications, including 38 books; and "Elements of a Successful Peer Review Process," by Gayle A. Brazeau, Ph.D., from the University of Buffalo's School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in Amherst, NY. Learn more about these sessions: Click here

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Use this listserv to communication with other academic authors

Do you want to network with fellow academic author members? Send a message out to the Publish & Flourish Listserv at publishandflourish@mail-list.com Are you looking for a publisher? Need help with your proposal? Advice on working with a journal editor? Just ask. This list is moderated by TAA and TAA workshop presenters.

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Do you have an authoring question? Get an answer from the authoring experts at TAA:

Email TEXT@tampabay.rr.com

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Recommended reading for academic authors:

Click here to visit the recommended reading list.

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Discounted editing services for members

As a courtesy to its members, TAA has asked several companies to provide their editing services at a discount to TAA members. See the list of companies offering discounted services such as developmental editing, copyediting, text formatting, reference checking and formatting, publications consulting, assistance with scholarly articles, book chapters, textbooks, scholarly books, conference papers, and grant applications: Click here

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We would love to get your input!

Please let us know what you think of this new TAA member benefit. Send an email to TAA's Associate Executive Director Kim Pawlak at kmpawlak@centurytel.net. We are open to any comments, suggestions for improvement, additions, and questions!

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