Academic Writing Tips

Not everyone can write scholarly papers. The reason for such a claim is that there are rules to follow so as not to commit plagiarism. What makes an academic writing different from an ordinary essay writing is its citations. A typical essay doesn’t necessarily need sources or references. Ideas come from the writer’s mind and it’s up to him or her to be able to organize his or her ideas in such a way that it will be interesting for the readers. Academic writing, on the other hand, requires special skills of weaving not only his or her own ideas but that of experts as well to make his or her claim credible. Stringing words together requires not only expertise in organizing ideas but also in documenting sources through text citations and referencing. There are several options to follow on which type of documentation to use, either APA , Turabian, MLA, and the like. For these different text citations, you may visit Purdue University and it will give you guidelines in these different text citations.


Aside from knowledge of documentation, a writer must also be guided by logic, since, the grouping and organizing of ideas require critical thinking. He or she must be able to observe the three qualities of an essay such as unity, coherence and emphasis. Unity requires that an essay should develop only one idea. This idea is reflected in a thesis statement. All the details should support the essay’s thesis statement. Coherence, on the other hand, demands the smooth flow of ideas in the entire essay. To have a smooth flow, the writer must consider the use of transitional devices such as the use of conjunctions, phrase summary , synonyms or repetitions of words or phrases. Any gap of meaning or abrupt change in thought is a signal that the writer has not become successful in achieving cohesion in his or her essay. The last quality in academic writing is emphasis. Emphasis is equated with style. A writer may have developed a unified and cohesive essay, but if it is devoid of aesthetic style or artistry, then, for sure, he or she may not be able to gain wide readership. Emphasis necessitates the use of sentence variety particularly in sentence beginnings. Imagine a paragraph in which the writer uses subject-predicate order in all his or her sentences in a paragraph. What a boring work to read, isn’t it? So, the next time you write, analyze your sentence beginnings for you might also be using similar patterns for sentence beginnings all throughout.



On the whole, academic writing is not that difficult after all if you will come to know its rudiments, its rules which you may learn from the experts. How? By reading academic papers or journal articles constantly.