Academic writing is a formal style of writing used in universities and scholarly publications. You’ll encounter it in journal articles and books on academic topics, and you’ll be expected to write your essays, research papers, and dissertation in academic style.
Academic writing is a funny business. It’s not done to entertain, as in the case of fiction, but to communicate a set of ideas as carefully and unambiguously as possible. English grammar for academic writing is a special subset of the English language. There are some grammatical conventions you will see in almost all examples of Academic English– and that you should expect to follow in written work for your classes.
Some of the basic important rules of academic writing are as follows:
Aim for clarity:
Explain your ideas as clearly and simply as you can. Imagine that you’re explaining your findings to your grandmother, or a friend down at the pub. Avoid jargon and define any terms that your readers may not know.
Start in the middle:
I personally have trouble motivating myself to write: a lot of coffee is required! I don’t particularly enjoy the process, so one of the things I try to do is make the process as easy on myself as possible. Start writing whichever section you are most comfortable with. For me, as a quantitative researcher, this section is generally not the Introduction, but more likely the Results, where I am simply describing what I have found.
Pay attention to sentences:
Keep sentences short and to the point. Avoid run-on sentences and avoid sentence fragments. If a sentence is longer than three lines, it’s probably too long.
Write in the active voice:
Think about who is doing the action in the sentence, and put them (or it) at the start. Avoid using the passive voice (e.g.“It has been demonstrated by some experts that…”). Instead, say“Smith and Jones (2012) demonstrate that…”
Pay attention to paragraphs:
Discuss only one idea per paragraph, and keep paragraphs relatively short (I rarely write paragraphs that are longer than 10 lines). The first sentence of each paragraph should tell the reader what the paragraph is about. You should be able to follow an article simply by reading the first sentence of each paragraph.
Be aware of the 80/20 rule:
Applied to writing, the 80/20 rules suggest that you can probably generate 80% of the content in 20% of the time. Focus on getting your ideas down on paper, even if it looks messy. Then go back and edit carefully. Do not try to write perfectly referenced sentences in the first draft.
Don’t write about things you don’t quite understand:
Muddled writing is a symptom of muddled thinking. If you don’t understand what you’ve written, then it’s unlikely your audience will do much better. In general, you should know more about the subject than what you actually write, not less!
By carefully following the above rules you can easily improve your academic writing and can score more and more marks in your institution. If you are still having some trouble to do academic writing you can easily hop on to our website Genius Writers UK and get help from professional academic writers who will not only guide you properly but also provide the option to do the work them selves. Mean you just have to tell the topic and you will get it done by our professionals in no time.