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What Is Academic Writing?
Academic writing is a general term that essentially means writing for an academic audience, such as professors and researchers. Like all writing, knowing your audience and purpose is key to communicating effectively. Academic writing is related to education, research, and scholarly conversation. It includes discussion posts, lab reports, research papers, and much more.
Universities are organized into disciplines, or areas of study, such as history and psychology. Disciplines are often grouped into broad areas such as the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and applied disciplines. Each discipline has expectations and conventions for communicating in writing. For example, lab reports focus on findings while literary studies lean heavily into interpretation.
Even though expectations vary across disciplines, most academic writing shares several common characteristics. Let’s look at a few of them.
an assignment?
Style Guides
Sometimes it might seem like your professors invented APA, MLA, or Chicago to make your life difficult, but we promise that’s not the case. Style guides provide a shared set of rules that help writers present information consistently, and they are used widely in academic and professional writing. They ensure accuracy and standardize how writers cite and format information.
Believe it or not, style guides actually save time!
The best way to ensure that your writing adheres to a style guide is to take the time to familiarize yourself with it. The University Library & Archives has manuals of style that you can review. You can also visit websites like Purdue OWL that break down the style guides with examples and templates.
Many students approach style guides backwards. They try to figure out how to format a citation without understanding the guiding standards. It’s like trying to chop wood with a dull ax. Taking the time to sharpen the ax saves you time and energy, and learning your particular style guide before trying to format your paper is an ax-sharpening move!
If you’re not sure which style guide to use, check your syllabus and assignment instructions, or ask your professor.
Clear and Concise Language
Despite what you’ve heard, using “bigger words” does not improve your writing or make you sound more intelligent. In fact, it might have the opposite effect. The goal of academic writing is not to impress anyone; it’s to explain what you know about a topic. Using words you don’t fully understand can confuse your reader, and adding “fluff” can weaken your writing.
When students struggle to meet a word or page count, sometimes it’s because they need to gather more information or haven’t fully developed their understanding of a topic. If you’re still researching a topic, it might be helpful to pause drafting while you gather information and take notes.
Here are some helpful tips for drafting and revising:
Avoid unnecessary repetition
Using the same key terms is fine, but avoid repeating yourself. For example, you don’t need to say ATM Machine because the “M” already means machine.
Prioritize brevity and word choice
Dictionaries and thesauruses can help you find the most accurate language.
Use terminology appropriate to your field
Choose words and phrases that are familiar to your audience, i.e., discipline-specific terminology.
Avoid filler words and fluff
Clear writing focuses on ideas, not padding.
Paraphrase vs. Direct Quotation
In your academic career, you are going to cite a lot of sources, so you might as well learn to do it well. There are times when a direct quotation is necessary, but your default should be to paraphrase because it demonstrates your understanding and helps to maintain your writing style and voice. Formal writing does not mean formulaic writing!
Simply put, paraphrasing is the act of restating another person’s words and ideas in your own words and voice without altering the original meaning. Paraphrasing is not finding a synonym for every word. Rather, it is taking what someone says and explaining it clearly within the context of your writing. You should always strive to maintain your voice and style.
Tips for paraphrasing:
- Make sure you fully understand the original passage or concept before attempting to paraphrase it.
- Incorporate the words and ideas of others naturally into your sentences.
- If you use exact wording from the original source, place those words in quotation marks.
- Always cite your sources, whether you quote directly or paraphrase.
Formal Tone and Active Voice
The “default setting” for academic writing is formal tone. You want to follow the guidelines given by your professor (or the journal, etc.), but if it’s not explicitly stated that you may write informally or conversationally, you should go with a formal tone.
- Contractions are often avoided in formal writing. For example, write do not instead of don’t.
- Avoid slang or writing as if you’re talking to a friend.
- When in doubt, third-person writing is usually a safe choice. That’s not a hard rule but a general guideline.
Active voice is typically stronger and more concise than passive voice. Active and passive voice describe the relationship between the subject of a sentence and the action being performed. If the subject is performing the action, it is active voice. If the subject receives the action, it is passive.
- Passive: The door was opened by the man.
- Active: The man opened the door.
Notice how the second one uses fewer words and is more direct? That’s the basic idea of active vs. passive voice. Passive voice has its place, and it’s not necessarily wrong to use it. However, entire papers or paragraphs written in passive voice can be exhausting for readers. It goes back to brevity.
You would probably say, “I want a piece of pizza” instead of, “a piece of pizza is wanted by me right now.” The first way of saying it is more simple and direct.
Academic Integrity and AI
We are aware that we live in a world full of resources and tools. We also know that shortcuts can be tempting, especially when you’ve worked a double shift, you’ve got kids to feed, and that 11:59 deadline is looming over your head. We understand, but that doesn’t make it acceptable to sacrifice your integrity. On the other side of the coin, you don’t want to be accused of plagiarism or not doing the work you spent so much time and effort to complete.
You should take the time to understand the university’s and your instructors’ policies around academic integrity and the use of AI, but here are some guiding principles:
- Always give credit to the people, groups, and organizations whose words and ideas you use in your writing.
- AI use should follow your instructor’s guidelines and university policies. When in doubt, ask your professor and disclose how you used the tool.
- You are responsible for what you submit. It is important to understand expectations ahead of time. Misunderstandings about citation or AI use can still lead to academic integrity issues.
AI might be convenient, but that doesn’t mean it’s flawless. What it produces can be shallow, formulaic, or contain incorrect information. Yes, it can generate texts for you. Should you let it generate texts and then submit them as your work? Absolutely not. Policy and ethics aside, doing that robs you of developing the knowledge and skills that you will need in the workplace and other areas of your life.
As our own Dr. Conklin recently said, “You can take a forklift to the gym and lift a lot of weights, but you won’t get any stronger.” You’re here to learn and develop your skills. You are doing yourself a disservice if you don’t use this time to grow as a writer.
Feedback
Everyone benefits from feedback. Professional writers have editors. Even bestselling authors rely on editors and reviewers before publishing their work. Stephen King has never published a book that has not gone through a professional editor.
The reason is simple: writers often miss things in their own work because they are too close to it. A fresh set of eyes can help identify unclear ideas, gaps in explanation, or places where writing could be stronger.
You spent a lot of time on that paper. You owe it to yourself to make sure that it makes sense to your readers.
There are several ways to get feedback, but keep in mind that some readers might be more helpful than others. Feedback is most useful when it comes from people who read regularly or who understand academic writing. Look to your peers. Form or join a study group. Reach out to your professors, and go to their office hours.
Fortunately, all currently enrolled students at A&M–Central Texas have the opportunity to work with highly-skilled writing consultants in the Learning Center. We can help you with all stages of the writing process, from brainstorming to formatting and everything in between. We won’t write or edit the paper for you, but we’ll guide you through the process and equip you with resources you need to succeed.
We look forward to working with you!