Most essays, reports, dissertations, theses and assignments you produce at university need to be written in an ‘academic style’. It is important, therefore, to understand what academic writing looks like and learn how to use it in your own writing.

Many people associate academic writing with long words and complex sentences; something that is difficult to read. However, good academic writing should be clear and easy to follow to ensure your reader can understand your ideas and arguments, while still using the technical language of your subject. 

There are some key features of an academic tone or register, and some things to avoid.  

Your writing will need to be objective, meaning it should be based on evidence and not personal opinion. Therefore, it is imperative that you support your points with evidence. Don't forget that you will also need to reference this evidence. 

You'll also need to use impartial language, that isn’t judgmental or emotive. For example, we would avoid words like good, bad, great, awful and instead be specific about the strengths or limitations. Using examples such as 'This argument has merit because...' or 'the policy appears to fail on delivery when compared to...'.

Oftentimes you will need to write in the third person and avoid using ‘I’, though not always. You may be able to write in the first person if you are doing a reflective assignment for example. Writing in the third person can help our work to appear more objective as we will need to focus upon the evidence ourselves. There are several ways to do this, but some common ones include:

• Using the passive voice - e.g. 'the data was recorded', 'the report was submitted'
• Use the subject e.g. 'this report aims to...', 'the fundings suggest...'
• Use the 3rd person e.g. 'the author', 'the student', 'the researcher'
• Use it e.g. 'it has been established....', 'it can be seen that....'

Academic writing is often formal. Formal words often convey what you want to say more concisely, for example, you might ‘investigate’ as opposed to ‘look in to’. Don’t forget you will need to use technical vocabulary particular to your subject too.

You will also need to avoid language like conversational language, colloquialisms, slang, and contractions.

• Conversational words - huge, great, have a go
• Contractions - won't (will not), it'll (it will), isn't (is not) 
• Slang - kids (children), canny (nice or pleasant)
• Colloquialisms - it's a pain (unpleasant/tedious), get worked up (become annoyed)

It's is a contraction and you may see it used where a sentence would normally read "it is" or "it has." The apostrophe indicates that part of a word has been removed and this is not formal language and is not an example of formal language so would not be acceptable in an academic assignment. Its with no apostrophe, on the other hand, is the possessive word, like "his" and "her," for nouns without gender.

When writing formally it is important to be aware of common grammatical errors such as comma splicing. A comma splice is when you incorrectly use a comma to connect two independent clauses that make sense on their own. Commas work well when pairing them with conjunctions or listing a series of items. You may add in a conjunction to the sentence like and, or but and so. 

For example: "The tree was brown, and the tree had green leaves". OR "The tree was brown. The tree had green leaves" OR "The tree was brown; the tree had green leaves"

You would only use the semi colon if the two parts of the sentence were closely related or build upon one another.

There are lots of resources available online to help with selecting formal language. One resource designed for academic writing is the Manchester Academic Phrasebank. See the link below to the Manchester Phrasebank and explore variations to support you with your academic language.

Check out the quiz below on academic register.

Academic language should be clear and to the point, to allow you to convey what you want to say as easily as possible. The information you include within your writing should be accurate and you should avoid using unnecessary words too.

When writing, avoid using unnecessary words. For example:

• The children cooperated together during the task vs The children cooperated during the task.

Try to avoid ambiguity too. Using pronouns like it/they/he/she and determiners like this/that/those/these can sometimes make meaning unclear. For example: 

• The project interviewed six small businesswomen.  Does this mean small women or women who own small businesses?

Academic writing often uses cautious or tentative language when referring to ideas or evidence. 

Being tentative is a way to acknowledge that it is difficult to know anything with absolute certainty. It is unlikely that you have examined all of the evidence on a topic, and not all studies are conclusive or well-designed and the findings they produce are often up for interpretation. Not to mention, that what is known can and often does change as knowledge advances.

Therefore, when writing for an academic context we often use tentative language, or hedging. This means using subtle language to express ideas so it is clear what you are trying to say but there is still room for discussion.

In these paired (a/b) examples the second version of the sentence uses tentative words which are underlined.

• a) Counselling helps to sort out your problems.  b) Counselling may help to sort out your problems.
• a) Rates of infection differ from region to region. b) Rates of infection appear to differ from region to region.
• a) Climate change is responsible for this unusual weather. b) It is possible that climate change is responsible for this unusual weather.

More examples of tentative phrases include, probably; might; seems; often; it could be argued that; the evidence suggests that; it is apparent that; it may be that; it is unlikely that.

Explore the game focussing on tentative or hedging language below. Write out the sentences produced by the card game, editing them to make the language more tentative.