Academic writing

Academic writing or scholarly writing is nonfiction writing produced as part of academic work in accordance with the standards and disciplines of each academic subject, including:
reports on empirical fieldwork or research in facilities for the natural sciences or social sciences,
monographs in which scholars analyze culture, propose new theories, or
develop interpretations from archives,
as well as undergraduate versions of all of these.
Academic writing typically uses a more formal tone and follows certain conventions, such as referencing other academic work and making use of established rhetorical strategies. However, the exact style, content, and organization of academic writing can vary depending on the specific genre and publication method. Despite this variation, all academic writing shares some common features.
Academic style
Academic writing often features prose register that is conventionally characterized by "evidence...that the writer(s) have been persistent, open-minded and disciplined in the study"; that prioritizes "reason over emotion or sensual perception"; and that imagines a reader who is "coolly rational, reading for information, and intending to formulate a reasoned response."
Three linguistic patterns that correspond to these goals across fields and genres, include the following:
a balance of caution and certainty, or a balance of hedging and boosting;
explicit cohesion through a range of cohesive ties and moves; and
compression, or dense noun phrases to add detail rather than more dependent clauses.
The stylistic means of achieving these conventions can differ by academic discipline, which helps explain the distinctive sounds of, for example, writing in history versus engineering or physics versus philosophy. Biber and Gray proposed that there are differences in the complexity of academic writing in the humanities versus the sciences. In the humanities, writing often focuses on elaborating and developing complex structures, while in the sciences, writing often prioritizes concise, highly-structured texts. This difference is thought to be related to the types of knowledge and information being communicated in these two fields.
One theory that attempts to account for these differences in writing is known as "discourse communities".
Criticism
Academic style, particularly in humanities, has often been criticized for being too full of jargon and hard to understand by the general public. In 2022, Joelle Renstrom argued that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on academic writing and that many scientific articles now "contain more jargon than ever, which encourages misinterpretation, political spin, and a declining public trust in the scientific process."
Discourse community
A discourse community is a group of people that shares mutual interests and beliefs. "It establishes limits and regularities...who may speak, what may be spoken, and how it is to be said; in addition [rules] prescribe what is true and false, what is reasonable and what foolish, and what is meant and what not."
The concept of a discourse community is vital to academic writers across all disciplines, for the academic writer's purpose is to influence how their community understands its field of study: whether by maintaining, adding to, revising, or contesting what that community regards as "known" or "true." Academic writers have strong incentives to follow conventions established by their community in order for their attempts to influence this community to be legible.
Discourse community constraints
Constraints are the discourse community's accepted rules and norms of writing that determine what can and cannot be said in a particular field or discipline. They define what constitutes an acceptable argument. Every discourse community expects to see writers construct their arguments using the community's conventional style of language, vocabulary, and sources, which are the building blocks of any argument in that community.
Writing for a discourse community
For writers to become familiar with some of the constraints of the discourse community they are writing for, across most discourses communities, writers must:
identify the novelty of their position
make a claim, or thesis
acknowledge prior work and situate their claim in a disciplinary context
offer warrants for one's view based on community-specific arguments and procedures
The structure and presentation of arguments can vary based on the discourse community the writer is a part of. For example, a high school student would typically present arguments differently than a college student. It is important for academic writers to familiarize themselves with the conventions of their discourse community by analyzing other works. This will help writers effectively communicate their ideas.
Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) is an educational program that aims to improve students' writing skills within the context of various disciplinary communities. The Writing Across the Curriculum Clearinghouse provides resources for such programs at all levels of education.
Novel argument
In a discourse community, academic writers build on the ideas of previous writers to establish their own claims. Successful writers know the importance of conducting research within their community and applying the knowledge gained to their own work. By synthesizing and expanding upon existing ideas, writers are able to make novel contributions to the discourse.
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the combining of past writings into original, new pieces of text. According to Julia Kristeva, all texts are part of a larger network of intertextuality, meaning they are connected to prior texts through various links, such as allusions, repetitions, and direct quotations, whether they are acknowledged or not. Writers (often unwittingly) make use of what has previously been written and thus some degree of borrowing is inevitable. One of the key characteristics of academic writing across disciplines is the use of explicit conventions for acknowledging intertextuality, such as citation and bibliography. The conventions for marking intertextuality vary depending on the discourse community, with examples including MLA, APA, IEEE, and Chicago styles.
Summarizing and integrating other texts in academic writing is often metaphorically described as "entering the conversation," as described by Kenneth Burke:
Key elements
While the need for appropriate references and the avoidance of plagiarism are undisputed in academic and scholarly writing, the appropriate style is still a matter of debate. Some aspects of writing are universally accepted as important, while others are more subjective and open to interpretation.
Style
Contrary to stereotype, published academic research is not particularly syntactically complex; it is instead a fairly low-involvement register characterized by the modification of nominal elements through hedging and refining elaborations, often presented as sequences of objects of prepositions such as what, where, when, and whom.
Logical structure
Writing should be organised in a manner which demonstrates clarity of thought.
Appropriate references
Generally speaking, the range and organization of references illustrate the author's awareness of the current state of knowledge in the field (including major current disagreements or controversies); typically the expectation is that these references will be formatted in the relevant disciplinary citation system.
Bibliography
Typically, this lists those materials read as background, evidencing wider reading, and will include the sources of individual citations.
Avoidance of plagiarism
Plagiarism, the "wrongful appropriation of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions", and the representation of them as one's own original work, is considered academic dishonesty, and can lead to severe consequences.
Academic genres
Academic writing encompasses many different genres, indicating the many different kinds of authors, audiences and activities engaged in the academy and the variety of kinds of messages sent among various people engaged in the academy. The partial list below indicates the complexity of academic writing and the academic world it is part of.
By researchers for other researchers
Scholarly monograph, in many types and varieties
Chapter in an edited volume
Book Review
Conference paper
Essay; usually short, between 1,500 and 6,000 words in length
Explication; usually a short factual note explaining some part of a particular work; e.g. its terminology, dialect, allusions or coded references
Literature review or Review Essay; a summary and careful comparison of previous academic work published on a specific topic
Research Article
Research proposal
Site description and plan (e.g. in archeology)
Technical report
Translation
Journal article (e.g. History Today); usually presenting a digest of recent research
Technical or administrative forms
Brief; short summary, often instructions for a commissioned work
Peer review report
Proposal for research or for a book
White paper; detailed technical specifications and/or performance report
Collating the work of others
Anthology; collection, collation, ordering and editing of the work of others
Catalogue raisonné; the definitive collection of the work of a single artist, in book form
Collected works; often referred to as the 'critical edition'. The definitive collection of the work of a single writer or poet, in book form, carefully purged of publishers errors and later forgeries, etc.
Monograph or exhibition catalog; usually containing exemplary works, and a scholarly essay. Sometime contains new work by a creative writer, responding to the work
Transcribing, selecting and ordering oral testimony (e.g. oral history recordings)
Research and planning
Empirical research
Experimental plan
Laboratory report
Raw data collection plan
Research proposal, including research questions
Structured notes
Newer forms
Collaborative writing, especially using the internet
Hypertext, often incorporating new media and multimedia forms within the text
Performative writing (see also: belles-lettres)
By graduate students for their advisors and committees
Doctoral Dissertation, completed over a number of years, often in excess of 20,000 words in length
Masters Thesis (in some regions referred to as Masters Dissertation), often completed within a year and between 6,000 and 20,000 words in length.
Thesis or Dissertation Proposal
By undergraduate students for their instructors
Research Paper; longer essay involving library research, 3000 to 6000 words in length
Book report
Exam Essays
By instructors for students
Exam questions
Instructional pamphlet, or hand-out, or reading list
Presentations; usually short, often illustrated
Syllabus
Summaries of knowledge for researchers, students or general public
Annotated bibliography
Annotated catalogue, often of an individual or group's papers and/or library
Simplified graphical representation of knowledge; e.g. a map, or refining a display generated from a database. There will often be a 'key' or written work incorporated with the final work
Creating a timeline or chronological plan. There will often be a 'key' or written work incorporated with the final work
Devising a classification scheme; e.g. for animals, or newly arisen sub-cultures, or a radically new style of design
Encyclopedia entry or Handbook chapter
Disseminating knowledge outside the academy
Call for papers
Documentary film script or TV script or radio script
Obituary
Opinion; an academic may sometimes be asked to give an expert written opinion, for use in a legal case before a court of law
Newspaper opinion article
Public speech or lecture
Review of a book, film, exhibition, event, etc.
Think-tank pamphlet, position paper, or briefing paper
Personal forms often for general public
These are acceptable to some academic disciplines, e.g. Cultural studies, Fine art, Feminist studies, Queer theory, Literary studies
Artist's book or Chapbook
Autobiography
Belles-lettres; stylish or aesthetic writing on serious subjects, often with reference to one's personal experience
Commonplace book
Diary or Weblog
Memoire; usually a short work, giving one's own memories of a famous person or event
Notebooks
Format
A commonly recognized format for presenting original research in the social and applied sciences is known as IMRD, an initialism that refers to the usual ordering of subsections:
Introduction (Overview of relevant research and objective of current study)
Method (Assumptions, questions, procedures described in replicable or at least reproducible detail)
Results (Presentation of findings; often includes visual displays of quantitative data charts, plots)
and
Discussion (Analysis, Implications, Suggested Next Steps)
Standalone methods sections are atypical in presenting research in the humanities; other common formats in the applied and social sciences are IMRAD (which offers an "Analysis" section separate from the implications presented in the "Discussion" section) and IRDM (found in some engineering subdisciplines, which features Methods at the end of the document).
Other common sections in academic documents are:
Abstract
Acknowledgments
Indices
Bibliography
List of references
Appendix/Addendum, any addition to a document
See also
Academia
Academic authorship
Academic ghostwriting
Academic journal
Academic publishing
Author editing
Creative class
Criticism
Expository writing
Knowledge worker
Persuasive writing or rhetoric
Publishing
Research paper mill
Rhetorical device
Scientific writing
Scientific publishing
Scholarly method
Scholarly skywriting
Style guide
References
Further reading
General
C. Bazerman, J. Little, T. Chavkin, D. Fouquette, L. Bethel, and J. Garufis (2005). Writing across the curriculum. Parlor Press and WAC Clearinghouse. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/referenceguides/bazerman-wac/
C. Bazerman & D. Russell (1994). Landmark essays in writing across the curriculum. Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press.
Borg, Erik (2003). 'Discourse Community', English Language Teaching (ELT) Journal, Vol. 57, Issue 4, pp. 398–400
Coinam, David (2004). 'Concordancing Yourself: A Personal Exploration of Academic Writing', Language Awareness, Vol. 13, Issue 1, pp. 49–55
Goodall, H. Lloyd, Jr. (2000). Writing Qualitative Inquiry: Self, Stories, and Academic Life (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press)
Johns, Ann M. (1997). Text, Role and Context: Developing Academic Literacies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
King, Donald W., Carol Tenopir, Songphan Choemprayong, and Lei Wu (2009). 'Scholarly Journal Information Seeking and Reading Patterns of Faculty at Five U.S. Universities', Learned Publishing, Vol. 22, Issue 2, pp. 126–144
Kouritzin, Sandra G., Nathalie A. C Piquemal, and Renee Norman, eds (2009). Qualitative Research: Challenging the Orthodoxies in Standard Academic Discourse(s) (New York: Routledge)
Lincoln, Yvonna S, and Norman K Denzin (2003). Turning Points in Qualitative Research: Tying Knots in a Handkerchief (Walnut Creek, CA; Oxford: AltaMira Press)
Luey, Beth (2010). Handbook for Academic Authors, 5th edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
Murray, Rowena, and Sarah Moore (2006). The Handbook of Academic Writing: A Fresh Approach (Maidenhead: Open University Press)
Nash, Robert J. (2004). Liberating Scholarly Writing: The Power of Personal Narrative (New York; London: Teachers College Press)
Paltridge, Brian (2004). 'Academic Writing', Language Teaching, Vol. 37, Issue 2, pp. 87–105
Pelias, Ronald J. (1999). Writing Performance: Poeticizing the Researcher's Body (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press)
Prior, Paul A. (1998). Writing/Disciplinarity: A Sociohistoric Account of Literate Activity in the Academy (Mahwah, NJ; London: Lawrence Erlbaum)
Rhodes, Carl and Andrew D. Brown (2005). 'Writing Responsibly: Narrative Fiction and Organization Studies', The Organization: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Organizations and Society, Vol. 12, Issue 4, pp. 467–491
Richards, Janet C., and Sharon K. Miller (2005). Doing Academic Writing in Education: Connecting the Personal and the Professional (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum)
The University of Sydney. (2019). Academic Writing.
Architecture, design and art
Crysler, C. Greig (2002). Writing Spaces: Discourses of Architecture, Urbanism and the Built Environment (London: Routledge)
Francis, Pat (2009). Inspiring Writing in Art and Design: Taking a Line for a Write (Bristol; Chicago: Intellect)
Frayling, Christopher (1993). 'Research in Art and Design', Royal College of Art Research Papers, Vol. 1, Issue 1, pp. 1–5
Piotrowski, Andrzej (2008). 'The Spectacle of Architectural Discourses', Architectural Theory Review, Vol. 13, Issue 2, pp. 130–144
Bibliography
Baldo, Shannon. "Elves and Extremism: the use of Fantasy in the Radical Environmentalist Movement." Young Scholars in Writing: Undergraduate Research in Writing and Rhetoric 7 (Spring 2010): 108–15. Print.
Greene, Stuart. "Argument as Conversation: The Role of Inquiry in Writing a Researched Argument." n. page. Print.
Kantz, Margaret. "Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively." College English 52.1 (1990): 74–91. Print.
Porter, James. "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community."Rhetoric Review. 5.1 (1986): 34–47. Print.
Writing
Second language writing