Features of Academic Writing | Academic Skills Kit

Academic style is the formal, professional language used for university-level assessment and research.

Academic style comes with practice and experience and can take time to get right. All academic writers, regardless of experience, tend to go through drafts and revisions, and this is a key part of the writing process. There is no magic formula for producing academic writing, but there are some typical features that you’ll notice that you can use to help you develop as an academic writer.

Typical features of academic writing

Based on evidence

Claims that you make in academic writing must be supported with reliable evidence. Very few ‘facts’ are indisputable. In academic writing, often you are given a topic to consider, and there is an expectation that you will find research around this topic and select appropriate, authoritative sources to use as an evidence base for your conclusions/stance.

Precise/concise

The facts and figures you give should be as accurate as possible, and your language should be clear and unambiguous. You are often asked to write to a word count, which means you need to be careful not to repeat yourself or use unnecessary language.

Impersonal/objective

Often you’ll see that personal pronouns such as ‘I’, ‘you’, or ‘we’, are avoided. This is because use of these pronouns assumes a closeness with the audience. Academic writing tends to be objective and neutral, so this isn’t always relevant or necessary. You should also be careful to make sure you don’t use language to show you have been influenced by your own beliefs, emotions, opinions, or experiences.

Formal

The language you use shouldn’t be casual and conversational. You should show that you are able to use subject specific vocabulary appropriately, but this doesn’t mean you need to use overly complicated words and phrases, or write long, complex sentences to communicate your point. You should also avoid using contractions (for example, can’t, won’t) as these are considered to be informal in tone in the context of academic writing.

Cautious

When presenting your stance or argument, you should aim to avoid over generalising. With evidence you present there may be varying degrees of certainty in relation to the evidence. The language used throughout your work and at the end should reflect this.

Your writing should reflect that nothing is ever completely certain and that there may be exceptions/differences due to circumstances.

Analytical/critical

Academic writing very often asks you to analyse issues from different angles, where you should assess and synthesise a range of evidence to come to a well-informed conclusion.

Here’s an example

Here’s a sample paragraph which has an informal tone. Although this isn’t ‘wrong’, it doesn’t meet the expectations for academic writing and wouldn’t be appropriate to submit.

Corrected paragraph

Procrastination is a significant issue for many students. Research conducted by Klassen, Krawchuk and Rajani (2008) found ‘It’s not unusual to find reports that puts the prevalence of problematic procrastination in undergraduates as being 70% or above’. In order to understand this issue and provide strategies to help overcome procrastination, several theories have been developed. The first is Temporal Motivation theory. Steel and Konig developed this theory in 2006 using factors such as motivation, expectation, value, impulsiveness, and delay in a formula. They argue that these factors are common across all students, and that by adjusting one or two, significant changes can be made and a person’s likelihood to procrastinate will reduce. However, Konig and Steel took a very theoretical stance, and although considered aspects of psychology, have only conducted minimal empirical research. Overall, the application of this theory seems very limited and may not account for complex factors students may have to face.

Some feedback this piece of work might receive

‘Lots of students really struggle with procrastination.’

This is too vague - try to avoid expressions like this as we don’t know how many people are affected. Research would indicate how many, and a number would strengthen this point and make it more precise.

‘“It’s not unusual to find reports that puts the prevalence of problematic procrastination in undergraduates as being 70% or above”.’

Although using evidence helps build an argument, there is no reference here and no signposting, so we don’t know where the information is from, or how it fits in with the rest of the text and how it helps answer the question.

‘There has been a bit of work looking into this, as obviously it’s not good to put things off for a long time.’

‘A bit of’ is quite vague. It is also best to avoid words like ‘obviously’. This is subjective and academic writing tends to be objective. The use of phrasal verbs like ‘put off’ and contractions might be considered informal.

‘The research isn’t really that conclusive and doesn’t give any clear answers, so I don’t think there is anything that can be done with people who don’t do the work they need to, they should just get on with it in my opinion.’

Although a conclusion is drawn, we don’t know how the author has reached this and it seems like a generalised opinion. In academic writing, you as the writer can comment, but this needs to be based on the evidence presented. You can also see that the writer has used contractions here which isn’t appropriate in this context. There is also a lack of caution in this sentence, and the author is making a generalisation. One way to avoid overgeneralised statements is to use cautious language. The sentence ‘I don’t think there is anything that can be done with people who don’t do the work they need to’ is a very strong statement to make based on limited evidence. In academic writing, a writer would take a more cautious stance. For example, ‘it may be difficult to support some students with their procrastination issues’.

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Illustrations by Eilidh Muldoon.