Academic writing presents and evaluates problems and reaches an objective position; a position that focuses and is based on research and reasoning rather than personal feelings and opinions. Being objective suggests that you are concerned about the facts and that you are not influenced by personal feelings or prejudices. Part of being objective is being fair in your work. Try to consider both sides of an argument and avoid making value judgments using words like wonderful or dreadful.
Being objective also makes your work more professional and credible. You might wonder why anyone would want to talk about balancing objectivity and persuasion when academic writing is largely a matter of documentation, rigorous testing, and other objective controls. Academic writers know that they cannot simply state something as true, express a personal opinion, without recognized factual support. Research and objectivity are essential, we say, for formal academic writing.
Objective writing places emphasis on facts, information, and arguments, and can be contrasted with subjective writing that relates to personal feelings and prejudices. There is also an academic article, to show authentic examples of objective language, and a checklist at the end, which you can use to test the objectivity of your own writing. But it's a good idea to try to be as objective in your evaluation of the topic for as long as possible, because ultimately readers will be more influenced by factual and well-documented evidence that you have reviewed and rechecked. And yet, no matter how objective your facts, statistics, results of experiments, or citations from respected sources, your argument remains subjective by its very nature.
This is clearly their most valuable tool for academic writing, and it is the direct link between objectivity and persuasion. This type of language allows the writer to show how strongly he feels about information, without using emotional language, which should be avoided in academic writing. Objective writing uses third-person pronouns (he, she, they), in contrast to subjective writing that uses first-person pronouns (me, we) or second-person pronouns (you). If you can persuade your audience to recognize the logos of your argument, which includes all the facts, statistics, definitions, analogies, quotes from authorities, and other evidence offered in support of your claims, then you have truly learned to balance objectivity and persuasion.
Although many academic writers believe that objectivity is an essential characteristic of academic writing, conventions are changing and how much this is true depends on the subject of study. Asking yourself these questions will help you maintain a sense of objectivity until you have successfully completed your research. While it remains a common feature of academic writing, especially in the natural sciences, a subjective tone is increasingly acceptable in fields that use qualitative data, as well as in reflective writing. The objective tone is usually related to the use of the passive, which eliminates the actor from the sentence.
Much of your success will depend on the audience you are appealing to, although it can be safely said that, for academic degree purposes, your audience is your advisor and your committee. Another way to use the active voice while remaining objective is to focus on the evidence and make this the subject of prayer.
