Article Writing Support

Usually one of six things, and the brief names it. A straight news piece uses the inverted pyramid: the most consequential fact first, detail descending, so an editor can cut from the bottom without losing sense. A feature opens on a delayed lead — a scene or anecdote — then lands a nut graf, the paragraph stating what the piece is about and why it matters now. A comment column declares its position early and defends it. A review article surveys published work, either as a narrative synthesis or as a systematic review built on a pre-specified protocol. A research article reports the writer's own study in IMRaD form. Working out which one you have been set determines the lead, the paragraph order, and whether subheadings belong on the page at all.

Write the nut graf before you write the lead. A topic is a noun phrase — 'campus food waste'. An angle is a claim with a subject, a verb and a time marker: three of the four halls that introduced weighed-waste bins last year cut waste, and the fourth shows why the scheme is fragile. If you cannot write that sentence in under forty words, the scope is still too wide for the word count you have. A 1,200-word feature carries one claim and two supporting strands. A 3,000-word review carries a claim plus a structured survey of the literature behind it. Narrowing scope at the outline stage costs far less than cutting 800 words from a finished draft.

From the body that produced the number, not the outlet that reported it. For statistics that means going to the national office directly: the Office for National Statistics, Statistics Canada, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Central Statistics Office in Ireland, Destatis in Germany, the Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Centre in the UAE, or Eurostat for cross-EU comparison. For research claims it means the paper itself, located by DOI, rather than the university press release describing it. Mike Caulfield's SIFT method — stop, investigate the source, find better coverage, trace the claim to its original context — is the quickest discipline for this. Trace every figure before quoting it: releases round, and headlines overstate.

Check the brief; where it is silent, the discipline decides. Journalism and communications modules generally run on the AP Stylebook, which is reissued every two years, so confirm which edition your department names rather than working from an older copy. Long-form, humanities and book-style articles generally run on The Chicago Manual of Style, whose 18th edition appeared in September 2024 with reorganised citation chapters and new guidance on citing AI-generated text. The two disagree about numerals, serial commas, title capitalisation and attribution formatting, so mixing them shows on the page. Prose style is a separate decision from referencing — how the main referencing styles differ sets out what your department is likely to require.

By evidence density, and by who the reader is assumed to be. A blog post is written for a self-selected audience, can address the reader directly, and is often judged partly on how it performs online. An article assumes a general but attentive reader and has to earn each claim inside the text. A research paper reports the writer's own investigation in IMRaD form and is judged on method and the handling of data. An article may report other people's investigations, but must attribute every one of them. The difference shows in the first paragraph: a paper states a research question, an article gives the reader a reason to keep going.

Four things, all of them alongside your own writing. First, we read the brief with you against the six article types above and settle which one you have been set, then match that reading to the marking criteria — the choice decides where the nut graf lands and how much of the word count reported evidence has to carry. Second, we build a worked example on a parallel subject, so you can see a nut graf, an attribution and a kicker functioning without borrowing our sentences. Third, we coach the draft you have written — angle, paragraph order, unsupported claims, where the word count is being spent. Fourth, line editing and proofreading against your style guide and an exact limit. The worked example is labelled as a reference document and written on a different angle with different sources, never on your brief. On journalism briefs the grey areas are usually the same three — who may fact-check your figures, whether interview audio may be transcribed by anyone or anything other than you, and how much sub-editing is permitted before the prose stops being yours — so put those questions to your module leader before the deadline rather than after it.