Academic writing is clear, concise, focused, structured and supported by evidence. Its purpose is to help the reader's understanding. It has a formal tone and style, but it is not complex and does not require the use of long sentences or complicated vocabulary. Like specialized languages adopted in other professions, such as law or medicine, academic writing is designed to convey an agreed meaning about complex ideas or concepts to a group of academic experts.
The passive voice is useful in academic writing because it allows writers to highlight the most important participants or events within sentences by placing them at the beginning of the sentence. In academic writing, the author is expected to investigate the research problem from an authoritarian point of view. It's appropriate for you to use specialized language within your field of study, but you should avoid using that language when writing for non-academic or general audiences. Examples of other academic conventions to follow include proper use of titles and subtitles, spelling acronyms correctly when used for the first time in text, avoiding jargon or colloquial language, avoiding emotive language or unsupported declarative statements, avoiding contractions, and using pronouns first person and second person only when necessary.
Keep in mind that a problem statement without the research questions does not qualify as academic writing because simply identifying the research problem does not establish for the reader how it will contribute to solving the problem, what aspects they think are most critical, or suggest a method for collecting data. to better understand the problem. In addition to understanding the use of specialized language, there are other aspects of academic writing in the social sciences that you should know. The accepted form of academic writing in the social sciences can vary considerably depending on the methodological framework and the target audience.
The characteristics of academic writing include a formal tone, the use of the third-person perspective rather than the first person (usually), a clear focus on the research problem being investigated, and the precise choice of words. A useful approach to evaluating the quality of your academic writing is to consider the following issues from the reader's perspective. For example, the idea of being rational may have the same general meaning in both political science and psychology, but its application to understand and explain phenomena within the research field of each discipline may have subtle differences depending on how scholars of that discipline apply the concept to theories and the practice of their work. Often, in academic writing, scholars don't want to focus on who is performing an action, but on who is receiving or experiencing the consequences of that action.
Yes, it's appropriate that you use specialized language and a formal style of expression in academic writing, but it doesn't mean using big words just for doing so. This refers to having a clear understanding of the relevant body of knowledge and academic debates that exist within, and often external to, your discipline in relation to the topic. Finally, understand that semicolons represent a pause that is longer than a comma, but shorter than a period in a sentence. Academic writing refers to a style of expression that researchers use to define the intellectual boundaries of their disciplines and specific areas of specialization.
