ACADEMIC AND GENERAL WRITINGS

A. What is academic writing?

1. It is the style of writing many people use in
academic disciplines;
2. It requires special set of skills that not everybody
have, and
3. It is very formal, objective and concise compare to
other genre types.

Types of academic writing are research project, term

papers, conference papers, essays, and reports.
The main difference between academic writing and another styles of writing is
that it is more formal and structured, and it has the target audience of readers
which are the scholars of the same discipline.

Academic writing has its own rules, guidelines, and practices to follow, such
as:
1. Presenting ideas following a formal structure or order;
2. Citing sources (authors/literatures) following established styles;
3. Using conventional grammar, spelling, and punctuation;
4. Avoid using contractions, such as ‘don’t’, instead of ‘do not’;
5. Avoid casual word usage, e.g. ‘meager’ instead of ‘scanty’;
6. Avoid using the first person.
For example:
“I will share with you the results…”,
Write: “The results of the study…”
General or non-academic writing

It can include a varieties of genres and is often

not audience-specific. It might attract a broader
demographic.
For example: Fiction being a popular type of non-
academic writing which is not limited to an audience
in a specific discourse, and is enjoyed by many
people in the world.
The types are: expository, descriptive, persuasive, and
narrative.

1. Expository
Expository is the most common type of writing. It
explains a concept, imparting information from
themselves to a wider audience. This type of text does not
include the writer’s opinions, instead focusing on the
accepted facts about a topic, including statistic or other
evidence.
Examples: Textbooks, articles, recipes, news stories,
business, technical or scientific writing.
2. Descriptive
When someone writes in descriptive style, s/he is
painting a picture in words of a person, place, or thing
for sure. Furthermore, s/he can employ the metaphor or
her/his literary devices to describe her/his impression
through the five senses (what s/he hears, sees, smells,
tastes, or touches), but s/he is not trying to convince the
audience of anything or explain the scene.
Examples: Poetry, Journal/diary writing, Description
of nature, Fictional novels or plays.
3. Persuasive
Persuasive writing is the main writing style writer writes in
academic papers. When s/he writes in this style, s/he is trying to
convince the audience of a position/belief. This type of text
underlines the writer’s opinion or biases as well as justifications and
reasons given by the writer as the correct fact of her/his position.
Argumentative essay that most of the students write in class
belong to this type of text.
Examples: Cover letters, Op-Eds and Editorial
newspaper articles, Reviews of items, Letters of complaint,
Advertisements. And Letters of recommendation.
4. Narrative
Narrative type is the most widely used text type
either in fiction or nonfiction. When a writer writes a
narrative style, s/he must construct and communicate a
story complete with characters, conflict, and settings.
Examples: Oral histories, Novels/Novellas,
Poetry (especially epis, sagas or poems), Short stories, and
Anecdotes.