This brief, flexible guide features dictionary-style entries on the key terms and concepts associated with academic and research-based writing, as well as offering a user's guide to academic culture. Offering enormous flexibility, the alphabetically-organized entries in this text can be introduced in any order to present discussions of writing papers—from developing a thesis statement to citing sources. Each entry uses examples from scholarly writing to explain a particular aspect of the writing or research process—Analysis, Argument, Summary, Synthesis—and provides concrete, manageable techniques and exercises to help students make their writing work. Entries from different disciplines show the development of specialized knowledge and specific rhetorical practices. A guide to academic culture as well as a writing guide, the text helps students develop skills such as how to interpret a syllabus or analyze an assignment.