What is Academic Writing?
Academic writing refers to the more technical form of writing that academics use to communicate with each other. It’s important to note that certain elements of academic writing differ among audiences, journals, and domains. However, various elements remain consistent throughout, and this is what I intend to discuss in this post.
Main Aspects of Academic Writing
Reflecting on the process of academic writing, it’s important to note that you need to adapt to the audience you intend to speak to. So, if you plan to write an academic article it’s recommended that you get comfortable with your domain’s style of writing by referring to your target journal’s author guidelines or by referring to recent top-level publications within your field. However, below we discuss the main hallmarks and typical pitfalls for academic writing.
- Structure & Story – When it comes to academic writing the general structure and story of an academic article is quite standard across various domains. By structure, I refer to the sequence of your arguments and writing, which typically follows the ITMR and D structure.
| Introduction |
| Theoretical Background |
| Method |
| Results |
| Discussion |
The underlying theme of this approach follows the typical notion of broad-narrow-broad writing. The depiction below highlights the style which starts with the more broad conversation you intend to contribute to. This follows the more narrow specificities of the real methods and conditions you apply to your study, which in the end needs to be again generalized to the broad conversation. This last part is often the crux and is where the relevance of your questions and the robustness of your methods determine how generalizable your findings will end up being. The following illustration highlights the typical structure of academic writing in management research.
SOURCE: Adapted from (Swales & Feak 2012)
To simplify, your discussion should ideally start with the world of ideas that are already known and the specific ideas that you aim to introduce. Then, the middle part deals with the real world (your technical and empirical approach), which you then use as a basis to refer back to the world of stories to which you aim to contribute. The crux of the process is that you need to demonstrate the necessary academic rigor, theoretical grounding, methodological rigor, and empirical relevance.
- The readability of your writing – The ultimate success of your academic writing rests on your ability to convey your ideas to your audience. If your language and writing are difficult to follow and inconvenient to read, odds are that you will find it a lot more difficult to publish in top academic journals. With that in mind here are the ten commandments for academic writing, that all scholars need to take note of.
| Focused Writing | It’s important to stick to one idea per paper. Trying to sell different ideas in a single paper may increase complexity and decrease comprehension. |
| Be Explicit | Don’t deviate, be continuous, and let the story unfold coherently. |
| Continuous | Don’t deviate, be continuous and let the story unfold coherently. |
| Relevance | Avoid adding unnecessary information, that could confuse the reader. Strictly stick to the information that directly contributes to your main idea. |
| Exhaustive | Be exhaustive, do not omit any important information. |
| Articulate | Make sure that there are logical flows between paragraphs and ideas. |
| Concise | Maximize density, say as much as possible in as few words as possible. |
| Transparency | Ideally, it is considered good practice to be transparent in your practices and processes to allow for the replicability of your study in the future. If you want to learn more about replication research, see this post. |
| Unambiguity | Don’t be ambiguous in your writing. Write in a manner in which alternative interpretations are closed. |
| Neutrality | One of the most important parts of scientific writing is to avoid bias as far as possible, and for your reading, this means that you should remain neutral and not lead the readers to come to your desired conclusions. |
The essence of good writing is to improve the readability of your writing without compromising on the relevance of your message. Therefore, it’s always important to ask yourself:
- Who am I writing for?
- Who is the reader?
- Are they experts?
- What is the typical idea of an ordinary reader?
- Choice of language and wording – Classic academic writing is characterized by neutral and rigid language. Today, academic writing is more commonly characterized by using simple language with as little passive voice as possible. Without going into the more technical parts of academic writing, I believe the following quote gets the message across.
“Don’t use a big word when a singularly loquacious and diminutive linguistic expression will satisfactorily accomplish the contemporary necessity.”
- Visual presentation – The importance of choosing the appropriate visualizations to get your message across is often neglected. Visual illustrations such as graphs, figures, and charts are supposed to help the reader understand and make sense of your arguments or complex sequence of ideas. Selecting the appropriate visualization for your academic article should be given as much care and attention as the writing itself.
Conclusion
Academic writing is unique in style compared to more classical writing styles. Therefore, learning and honing the craft of academic writing should be a key concern for all current and prospective scholars. Hopefully, this introduction gives you some understanding of the value of clear and concise academic writing.
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