Back to Basics: The Key Conventions of Academic Writing

Join the University of Chester's Academic Skills Team for The Skills Pod. In this episode we go back to basics and chat about the key conventions of academic writing. We go through ways to make your academic writing formal, the importance of referencing, and how editing can help you with clarity and conciseness. This episode features Anthony, Emma, and Liz.

Transcript

Welcome to the skills podcast about all things academic, writing, reading, maths and stats, not today. And today we're going to be talking about academic writing. And my name is Liz Johnson. I'm one of the Academic Skills advisors, and I've got two colleagues with me today. Hi, I'm Emma, and I'm an Academic Skills Advisor. Hi everyone. I'm Tony, and I'm a senior academic skills advisor as part of the team as well. So firstly, take care with acronyms. Yeah, so, yes, so, yeah, take care of acronyms is a is a big one we see in team. So, acronyms, there. Acronyms are there no rephrase this. Acronyms exist to help with the readability of your work. So yes, there is an inadvertent benefit of that. It can help your work count, but predominantly, they're there to help with the readability of your work. Big issue that students do acronyms is they make everything into an acronym, and then actually defeats the purpose, and it makes it harder to read than when you have loaded. It is almost a code, yeah. And you know, the amount of times we read things, and we're like, what does this mean again? And it can kind of solar and all sorts of stuff, all the things you know. And it can really, really throw you off as a reader to that point, because the idea is you're trying to convince your reader of your argument, and if you lose them, you've lost your argument there. So the key thing with acronyms is, if you're going to use it more than three times in your assignment, it might be worth making it into an acronym. If you're only going to use it once or twice, don't have it, just have it written out in full. So how do we put our acronyms into our work. Well, if you're using something like the BBC, it stands for the British Broadcasting Corporation. But if you're a British Broadcasting Corporation, every single time you use it, as Tony says, it gets kind of clunky and it takes up space in your assignments, and people lose thread of what's going on. So you need to write out in full what it is the first time you use it, if you're going to use it several times, and then establish the acronym, so the initials that you're then going to use going forward in order to say the same thing without writing British Broadcasting Corporation, just BBC going forward, and putting that into your work gives a signpost to the reader that that's what you're going to use going forward. And it simplifies things. It makes it easier to read. It makes it clearer, and it cuts down on, yes, the word count, but also very long sentences where you're just trying to establish the name of something like the Royal National Institute for the Blind, or, I don't know, whatever it might be, the Nursing and Midwifery Council. We see all the time, don't we? And there's a lot of health and nursing ones that come up come up in writing, it just gets a bit cumbersome, and it makes your writing a bit awkward to introduce your acronyms. As they said, you would write out the name in full, so National Health Service, and then in if you are, if it's an active citation, you would have national health service. Round bracket, NHS, comma, space, 2022, close your bracket. If it's a passive citation, then obviously that citation is all in brackets, so open bracket. National Health Service, then, because it's all in brackets already, you would have a square bracket. So we'd have a square bracket. NHS, close your square bracket. Comma, space, 2022, close bracket, and do double check with your department what they want, because we do occasionally see some differences in what the lecturers want. So that's what APA says. Just make sure your department agrees with it. Okay. And important to note as well with acronyms is, you know, you've made the acronym in text, and you know you thought about it, it's only going to appear. It's going to appear more than three times, per se, but make sure the acronym does not appear in your reference list. So for example, there NHS would be National Health Service written in your reference list, not NHS, because obviously we need all those letters to help us when we put it in alphabetical order. So if you had loads of NHS, is that could potentially impact if you had an rubber author beginning with NH for example. So yeah, make sure that your acronyms don't exist in your reference list. It's just for in text purposes only. You stole my point Tony, again, again. Okay, so that was acronyms. So our next top tip for academic writing reference correctly. What does this mean? Just means make sure that you follow APA usually at our institution, might be MHRA. You might have a different referencing system that you apply it consistently throughout your work with the references you have, either in your text, if it's an in text referencing system like APA, or as footnotes, if it's MHRA, for example. So it's making sure that the lecturer can see everything you've used, all the sources you've used, and then they can find where you've got those sources from. So it's making sure that things agree with each other. You're not missing anything out there's not maybe in your writing, you've got NHS, and you've got 2020, but in your reference list, you've got National Health Service, and then the date is 2019, the lecture will be like, hang on a minute. That reference isn't correct. It doesn't agree. What's going on. Where's the mistake? So it's just making sure you acknowledge all the sources properly and fully in your writing and in the list that goes at the end. And I've got two things as well on referencing two tips. It's a shame if we're not out of time. I've got two tips when it comes to referencing. One is make sure the references that you're using are actually relevant to your field. Where possible, we see quite often students we talk about one thing, but they'll be bringing in a completely random field when actually their own field has that information held. And quite often, I think, being kind of see that when students are using maybe AI or, you know, or they've gone on to Google Scholar, or the library just typed in a keyword. They've seen the first one they put it in, we're actually reading it. So your tutors will check that. I think the other thing to recognise as well is that in text, citations are really important, because typically, is marking as as and as readers. When we read a sentence that doesn't have a citation, we would default to that being your opinion or your critical thought. So if you are presenting information which is not your critically informed opinion, it needs a reference, because otherwise your tutors are going to ask the question, where is this come from? And you might you've already seen that in your work, or you might have comments saying RAF or reference question mark, and that's exactly what your tutors mean. So just make sure, if you're presenting evidence, you have a citation. You have a dual critically informed opinion coming after evidence. It doesn't need that citation. So it's really important why we have citations there. Yeah. And then I think, like what Liz was saying, use it, use your referencing system consistently and correctly. So get and get to grips with it as early as possible in your academic journey as well. So you start looking at the resources that are available to you. So if you're a university of Chester student. Then you've got our Moodle pages, which have our referencing tile and which shows you how to reference. And then we've also got cite them right online, which is a website that helps you format your references. So it doesn't do them for you, but it shows you how to correctly format your references. And then also you've got our team as well, so the Academic Skills team we're here to. We've also got episodes of the skills pod on APA referencing and MHRA as well. Okay, so my next top tip is formal style. For me, formal writing. The biggest way to make your work formal is to remove your contractions. So when we speak, we offer news contractions to be weird if we didn't see I've just used that contraction there, whereas in academic writing that should be, did not or do not. Do not, don't, do not, yeah, didn't, yeah. Here we go back to school. Did not. Did not. If you did not, right, it would be did not. Now when we're writing, because when we're in a flow, our brain doesn't it kind of goes from the brain down there onto onto the paper. Quite often, when we're in that flow, those contractions are going to come out into your work because they say that's how we speak. Now, formal writing is about removing those contractions, and it's so easy to spot those contractions when you're reading it for the first time, when somebody else is seeing it, that's the easiest way to make your work informal. So whenever you know informally informal. So you have to make sure that in your edit you're very conscious about looking for those particular contractions, that you can remove them and keep it in the very formalised style, I think, as well. So with what we mean by formal, formal style is not that chatty celebrating. So you've mentioned conjunction better, but also things like, you haven't mentioned conjunctions. That's why I was confused myself, conjunctions. I was like, what's the word now he's messing up. It's you. It's your fault. So you've just, you just mentioned contractions. But also another kind of really informal thing that people do in their writing is use conjunctions at the beginning of the sentence, so things like and, but because that makes your sentence incomplete. So we do it naturally in speech, but in academic writing, we need to whittle out those sentences that begin with and and because and, but because they're too informal. So it's that cutting out that kind of Chatty style. So as Tony was saying, when you're writing, you're in a flow. Don't get caught up on kind of making sure that you're not using because at the start of the sentence, or using contractions, and don't get too caught up on your word choices. Either it's important just to get that first draft down. You can then make it more formal through editing it. And the other thing is that we can often see students who are trying so hard to be formal that they actually end up writing something that doesn't flow because the out of the comfort zone, trying to write in what they consider to be academic style, but they end up making the writing too confusing or having too many words in there that don't quite flow or fit together. So maybe try for that conversational style first take out contractions and edit it and give yourself time to do that, because it's learning where the framework is, learning what the expectations are for academic writing, and it is going to be different from a loss of the writing you probably do regularly, and it is something different. But it doesn't mean to say it should be difficult to understand. It still needs to be simple. You still need to put your point across as clearly as possible. The lecturer doesn't want to have to sit there and reread a sentence three or four times before it makes sense, because you've used such difficult language that they're scratching their heads thinking, what do they mean? They want to get the meaning straight away so they can give you the marks. Yeah, absolutely. And that's another top tip is keeping it clear and simple. And I think a lot of a lot of the times you're saying those students do feel that it's academic, so it has to be flowery and difficult to follow. And you know, sometimes there are journal articles that you'll look at and you'll think, I don't know what this means. That tends to be bad writing. So make sure you know the key thing about academic writing is it's conveying research findings arguments. And so it's really important that it is, it is clear and concise and simple, so don't use a thesaurus and find the most kind of obscure, convoluted word that you can. And because this is something that we often see, isn't it? But there are there are freight there are words in sentences that we would never normally use in a sentence, and it's quite and that makes it quite difficult to follow, and can be quite jarring for your reader. You can and yeah, so that we see a lot, as you can tell, someone's done the right click and, you know, done a synonym. And for me, yeah, there is that misconception that academic rating is to use those complicated words. And when I read like often, I see students use the word this a lot. It's like you never really use that in in any context, in any way in life, using the word this, unless you've got a monocle and you're the monolith. My dad uses the word thus an awful lot. And yeah, he gets accused of being prim and proper a lot. So that tells you no. He wears waistcoats, not in a garrison gate, kind of trendy way, you know, is it still 1930 kind of way, you know, nice and so for me, yeah, academic rating should be accessible, you know. And I tip trick that I kind of used is I often ask the question, would my mum understand what I'm writing, you know? Or have I assumed my readers knowledge? Or have I gone too convoluted with this? You know, good academic writing is accessible. It is clear, it's concise. And as I said before, your academic rating is an argument. You're trying to convince your reader of your argument. So again, if you lose them through convoluted language, you've then lost that argument already. So yeah, definitely keep that in mind. Um, avoid emotive language. Oh, this is a big one. I got hammered for this in my undergrad dissertation, and it's been dreamed into me ever since. Drunk, I said drum, drummed. It's been drummed into me ever since. And we often see this, particularly when people do reflective pieces, I find it comes in more where you know, this was a surprising result, or this was an interesting finding. This was a major study. We cannot quantify those things. And again, academic writing, I guess what we did talk about informal rating is being objective. So by you adding in interest in amazing study, surprise and study, you're not being objective. You are trying to bias your reader from that neutral kind of point. Trust me, if you're presenting figures and they are surprising, your reader will also think, oh, wow, that's an interesting result. That's finding, don't put words in their mouth because it might be interesting to you, doesn't necessarily mean it's interesting to your reader. The kind of writing that you would typically find maybe in a newspaper isn't the kind of writing you would have in your academic writing. When I was the librarian for media studies, we did see a lot of journalism students who would be very good at the journalistic style, and they wouldn't, kind of make the transition to the academic writing as easily because they were so used to putting in all of those descriptors that aren't needed. As you say, they're putting words into the reader's mind that shouldn't be there. You need to, more or less impartially, pass the evidence over, show your judgement, hope that they come to the same conclusion and go along with you. You don't want to be on unfavourably or favourably biassing them towards an understanding of information. You know, you're trying to be scientific about it, be academic about it, not put thoughts into their mind. It's kind of like, it's not a blog post, isn't it? Like a blog post is kind of trying to, trying to get your it's like persuasive writing, isn't it? It's trying to get your attention. It's trying to persuade you to, persuade you to, I don't know, go on holiday to this place, or connect with the with the writer about their experience, whereas with academic writing, it's, as Liz was saying, it's you're presenting the facts, you're arguing the point, and you're hoping that the reader meets you. You're not gonna You're not trying to do that by emotional blackmail, is what we're trying to say. Another top tip, uh, right in third person, unless reflective. So a reflective assignment, um, check your assignment briefs, obviously. Um, you will need to factor in space to use the first person. So I But typically, an academic assignment is written in the third person, and that helps with this objectivity. So you will be bringing in your evidence. So I don't know, Venables brackets 2023 argues this old chestnut, dogs are better than cats because dogs are more playful than cats, not always. Cliffe and 2024 would dispute this research. Becomes available free to all students online. Once you've done it a few times, it doesn't feel quite so awkward, does it takes practice? I think that's, I think that's the thing with all of academic writing, isn't it? You know, it takes practice, and editing is a huge part of the writing process. So don't, kind of, don't skimp on the editing. It's really important. It's going to help you get all these things kind of in line. Make sure you're not using contractions, using conjunctions at the start of sentences. And on that note, thank you for listening. Yes, I'm Emma, I'm Liz, I'm Tony. Hi. Captain women, my example, we carry on now so Venerables, 2023 argues cancer. No, she doesn't argue dogs are better than cats because they're more because dogs more playful will stop then your you would introduce your critical analysis. So you wouldn't say, I think, but you would say, this suggests, or the evidence suggests, or it could be argued. So using phrases like that, keeps your assignment in the third person, maintains that formal tone that that your reader is looking for, and if you are struggling. 

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