Academic writing is clear, concise, focused, structured and supported by evidence. Its purpose is to help the reader understand. It has a formal tone and style, but it is not complex and does not require the use of long sentences and complicated vocabulary. The four main types of academic writing are descriptive, analytical, persuasive, and critical.
Each of these types of writing has specific language characteristics and purposes. Academic writing in English has a distinctive style: it is formal and uses particular language rules that you need to learn. Structure is also important in academic writing: it helps clarify your ideas, guides the reader's understanding, and can strengthen your arguments. It's what students are expected to produce for classes and what professors and academic researchers use to write academic materials.
I think it's reasonable to require academics to be able to present their arguments in writing. As noted above, all research, evidence and arguments can be challenged, and it is important for the academic writer to show his stance on a particular topic, in other words, how strong his claims are. Being able to write in an academic style is essential to disciplinary learning and fundamental to academic success. In most academic writing, you are required to go at least one step further than analytical writing, to persuasive writing.
It takes time, effort, awareness, experience, reflection, resistance and support to master academic writing. This page considers what academic writing is, analyzing in detail the main characteristics of academic writing and suggesting ways to develop academic writing. A form becomes “academic” when it frames a critical practice, when it becomes a way of giving and receiving criticism. Note 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 he thinks are most critical, nor does it suggest a method of collecting data to understand the better the problem.
Writing for publication can be a mysterious process that intimidates novice writers and academic neophytes. Academic writing aims to be clear and precise, with a direct style that logically moves from one idea to the next. It is difficult to find a simple definition of academic writing because there are many types and forms of academic writing, produced for a variety of reasons. To make it more precise, the writer could specify exactly what group of people he was referring to, what his preferences were, and the degree of strength of those preferences.
