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General Guidelines for Academic Writing

     In general, it is inappropriate simply to write as you would speak in academic writing. In conversation, the listener can ask for clarification or elaboration easily, and thus the speaker can use imprecise language, ramble from topic to topic freely, and so on. Instead, academic writing must stand on its own, conveying the author's ideas clearly through words alone. As a result, academic writing requires substantial effort to construct formal language relevant to a well-defined topic. The best academic writing will be difficult to write but very easy to read.
     Rules for academic writing are quite strict, though often unstated. Academic writing is used in scientific papers or reports whenever you want to convey your ideas to readers, with many possible backgrounds and assumptions. Unlike casual conversation or emails to friends, academic writing needs to be clear, unambiguous, literal, and well structured.
 

     The checklist below will help you revise and polish drafts of academic papers. After checking your draft against these points, ask a colleague to help you in areas that need work or that you do not understand.
 

  1. Is your contributions original or reasonably interesting?
  2. Is your contributions (main ideas) clearly stated in the abstract?
  3. Have you included enough evidence or proof carefully and explained how it proves your point?
  4. Is your paper logical? Is there any contradiction in your paper?
  5. If appropriate have you given enough references?
  6. Is your sentence style straightforward and concise? (No wordiness)
  7. Is your grammar basically correct? Have you proofread the final copy?

Write in Sentences

     Sentences have the following characteristics: they start with a capital letter; end with a full stop, exclamation mark or question mark; and contain a verb (doing word).
     Authors commonly make the mistake of not writing in full sentences (they fail to provide a main clause in their "sentence") or write very long sentences that would be better chopped into smaller ones. Short, clear sentences are usually more effective than those which are long and complex. If you are in any doubt, split up any longer sentences into two or three shorter ones. This advice is especially important if you find writing difficult or English is not your first language: short sentences will help you avoid grammatical mistakes and make it easy for the reader to follow your line of ideas.