What is academic writing

Academic writing is clear, concise, focussed, structured and backed up by evidence. Its
purpose is to aid the reader’s understanding.

It has a formal tone and style, but it is not complex and does not require the use of long
sentences and complicated vocabulary.

Each subject discipline will have certain writing conventions, vocabulary and types of
discourse that you will become familiar with over the course of your degree. However,
there are some general characteristics of academic writing that are relevant across all
disciplines.

Characteristics of academic writing

Academic writing is:
• Planned and focused: answers the question and demonstrates an understanding of the
subject.
• Structured: is coherent, written in a logical order, and brings together related points and
material.
• Evidenced: demonstrates knowledge of the subject area, supports opinions and arguments
with evidence, and is referenced accurately.
• Formal in tone and style: uses appropriate language and tenses, and is clear, concise and
balanced.

Features of academic writing

Introduction
Academic writing in English is linear, which means it has one central point or theme
with every part contributing to the main line of argument, without digressions or
repetitions. Its objective is to inform rather than entertain. As well as this it is in the
standard written form of the language.There are ten main features of academic
writing that are often discussed. Academic writing is to some extent: complex,
formal, objective, explicit, hedged, and responsible. It uses language precisely and
accurately. It is also well organised and planned.

Complexity
Written language is relatively more complex than spoken language. Written language
has longer words, it is lexically more dense and it has a more varied vocabulary. It
uses more noun-based phrases than verb-based phrases. Written texts are shorter
and the language has more grammatical complexity, including more subordinate
clauses and more passives.

Formality
Academic writing is relatively formal. In general this means that in an essay you
should avoid colloquial words and expressions.

Precision
In academic writing, facts and figures are given precisely.

Objectivity
Written language is in general objective rather than personal. It therefore has fewer
words that refer to the writer or the reader. This means that the main emphasis
should be on the information that you want to give and the arguments you want to
make, rather than you. For that reason, academic writing tends to use nouns (and
adjectives), rather than verbs (and adverbs).

Explicitness
Academic writing is explicit about the relationships int he text. Furthermore, it is the
responsibility of the writer in English to make it clear to the reader how the various
parts of the text are related. These connections can be made explicit by the use of
different signalling words.

Accuracy
Academic writing uses vocabulary accurately. Most subjects have words with narrow
specific meanings. Linguistics distinguishes clearly between "phonetics" and
"phonemics"; general English does not.

Hedging
In any kind of academic writing you do, it is necessary to make decisions about your
stance on a particular subject, or the strength of the claims you are making. Different
subjects prefer to do this in different ways.

A technique common in certain kinds of academic writing is known by linguists as a

‘hedge’.
Responsibility
In academic writing you must be responsible for, and must be able to provide
evidence and justification for, any claims you make. You are also responsible for
demonstrating an understanding of any source texts you use.

Organisation
Academic writing is well organised. It flows easily from one section to the next in a
logical fashion. A good place to start is the genre of your text. Once you have
decided on the genre, the structure is easily determined..

Planning
Academic writing is well planned. It usually takes place after research and
evaluation, according to a specific purpose and plan.

Vocabulary choice - you can develop a broader academic vocabulary by focussing

on vocabulary as you read: when you come across a word you’re not sure of, google
it or use a dictionary to find out its meaning and use think how you would use that
word in speaking or if you were explaining it to someone notice how often that word
or phrase is used in academic texts you are reading. If you come across it frequently,
it’s worth making sure you know how to use it.

Caution – writers are careful not to make claims that are too strong. Words like
“may” and “might” are often used to make claims less strong. Writers are also very
precise about the circumstances in which a claim is valid.

Impersonality – with the exception of reflective writing, write in the 3rd person – do
not use “I” and “you”.

Relevance – you should only include information that is relevant to the question. A
common mistake is to give too much unnecessary descriptive detail, which uses up
too many words, while not demonstrating critical understanding of the issue. You
need to decide:

What is relevant?

How much detail do I need to give?

Precision – this relates to formality. Words and terms have very specific meanings
and it is important that you use them correctly. If you are not sure what a word
means, do not use it without checking that it makes sense, both in meaning and
grammatical use. It is usually obvious to the reader when a writer has not understood
a word or an idea
Conciseness – in order to write within the word count, you have to write concisely.

Avoid repeating yourself – do not repeat an idea because you think that will show
its importance.

Use as few words as you can without losing meaning or complexity. We use more
words in spoken than written English, so writing often involves finding alternative
words to the words we use in everyday speech.

Edit your work carefully to find ways you can reduce word count

Grammatical complexity – in this context complexity refers to grammar structures

not the difficulty of understanding an idea. A simple sentence expresses one
grammatical idea the dog attacked the man a complex sentence contains more than
one grammatical idea. The sentences below increase in grammatical complexity the
dog attacked the man as he came into the house the dog attacked the man who lives
opposite the dog attacked the man who lives opposite when he tried to give him a
biscuit Even though the dog knows the man well, he attacked him as he came into
the house yesterday

The sentences in academic texts tend to be dense, in other words they contain lots
of highly grammatically complex sentences. A variety of grammatical structures are
used to create complex sentences. This is one of the reasons why academic reading
is demanding – both the ideas and the sentence structures can be complex. It is
useful to be aware of this and to develop the range of grammatical structures and
vocabulary that you use by thinking about what they mean and trying to use them in
your own writing. However, don’t use words and phrases that you are not familiar
with just because you think it will make your writing more “academic”. If you don’t
know what a word or phrase means, there’s a good chance you’ll misuse the word
and the reader/marker will know you don’t understand what you are reading.