Writing and Editing: Structure and Organization

This second course in the Good with Words: Writing and Editing series will help you become an effective architect of information, both with your sentences and with your paragraphs. You’ll learn that the traditional advice to “Show, don’t tell” is incomplete and that skilled writers actually switch back and forth between showing and telling. You’ll also learn more about the menu of time management techniques introduced in the first course of the series, including “deep work,” “studio time,” and “the Animal Farm Principle.” And as with the other three courses in this series, you will get access to a wide range of books and other resources you can use even after you finish the course. These include: (1) the readings and exercises provided to the students who have taken the in-person version of this course at the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago; (2) two digital libraries of excellent writing from a diverse collection of journalists, scientists, novelists, poets, historians, and entrepreneurs; and (3) a monthly “Good Sentences” email.

• Sentence Flow
• In this first week, you will be introduced to instructor Patrick Barry and begin to learn about sentence flow and structure. In-video questions will direct you to content previously covered in the first course of this specialization.
• Corresponding Ideas in Corresponding Form
• This week's content will focus on how structure can be used to generate content.
• Show and Tell
• Paragraphing