Academic writing is supposedly one of the most challenging kinds of writing. This academic writing niche is formal; the pattern needs to be precised. Usually, academic writing is started in the earlier years of schools and universities. Academic writing is continued throughout your career, whether undergraduate or postgraduate. The typical examples of academic writing include research papers, academic essays, detailed assignments, books, and professional documents or journals.
Academic writing can be puzzling and tricky for students who have just started it. With time you can get a grip over it. Academic writing comes with its own sets of demands. It requires particular and precise content structure, writing pattern, and relaying style.
It is important not to overdo anything while doing academic writing. It is also essential to stick to the precision and accuracy of the literary writing style. In the following article, some important do’s and don’ts of academic writing have been discussed. This will help you in avoiding unnecessary mistakes while doing academic writing. Following these pointers, you can curate well-written, readable, and adequately formatted scholarly articles, papers, and essays.
The Do’s of Academic writing
Following are the necessary do’s that should be kept in mind while doing academic writing. This will help you maintain the quality and enhance the level of your scholarly articles, blogs, and papers.
Search and use correct and authentic resources:
The Internet is loaded with hundreds and thousands of resources that can easily be used as citations and references in academic papers and research. But of course, not all the resources are authorized or strong enough to support the academic writing niche.
Resources that are correct and authentic can only be used for academic writing. The resources and citations should be fact and evidence-based. You can include vague references in your academic paper because that will compromise the quality of your research or essay. The information and facts used in the academic paper should be verified and factual enough to be used in real-life circumstances. Following are such examples.
● Websites that contain history material.
● History encyclopedia and relevant books.
● Current affairs, ongoing news, and affairs of state via verified and respectable news
agencies.
● Columns of known and credible journalists.
● Monthly and annual reports of research institutes.
● Scholarly related stuff such as medical journal articles, books, and research papers.
The resources mentioned earlier are credible and verified, but the publication date should also be kept in mind. Sometimes the published material is outdated and too old. Outdated material doesn’t hold much value, unfortunately, r because facts and figures keep changing over time. So it would be best to stay updated while writing an academic paper.
Use clarity, accuracy, and precision:
Academic writing demands clarity, accuracy, and precision. This requirement supports the idea that your academic writing may contain facts and figures about a well-researched thesis. The readers of your thesis or paper might look out for the answers in your article. For that very reason, you must write with clarity and precision. Writing is imperative, so your readers understand the weight and logic behind your arguments. While being transparent with your ideas and thought process, you should also be precise and accurate. Complicated sentence structure, complex vocabulary, and non-flowery language should always be avoided. Always try to use terminology that will be more readily understood and learned by the reader.
Always use supporting statements and evidence:
As we told you above, it is crucial to use facts and logical arguments while doing academic writing. Never let bias intrude on your factual assertions. Always be straightforward with your targeted audience’s emotions and never try to appeal to their feelings. When writing an academic paper, a writer must stay objective and unbiased. The audience will generally expect from you that the writer should have remained plain and simple while conducting the research and that no emotions or personal opinions and ideas were a part of it. Every argument you will be making in your academic paper should be fact-based with supporting evidence. Before writing your essay, always remember to collect relevant data from credible sources. You can cite your data and references at the end of the article.
The Don’ts of Academic Writing
Following are the necessary don’ts that should be avoided while doing academic writing. This will help you maintain the quality and enhance the level of your scholarly articles, blogs, and papers.
Avoid simple generalizations and non-required exaggerations:
Straightforward generalizations and non-essential exaggerations are usually taken as a way to bring the reader on a convincing page for a generally questionable idea. Over generalizations and unnecessary exaggerations are a terrible way to convince a reader and don’t sound ethical. They are always tough to prove by supporting evidence. Not only are they almost impossible to prove, but too irrelevant to the topic in discussion.
Avoid directly addressing the audience:
Academic writing strictly demands you to focus on facts and figures and how to present them. In such writing, language in a personalized and direct way should never be used. The pronouns such as I, we, and us should be avoided. The reader shouldn’t feel any informal phrase has been used for them at any point. The additional and repetitive phrases such as “in this paper” and “according to this study” should not be used more than twice because that won’t incite the reader’s attention; instead, the reader will lose the grip of the paper sooner than they should.
Avoid informal and colloquial zone language:
Informal and vague terms are known as colloquial and such language comes under the heading of everyday zone language. Academic writing is a formal way of writing your paper, and any informal language is strictly prohibited while doing academic writing.
Some examples of colloquialism that shouldn’t be used in academic writing include slang and cliche words. Other phrases such as “are you sure”; “for real” used in commonly spoken vocabulary should also be avoided. These phrases are excellent if you use them in daily conversation. However, they are not acceptable in academic writing.
