Clear, Specific, Precise and Exact: This Is All about Academic Writing

Academic writing is mostly the language of facts. I say “mostly” because there are various types of papers that sometimes require more than some scientists’ viewpoints and their analyses. But the most vivid peculiarity of academic writing is clarity. Professors and scientists overall do not speak with metaphors and proverbs. They are prone to use specific words and phrases that do not have double meanings. This is the feature number one that you have to take into account when writing academic papers, so, let’s make sure you are specific enough:

1.       Do you use facts?

The points given in the paper must be proven by commonly known facts or solid arguments that belong to respected and renowned people. But your facts must be clearly stated without extra words that can distract the reader from the main point.

2.       Do you include figures?

Statistics has always been a very useful tool that raises the reliability of the whole paper. For instance, instead of saying “over half of the population” you write “630 thousand of people”. You see, the style is changing right in front of your eyes.

3.       Do you avoid filler words?

Words like “so”, “well”, “you know” are unacceptable because you are stating facts, not speaking with your friend. In general, all words that do not bear semantically important information are reduced from the academic text because they avert readers from grabbing the essential viewpoint.

So, next time you are going to deliver an academic paper, ask yourself these 3 questions. If your answer is yes to all of them, then you’ve done a great job. But if there are some doubts, better revise to be sure whether your writing clear, specific, precise and exact. Be a professional freelance academic writer!