ACADEMIC WRITING

1 Genre / Type of Writing

Audience:
- Email
 Friend
 Boss
- Tweet / Facebook post
 Friends
 Company
- Essay
- Business
- Executive Summary
 Audience
 Busy professionals.
2 Length Expectations
- Concise: you are communicating your idea, but, you are doing it in a short way, as short as you can while still
keeping the idea there. Different cultures have many different rules. In English-speaking cultures usually, we
reallu want to get to the point, so we want something to be concise. We want to communicate our ide, but
we want tit to be in a concise way, so use our words very carefully so we do not use too many words.
 Long vs better (time / detail)

Short Tweet
Facebook post
Paragraph – 5 sentences
Email
Cover letter – 1 page (full page)
Resume
Essay (5 pages, 10 pages)
Long Report (50 pages)

Who is reading your writing, and who is your audience. Maybe they do not want to read long pieces of work.
How are you going to get your message across using the right amount of words?

3 Plan. The most important.

1 Method.
When you write something very important plan or think about what you will say. You can do the same with
reports. What are the main ideas that I need to talk about in this report? Where you just kind of brainstorm in
advance. Just yo get your ideas down on paper, and then organize them
- Idea. E. g. eat, cats
- Idea E.g. petes: quiet, cheap,

2 Method.

You can just write down everything, with a dash.

- Cats: Quiet
Cute
Grumpy
 3. Method

- Thesis: Cats are better than dogs

- Main idea 1 Cleaner: -Lick themselves
-Stay indoors
- Main idea 2 Apartment: -Quiet
-Smaller
4 Formal way or Informal way
Formal: Informal:
- Work - Friends
- Professional - Kids
- Strangers - Social Media: tweet, Facebook,
- Academic/ school
E.g. E.g.
Essay Postcard
Cover letter Test message
Report Email to friend
Email to customer Card

a) Different words
Formal: Informal:
Many vs lots
Apologize vs sorry
Regards, Kind regards vs cheers
Longer often
More formal
Latin based
b) Contractions:
Formal: Informal:
I am I´m
You would You´d
We will We´ll
Do not Don´t
Cannot Can´t
Should not Shoudn´t
Would not Wouldn´t
Is not Isn´t
Have not haven´t
Has not hasn´t
c) Sentence types / lengths
Simple – Students are stressed (informal)
Complex – When a student begins university, they often report feeling stress (formal)

You will also find informal writing when we use relative clauses more: who, which, that, when, within a
sentence. Eg.
- Jane Goodall, who works with chimpanzees is a wonderful woman.
d) Avoid there is / there are
E.g. X There are many issues that students face at university
 Students face many issues at university
X There are many development projects that the UN supports
  The UN supports many development projects.

e) Other suggestions to improve and stronger writing:

Formal: Informal:
o Slangs - informal
o Swear words (bad words). When you talk to your friends, not
with strangers.
o Exaggeration words: very, really, totally, so and a lot
E. g.
- He is very funny
- She is very pretty
- He is really handsome
- He´s totally hot
- Many students think university is very hard vs
Many students think university is difficult
- Bill 399 is really controversial
- A lot of the students vs Many students
- A lot of time is wasted vs Much time is wasted
o Text words: lol, b4, LMAO

5 Variety – words/sentences types:

- Do not use certain words again and again or
- The same sentence structure.
- Try to be interesting

E.g. “Sales have increased. They have increased for many reasons. The increase is because people
increasingly
like spending money.”

TIP: thesaurus, different tenses/sentences length

6 Passive voice vs Active Voice

If you are in sciences you can use passive voice, but not too much, it is normal. If you are studying humanities,
social science, history, psychology or these types of subjects do not use the passive voice, use the active voice
so, for more University writing we use the active voice
E.g.
- Healthcare reforms were implemented by Obama
Obama implemented healthcare reforms
- The war was won by the French
The French won the war

7 Use strong verbs

Weak verb: He gave assistance to my friend
Strong verb: He assisted my friend
Weak verb: Made and objection
Strong verb: Objected
Weak verb: Conducted an investigation
Strong verb: Investigated
Weak verb did an audit:
Strong verb: audited
 8 Apostrophes
E.g. Haberdashers´ Asker’s Hatcham Collage
Trade guild person place School
a) Possession
E.g. The man´s car is there
That´s George´s car
London´s best fish and chips
Exception: name ends in – s
E.g. She´s Chris’ girlfriend
He is Mr. Jones´ business partner
b) Collective nouns
Women: The women´s group meet weekly - (meet – UK) (meets - AM)
Men: The men´s toilets are disgusting
Children: The children´s department is upstairs

Compare to:

Boys: The boys´ School is excellent

Ladies: The ladies´ yoga class has started
E.g. Tom and Pete´s friend Shaun
Lulu´s and Angela´s boyfriends
Or
Thomas, Lucas, Paris, Barbados
It is Thomas´s birthday - - s´s
It is Thomas´ birthday
c) Compound nouns
Singular Mother in law E. g His mother in law´s party.
Plural Brothers in law E. g. The brothers in law´s company.

IMPORTANT: hers, theirs, yours, whose, ours.

E.g. The bag is her´s = wrong.

Formal and informal language

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/es-LA/grammar/british-grammar/formal-and-informal-language
We use formal language in situations that are serious or that involve people we don’t know well. Informal language is
more commonly used in situations that are more relaxed and involve people we know well.
Formal language is more common when we write; informal language is more common when we speak. However, there
are times where writing can be very informal, for example, when writing postcards or letters to friends, emails or text
messages. There are also examples where spoken English can be very formal, for example, in a speech or a lecture. Most
uses of English are neutral; that is, they are neither formal nor informal.
Formal language and informal language are associated with particular choices of grammar and vocabulary. Contractions,
relative clauses without a relative pronoun and ellipsis are more common in informal language.
Compare
She has decided to accept the job. formal
 informal: She’s =
She’s decided to accept the job.
contraction

Compare

The girl whom I met in Singapore was

formal
interested in working in Australia.

The girl I met in Singapore was interested informal: relative clause without the
in working in Australia. relative pronoun whom

Compare
We went to Barcelona for the weekend.
Formal
We have a lot of things to tell you.

Went to Barcelona for the weekend. Lots Informal: ellipsis (more likely to be
to tell you. written or texted than spoken)

More formal vocabulary commonly involves longer words or words with origins in Latin and Greek. More informal
vocabulary commonly involves shorter words, or words with origins in Anglo-Saxon. Most dictionaries indicate very
informal and/or formal words.

formal informal

commence start

terminate end

endeavour try

We often choose to use certain modal verbs to be more formal and polite:
Can I suggest you try this new model? (neutral)
May I suggest you try this new model? (more formal)
Might I suggest you try this new model? (very formal)

Formal and informal writing

https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/learning-english/activities-for-learners/c1w001-formal-and-informal-writing
FORMAL INFORMAL
Noun Phrases (e.g. the admission that…) Subject + verb (e.g. they admitted that…)
Sophisticated verbs (e.g. to determine) Active voice (e. g. they should make recommendations)
Passive voice (e.g. recommendations should be made by) Phrasal verbs (e.g. to pin down)
Abstract nouns (e.g. profitability) Question words (e. g. how we…)
Verb + noun (e.g. to enter into negotiations) Verbs (e. g. to negotiate)
Noun phrases (e. g. the method by which we…) Concrete nouns (e. g. profit)
5 Writing Rules Destroyed by the Dictionary
Omit needless rules
Last Updated: 9 Mar 2022

"Don't Use Adverbs"

Don't be so eager to cut adverbs that you destroy the meaning of your prose.

The adverb is not your friend. Adverbs ...are words that modify verbs, adjectives, or other
adverbs. They’re the ones that usually end in - ly. Adverbs, like the passive voice, seem to have
been created with the timid writer in mind.... With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is
afraid he/she isn’t expressing himself/herself clearly, that he or she is not getting the point or the
picture across.
—Stephen King, On Writing, 2000
There are numerous usage "rules" regarding the placement of adverbs in prose: one shouldn't split a
compound verb or infinitive with them (so no "to boldly go" or "must be heartily congratulated"); one must
place them closest to the word they are modifying (so no "Quickly the news anchor corrected himself"; go
with "The news anchor quickly corrected himself"); one shouldn't start a sentence with them, especially if
the adverb in question is hopefully; one should know when to use a flat adverb (like quick in "move quick"
and safe in "drive safe") and when to use an inflected -ly adverb (like "quickly move aside" and "safely
drive the truck"); the overuse of qualifying adverbs like perhaps and somewhat "amounts with English
journalists to a disease," as Henry Fowler put it in 1908, adding that "the intemperate orgy of moderation is
renewed every morning."
The words that get picked on the most are, as King points out, the -ly adverbs. They're derided as lazy and
redundant, particularly when paired with a speaking verb:
He shouted angrily at her. "Don't go in there!" she said fearfully. "I'm sad," he said sadly.
These are terrible sentences: shouting usually implies upset; you can find a better speaking verb like
"whispered" or "shrieked" to get the idea that she's afraid across; and it's a good thing that last sentence is
fictional, because were it to appear in writing, it would likely cause the deaths of millions of copy editors
due to rage-aneurysms upon first read. The advice to, as King puts it, "use the adverb in dialogue
attribution only in the rarest and most special of cases....and not even then, if you can avoid it" makes sense
when one is faced with a sentence like "I'm tired," she said jadedly. We're tired of these sentences too.
But the idea that adverbs as a whole need to be excised from prose is ridiculous. First, the targets are
always words that end in -ly, some of which (like manly and friendly) are not adverbs at all. Second, a wide
variety of words that we use in everyday, idiomatic prose are adverbs. Here's an example:
But the idea that adverbs as a whole need to be excised from prose is ridiculous. First, the targets
are always words that end in -ly, some of which (like manly and friendly) are not adverbs at all.
The adverb is one of our hardest-working parts of speech, and it doesn't deserve the scorn heaped upon it.
Before you cut an adverb, make sure it's not vital to the meaning of your sentence ("They treated
him brutally" is not the same as "They treated him," though it's also not as powerful as providing concrete
details of the way he was treated), and if you do decide to hack away at them, make sure that your -ly words
are actually adverbs. But don't try to get rid of all of them. Even Stephen King uses them, and in the
paragraph telling you not to:
With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is afraid he/she is n’t expressing
himself/herself clearly, that he or she is not getting the point or the picture across.

"Never Use the Passive Voice"

You don't have to be active all the time.

"Never use the passive where you can use the active."
—George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," April 1946
English verbs have two voices : active and passive. We use the active voice in sentences like this one, and it
shows who is doing the acting (we are) and what is being acted on (the active voice). But the passive voice
is often used in more formal sentences, like this one, where the actor—here, the invisible writer of this
sentence, who is the one using the passive voice—is hidden from view. Here are a few examples of
sentences written in the active voice and then recast in the passive voice:
The teacher told us to use the active voice. vs We were told to use the active voice.
The police questioned the suspect. vs The suspect was questioned.
I made a mistake. vs Mistakes were made.
You'll notice that the passive voice seems to distance an action from its perpetrator, or it makes the thing
being acted on ("we," "the suspect," and "mistakes" above) more important than the doer. For this reason,
the passive voice is very common in more formal writing, where the authors want to keep the perpetrator of
the action or the speaker distant.
Writing advice has eschewed use of the passive voice since at least 1920, when "Use the active voice" was
a point of composition in William Strunk, Jr.'s, The Elements of Style. But much of the advice against using
the passive voice ignores something very important: it's an integral part of the way that we use verbs in
English.
The passive voice flourishes in modern English because we have a need for it. The passive refocuses our
attention on the recipient of an action, particularly when the writer wants to emphasize the recipient or the
doer of an action isn't known:
The child was hit by a drunk driver.
For this reason, the passive voice is used in scientific writing, since the emphasis is on the results of
research and not on who is doing that research.
Passive voice is also handy when stating something that should be obvious:
Valuables should not be left in unlocked cars.
Sometimes, however, the passive voice is used to evade, and this is the type of passive that Orwell (and
many other commentators) object to the most. The press asks why thus-and-such happened, and a
spokesperson responds "Mistakes were made." Sure: but by whom, and why?
The point, finally, is that sentences cast in the passive voice have their uses and are an important tool
for the writer. Everyone agrees you should not lean too heavily on passive sentences and that you should
especially avoid awkwardly constructed passives. The few statistical studies we have seen or heard of
indicate that you are likely to use the active voice most of the time anyway.

"Never Use a Verb Other Than 'Said' to Carry Dialogue"

'Said' isn't the only word that can carry dialogue.

Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the
verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive
than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with
"she asseverated," and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.
—Elmore Leonard, "Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle," The New
York Times, 16 July 2001
This is a rule that is often repeated, something that is supposedly the province of "showing, not telling."
But this is less a rule of writing and more of a personal preference of Leonard's. There's plenty of lovely
prose that uses dialogue verbs besides said:
It came out of the third storey; for it passed overhead. And overhead—yes, in the room just above
my chamber-ceiling—I now heard a struggle: a deadly one it seemed from the noise; and a half-
smothered voice shouted—“Help! help! help!” three times rapidly. “Will no one come?” it cried;
and then, while the staggering and stamping went on wildly, I distinguished through plank and
plaster:—“Rochester! Rochester! for God’s sake, come!”
—Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847
Brontë uses shouted and cried here, when we, as astute readers, could probably deduce that the disembodied
voice was likely shouting, if Jane Eyre could hear it one floor down. Leonard's dictum that said should be
substituted here substantially changes the meaning of the passage: instead of a loud struggle above Jane's
room, we'd just have a lot of furniture moving and some mumbling indistinguishable from the floor
below. Shouted and cried also serve to increase the tension of the passage.
One could argue that Brontë was, compared to Leonard, a florid writer and so a bad example of what
Leonard means here. But even other writers who preferred a sparser style indulged in a few dialogue verbs
apart from said every once in a while:
"Ain't she cute?" Red Sam's wife said, leaning over the counter. "Would you like to come be my
little girl?"
"No I certainly wouldn't," June Star said. "I wouldn't live in a broken-down place like this for a
minion bucks!" and she ran back to the table.
"Ain't she cute?" the woman repeated, stretching her mouth politely.
 "Arn't you ashamed?" hissed the grandmother.
—Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," 1953
O'Connor, one of the American South's most iconic and spare writers, was a devotee of said, but this
passage shows that a well-deployed repeated and hissed can add just the right amount of color to a passage,
as well as obliquely show the reader something about the character. The hissed here shows that the
grandmother in the story is embarrassed at June Star's impertinence, but is also too proper to holler, rant, or
yell. The repeated here tells you that the woman is merely doing her social duty: though you don't know
much about this woman, you know that she certainly doesn't believe that June Star is cute.
It goes beyond dialogue markers, too:
Beatrice: I / had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man / swear he loves me.
—Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 1598
How much more vehement is Beatrice's declaration when Shakespeare has her use "swear he loves me" over
"says he loves me"?
Of course, lots of these non-said dialogue markers are almost as old as said itself is. Check your dictionary
and you’ll see that dialogue verbs like crow, yell, whisper, and groan are contemporaries of said and had
ample use in Old English as well as in Modern English.
Leonard does have one good bit of advice, however: don't use asseverate for said.

"Omit Needless Words"

What if that blade of grass is what gives the lawn its character?

Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary
words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no
unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all
sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
—Strunk & White, The Elements of Style, 1959 (2000)
Held to be The Writer’s Handbook, The Elements of Style is an expanded pamphlet originally written by
William Strunk, Jr., and expanded upon by E. B. White (he of Charlotte’s Web fame) in 1959. Along with
advice about the passive voice and keeping your writing in the same verb tense is this oft-quoted
axiom: omit needless words.
The question is, of course, what’s a needless word and who gets to say? Take this paragraph:
Sitting beside the road, watching the wagon mount the hill toward her, Lena thinks, “I have come
from Alabama: a fur piece. All the way from Alabama a-walking. A fur piece.”
Thinking although I have not been quite a month on the road I am already in Mississippi, further
from home than I have ever been before. I am now further from Doane’s Mill than I have been
since I was twelve years old.
Ready your red pens: how many redundant statements and words are in this paragraph? Quite a few. The
use of mount here implies that the motion is upward: do we need “the hill”? What about Lena’s first
sentence? Or the last sentence? We could lose half this paragraph and the meaning would still be clear.
Luckily for William Faulkner, his editor let the sentences stand. This is the opening paragraph to A Light in
August, one of Faulkner’s many novels, and it’s representative of his stream-of-consciousness style of
writing. To edit out the needless words here would be to strip Faulkner of what makes him Faulkner.
Sometimes authors use words for rhythmic emphasis:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
—William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 1606
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow: the rhythm of the first line of Macbeth’s famous soliloquy stops
the reader and listener short and tells us something about Macbeth’s state of mind (spoiler alert: it’s not
good!). “Tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day” means the same thing, but “Tomorrow and
tomorrow and tomorrow / creeps in his petty place from day to day” slows the listener down so that they,
too, can wallow with Macbeth.
If we have words in our language (and our dictionaries), then it is because they are needful , not needless.
And though we tend to focus on the meaning of words, we can’t deny that they can have extra-semantic
uses: authors can employ them for emphasis, zip, bite. They are there to be used, and used with
skill and abandon.

"Avoid Colloquial Language"

The "Harry Potter" series is full of words that aren't in dictionaries, and J.K. Rowling seems to be doing
all right.

Slang is everywhere. When we use it in everyday life to communicate with friends informally, it’s
usually fine. In fact, sounding too formal around our friends is kinda weird. Slang, or colloquial
language—to use the formal term—is not appropriate in academic writing and many professional
communication situations.
—Karen Langbehn, USF Writing Studio blog post , 18 May 2012
Some writing teachers tell their students to avoid certain classes of words: slang, jargon, new words whose
meaning isn’t apparent. The idea behind this is that you don’t want the words you use to snag the
audience’s attention and detract from the point you’re making. This is a guideline that many of us learn as
we go through school, where most of our writing is more formal and academic, and it’s a good guideline to
follow in academic and formal writing.
But context is everything. Sometimes writers and editors will forget that not all writing is academic
writing, and they’ll expand on the rule a bit to say that one shouldn’t use words that aren’t entered into a
dictionary (regardless of what one is writing).
Take it from the dictionary: this way madness lies. No dictionary you consult will be a complete record of
the language, but merely a snapshot of some of the language in use at a particular time. We’re not saying
that your writing will be terrible if you limit yourself to the words entered in that $5 paperback dictionary
you picked up at the bookstore, but we will be sad that you won’t have the word smellfungus (which has
nothing to do with smells or fungus) at your disposal.
Additionally, dictionaries follow the language. A new word appears; people begin to use that word more
and more; it shows up consistently in edited prose; we eventually enter it into the dictionary. If writers are
supposed to avoid words that aren’t entered into the dictionary, then the whole process falls apart at the
third step.
Plenty of writers have used words that aren’t entered into dictionaries. From a purely chronological point of
view, there were centuries of authors who wrote before general English dictionaries were even a thing—
Shakespeare, for instance. Even now, writers may choose to use words or jargon not in dictionaries for
world-building purposes. Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange is full of a fictional slang called Nadsat;
the Harry Potter series is full of words that aren’t in dictionaries.
In short, keep your audience in mind, but certainly use words that aren’t in the dictionary. We like reading
them as much as we like collecting them.