our STORY

EconScribe's mission is to help people communicate knowledge efficiently. 

Although we began as a copyediting service in 2010, we found that the most crucial writing issues that research writers faced related to the underlying structure of communication rather than to style or language; and that without fixing those structural issues, improving style or language would make little difference to what others understood of a researcher's work.

So in 2012, we piloted a training course to help PhD candidates learn specifically about structure, which is perhaps the most understudied aspect of writing. The course showed graduate students how to build a first draft with sound structural fundamentals: a coherent argument, a logical set of sections to support this argument, and paragraphs that would allow readers to learn as they read.  

Since then, our courses have traveled to various institutions, both physically and virtually.   Student reviews suggest that, for many, they offer a boost at the right time.  By pushing students to pay a little extra attention to argumentation and writing, and by using an approach that is different from the traditional academic model, our courses seem to be helping students in a way that existing resources at universities do not.    

That's the story so far.  We hope to continue offering our courses, and to make versions of our flagship course available to more and more students.  Our introductory textbook is now available to everyone.   If you would like to learn more, please get in touch. 

In the meantime, happy writing!

Varanya

Varanya Chaubey founded EconScribe in 2010.  She designed the RAP method, and has taught it at various schools, including Berkeley, Columbia, Duke, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Oxford, and Princeton. She has also taught professional writing courses at the World Bank and the IMF.  Varanya studied economics as an undergraduate at Princeton and as a graduate student at UC Berkeley.

Where we've worked 

Our training courses have been taught at various academic institutions:

Brown University

Chicago Booth

Columbia University

Duke University

Harvard Business School

Harvard University

Johns Hopkins University

MIT

Oxford University

Princeton University

Stanford University

University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Los Angeles

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

University of Maryland

University of Michigan

Vanderbilt University

Our trainers have also taught at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.  

Since 2010, we have provided project support to people from the following institutions: