Academic writing is a very popular style, there a so much people who use it: starting from students and ending with researchers. This style has several main features: arguments based on evidence, specific word set, and formal tone. If the very name of the “academic writing” scared you to death with its seriousness and caused you to question, “Where it is used”, the answer will be simple. There are documents where it is highly used: books, essays, dissertations, translations and etc.
Academic English is used in all official educational institutions, where the writing of various written works is widely practised. Any texts you create while studying at a University (essay, lab report, term paper, diploma) will require academic writing skills.
Basic knowledge
Academic writing is a genre just like other: fiction, love letters, newspaper and so on. Academic writing significantly differs from other types of texts. It is more structured and formal, and it has clear rules that include weird aspects such as font size and style. A lot of professors recommend this type of writing to improve critical thinking.
Main characteristics
- Formal tone
Academic writing excludes emotional, bright and subjective tone; even if you do not agree with the idea you write – your goal is to keep it to yourself. The use of first person singular pronouns is also prohibited.
- Clear focus
The author is obliged to have and render a clearly formulated main idea that he wants to convey to the reader. The focus of academic writing must be the research question or the argument. The paper may have contextual information, but every sentence and paragraph must connect to the primary focus.
- Logic
Every academic writing must have a logical structure. The simplest form of academic writing contains a title, introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. The introduction usually covers a summary of academic work and it is 15% of the overall word limit. This section includes background information, paragraphs, and their titles and thesis. First part is about 1-2 sentences. The next part is body paragraph, it is used to support your thesis, each body paragraph elaborates one point. Usually, the topic sentence of each paragraph must tell what the paragraph will be about. Then there is an explanation or developing an idea in the rest of the paragraph. The conclusion or the final paragraph refers to the thesis, compiling key points and underlines findings of the paper. The conclusion is 10% of the overall limit.
- Arguments
Academic works are never written without any reason, they always consider some specific idea. Therefore, every academic work should have clearly formulated arguments. Each statement must be supported by evidence; resources can be different: scientific sources, experiment, and writers’ quotes. But there are such types of academic works where resources should be taken only from the books of famous writers, philosophers, citation sites are prohibited. But if you see that your arguments are weak and unconvincing you can use paper writing service to get strong argumentation and, in general, perfect academic writing.
Required skills
- Time management
It doesn’t matter whether deadline you have: one day, week or year if you can not organize your time – consider yourself a loser. There are a lot of steps in academic writing and you need to have enough time for everyone. Make sure to spend enough time on research, editing and other parts so you don’t have to work at night.
- Know your people
Usually, academic writings read by professor or researchers. Therefore, your key goal is to know who you are talking to. If your paper will be read by professors, so you need to use high-level information, but if it will be your classmates you shouldn’t use any words, topics or terms complicated to understand.
- Correct writing skills
To write correctly, without any grammar or punctuation mistakes is a must. For example, you have perfect arguments, well-written thesis, and body paragraphs, but it would not make a difference is your grammar is dreadful and no one will be able to understand your writing.