Academic form of writing is characteristically different from other forms of writing in a variety of ways. It is formal, objective, aware and explicit, and acknowledge everyone who helped write it.

In the upcoming video, you will learn about the most important characteristic of academic writing: formal language.

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In this video, you learnt about the most important characteristic of academic writing: formal language. Your academic writing must look formal to appeal to a wider range of audiences, from academics to the experts in your field.

To bring formal standards into your academic writing, the following changes must be introduced:

Be specific. While writing, include specific details instead of writing vague statements and phrases.
Avoid the use of contractions such as don’t, they’re and won’t.
Use single-word instead of two-word verbs such as ‘discover’ instead of ‘find out’, ‘postpone’ instead of ‘put off’ and ‘communicate’ instead of ‘get across’.
Avoid using short forms such as ASAP for as soon as possible, B4 for before, WFH for work from home.

Now that you have understood the most important characteristic of academic writing, in the next video, let’s understand the second important characteristic: objectivity.

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In this video, you learnt about objectivity, which means being clear without having any preconceived bias. You understood that the sole focus of your academic write-up should be on the arguments derived along with evidence supporting them. It means that your personal thoughts and biases should not make room in your write-up.

You also learnt how you can bring objectivity to your write-up by following the instructions given below:

Your arguments should be well supported by logic and evidence. You should always include facts in academic writing.
Avoid generalisations, and your own opinion must always be backed by facts and evidence. You should not make assumptions or state a general idea based on personal beliefs.
You should avoid making any comments or stereotyping people based on their gender, ethnicity, religion, age, etc. Therefore, you must always use gender-neutral language such as ‘chairperson’ for ‘chairman’, ‘doctor’ for ‘female doctors’ and ‘players’ for ‘male or female players’.
You must avoid using subjective language. You should present your arguments without using personal pronouns, personal beliefs, emotions and judgements.

Having learnt the second important characteristic of academic writing, in the upcoming video, let’s understand the third important characteristic: awareness.

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In this video, you learnt about the characteristic, awareness, which states that one should be aware enough to not comprehend that any research finding is not absolute; hence, absolutist phrases must not be used.

You also learnt how you can bring awareness to your write-up by following the instructions given below:

Avoid using absolutist phrases, such as always, all, none and forever.
Use tentative phrases instead, such as probably suggest, perhaps, could, would, possibly and most likely.

So far, you have learnt three different characteristics of academic writing: formal language, objectivity and awareness. In the final video of this segment, let’s understand two more characteristics: explicitness and acknowledgment.

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In this video, you learnt about explicitness, which is an important characteristic for academic writing. Explicitness holds an indispensable position in academic writing. Your writing should be very clear and direct so that it is easy for the reader to understand.

The following ways can be adopted to bring explicitness into your write-up:

Your write-up should be clear, accurate and explicit in its expressions.
It must include signalling words such as firstly, secondly and finally.
Your write-up must indicate to the readers while changing the line of thought, presenting similar or contrasting ideas, or citing examples.
Words and phrases such as however, similarly, in addition to and because indicate what would be preceding and must be used in the write-up.

In the end, you also learnt about the important characteristics of acknowledgement where you must acknowledge all the sources that you have referred to during your research. You should provide valid evidence and facts in support of your claims by citing the relevant sources.

In this segment, you learnt about various characteristics of academic writing and understood how you can improve your writing by inculcating those characteristics. In the next segment, you will learn about the structure of academic writing.