Workshop "Navig(Punctu)ation in Academic Writing"

Driven by the pursuit of scientific novelty and rigorous argumentation, researchers often overlook punctuation, dismissing it as mere formatting. Yet, these subtle marks are akin to streetlights in an evening city. While they are on, we barely notice them, but the moment they go out, we instantly become disoriented. Commas, colons, and dashes act as reliable road signs. They make the reader’s journey through a complex academic text safe and predictable. Thoughtful punctuation ensures that your scientific ideas are perceived exactly as you intended.

During this worhshop, we will revisit core punctuation rules and explore their stylistic potential, examine key differences between American and British academic traditions. We will discuss how punctuation shapes sentence logic, how to align your choices with the strict style guidelines of peer-reviewed journals, and how to avoid typical «accident-prone» situations where a formally correct mark (even one verified by AI) distorts the perception of your thought.

Speaker: Anna Lepenysheva, PhD in Philology, Associate Professor at MGIMO, editor, translator, research supervisor, and reviewer. She has been teaching various aspects of the English language since 2000. Her academic and professional background includes studying, defending her dissertation, and working at St. Petersburg State University, Canada Christian College, and Stony Brook University. Her research focuses on academic writing, argumentation theory, and multimodal communication, with a particular emphasis on corpus and experimental methods.

Target audience: HSE teachers, researchers, and graduate students
Language: English
Date & Time: December 8, 17:30 - 19:30
Format: online