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Academic voice

Discover the principles of writing in an academic style.

When producing a piece of writing for university, there is a common style of writing which you will be expected to use. Don’t worry if you’re not used to writing in an academic style at first, it does take some time and practice to develop. 

The style of writing used at university can differ between subjects and even between modules, so we will just explore some general rules here.

Always make sure you check with your tutor or lecturer what kind of writing style they expect for an assignment. 

 

Elements of academic writing style

Formal and precise

Formal writing should avoid cliches idioms which add more words to a sentence, and are not precise.

For example, instead of writing that something: ‘is a drop in the ocean’, you might say that 'it has a minimal effect’.

Explore the interactive resource for this topic

For an example of editing for formality, take a look at this resource:

Editing for formality

 

Avoid absolute terms

In academic writing, you should be careful not to state that something is always or never the case.

If you claim, for example, that ‘it always rains in April’, you may have forgotten that in some parts of the world, it might not rain in April at all!

If you find yourself using ‘always’ and ‘never’, think about looking carefully at the evidence and asking yourself what trends can be seen here?

 
 

Impersonal

Try to avoid using the words ‘I/me’ or ‘we/us’. You can usually avoid these by using the passive voice rather than the active voice.

For example: ‘We should do more to address climate change.’

It is not clear who the ‘we’ is in this sentence.

A passive version of this would be: ‘More should be done to address climate change.’

This sentence focuses on the action, rather than the person, and is more suitable for academic writing.

 

Emotions and value judgements

In academic writing we should try to remain as objective as possible and avoid emotive or superlative language.

For example: ‘The results are amazing and offer the best evidence yet that there could be life on other planets.’

A more objective version of this would be:

The findings from this study suggest that there could be life on other planets, though further research into the field is necessary.

When we make a value judgement, we reach a conclusion about something based on our own values or beliefs.

In academic writing, we should make judgements and reach conclusions based on evidence, not our own opinions or values.

 
 

 

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