Most assignments are required to be written in an academic style, with presentation a key aspect of the University's Generic Assessment Criteria.
It is important therefore, to understand the key aspects of academic writing and how you can apply this in your own work.
You can ensure your writing has an academic tone or register by being objective; formal; precise; and tentative.
Select the tabs below to find out more about each aspect of creating an academic tone.
Academic writing should be objective to demonstrate that your assignment is based on existing evidence rather than your own opinion. You can do this by using impartial language and avoiding pronouns.
Using impartial language means you can avoid appearing judgemental and/or emotive in your writing. Avoiding words such as good, bad, great, awful, instead pointing to specific strengths and limitations can ensure an objective tone. This may look like:
'This argument has merit because...'
'The policy appears to fail on delivery when compared to...'
Writing in the third person and avoiding pronouns can also contribute to the objective tone of your writing as it highlights the importance of the ideas being discussed as well as the evidence provided. Some common ways to avoid pronouns in your writing are:
| Using the passive voice | 'The data was recorded' |
| Referring to the subject of the sentence | 'This report aims to...' 'the findings suggest...' |
Academic writing should be written in a formal tone to ensure your readers can fully understand your meaning.
There are things which can negatively impact the overall academic tone of your writing. Using conversational language, colloquialisms, and contractions are common errors that you should be aware of when proofreading your work.
Conversational words: those that are used in everyday conversations but are not formal English e.g. 'great', 'have a go'.
Contractions: rather than combining two words, both words should be written in full e.g. won't should be will not, it's should be it is.
Colloquialisms: words used by people in a specific location/age group/subculture which may differ across locations and groups e.g. 'trainers', 'sneakers', 'runners'.
Academic language should be clear and precise allowing you to make your points as directly as possible, as well as remaining within your word count. When writing, try to avoid words which do not add meaning to your writing.
For example,
'The children co-operated together during the activity'
vs
'The children co-operated during the activity'
You should also try to avoid ambiguity in your writing by being precise about your meaning. For example, writing 'between 1990-2000' rather than 'in the past.'
Academic writing should use cautious or tentative language when referring to ideas or evidence. Tentative, cautious, or hedging language is used to express ideas in such a way that you are acknowledging the need for further study on a topic.
The examples below demonstrate how tentative language can be used in a sentence.
| Counselling helps address problems. | Counselling may help address problems |
| Rates of infection differ from region to region. | Rates of infections appear to differ from region to region. |
| Climate change is responsible for this unusual weather. | It is possible that climate change may be responsible for this unusual weather. |
There are various resources which can help in selecting words to create a formal tone however in the study skills team we like to use the Manchester Academic Phrasebank as it has a focus on academic writing.
The video below provides some guidance on using the Phrasebank based on what you wish to do in your writing.
Follow the link below to access the website