Style
As academic writing has a specialized audience that includes academics, lecturers and tutors it needs to be written in an appropriate style.
The following sections give you advice on: Aspects of Academic Style, Passive Voice, Nominalization, Hedging, Tense, and Signposting/Conjunctions
Aspects of Academic Style
Academic style has some key characteristics including:
- specialist vocabulary
- clarity and conciseness
- an emphasis on analysis rather than just description
- supporting ideas with academically respected sources
- an impersonal and objective tone (avoiding first person pronouns)
- an absence of emotive language, contractions and slang
Links:
www.courseworks.unimelb.edu.au/researchandwriting/academicstyle.php
www.dlsweb.rmit.edu.au/lsu/content/4_WritingSkills/writing_pdf/academic_style.pdf
www.uefap.com/writing/feature/intro.htm
Passive Voice
In the passive voice the focus of the sentence is on the ‘action’ not the ‘actor’:
The government broke the agreement. (Active)
The agreement was broken [by the government]. (Passive)
It is useful when the ‘actor’ is unimportant, unknown, obvious or not a specific person. The passive can help you emphasise an action rather than the actor and give your writing more variety. However, don’t overuse it as it can make your writing somewhat dull and wordy. Instead, try to have a mixture of active and passive sentences.
Links:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_actpass.html
www.monash.edu.au/lls/llonline/grammar/passive/index.xml
www.csu.edu.au/division/studserv/ess/skills/passive.htm
Nominalization
Nominalization turns verbs (actions) into nouns (concepts). An example would be:
He guided the expedition.
He was the expedition guide. (= nominalised form)
It can make your writing more formal and help you both link ideas across sentences and with paraphrasing. If used too much however it can make your writing dull and unclear.
Links:
www.csu.edu.au/division/studserv/ess/skills/nominalisation.htm
www.une.edu.au/tlc/aso/students/factsheets/active-passive.pdf
Hedging
An important feature of academic writing is qualifying your ideas, often called "hedging". By hedging you are acknowledging the complexity and depth of your opinions. For example, by using hedging, the generalisation “schools are useful” could become:
- Most schools are useful. (quantifier)
- Schools are generally useful. (adverb)
- Schools can be useful. (modal)
For more detail you could combine some of the words above:
- A few schools can be useful (quantifier + modal)
- Some schools are useful on occasions (quantifier + adverb)
- Schools can sometimes be useful (modal + adverb)
Other ways to hedge include using verbs like “appears to” and “seems to”, adjectives like “probable” and “possible” and clauses such as “It could be the case that …”.
Link: www.clpd.bbk.ac.uk/students/hedging
Tense
Tenses help clarify the time you are writing about. It is essential that your tense use is both consistent and appropriate to your meaning. In particular, you should avoid inappropriate mixing of tenses. An example is given below where in the second sentence considers should be considered:
In 1859 Darwin published his book ‘On the Origin of the Species’. He considers that species change through the process of natural selection.
Your use of tense is often determined by the part of the text you are working on. For example an introduction will often use a mix of past and present tenses to give readers a background to a subject while methodology and results sections use past tenses when discussing particular research conducted and present tenses for generalizations made from that data. Apart from the links below, the sections on Passive Voice on this page and on Subject Verb Agreement will give you further information on using tenses correctly. Additionally, this linked Academic Skills Unit flyer provides examples of appropriate tense use with examples drawn from writing in Education.
Links:
www.monash.edu.au/lls/llonline/grammar/tense/index.xml
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/tenses.htm
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/601/01/
Signposting/Conjunctions
You need to connect your ideas smoothly to make your writing (and also oral presentations) cohesive and thus easier to follow. These connected ideas form relationships within or between sentences or even between paragraphs. Such relationships include addition, contrast and cause and effect. Conjunctions and transition or signal words are useful in this regard. Common conjunctions include:
- For = (meaning because/introduces a reason) e.g. For this reason, …
- And = addition
- Nor = addition (when first clause is negative) e.g. Neither rains nor floods will prevent …
- But = contrast
- Or = alternative
- Yet = (somewhat surprising) contrast
- So = introduces result
Signal words commonly used in academic writing comprise such words as moreover, consequently, however, for example and in conclusion.
Cohesion in academic writing(61 KB | PDF)Connecting and Reporting Words (49KB | PDF)
Links:
www.mc3.edu/aa/lal/workshops/reading_workshop/read/signal_words.html
http://web.clark.edu/martpe/signal%20words.htm
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/574/01/
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