Watch Your Style

Every academic writer tries to develop his own writing style. It doesn’t mean one has to be all creative and easily recognizable by the way he writes – in fact, academic writer should stay neutral for the sake of his customers; client’s tutor might notice that the assignment you wrote differs from what your customer usually submits. However, you should improve your academic writing style and practice alone won’t save you. There are some rules you need to follow in the everyday life in order to make sure you won’t lose the professional touch.

Avoid Profanity and Slang

And when I say “profanity and slang”, I don’t mean you should get rid of every single swearing word in your vocabulary. It will be enough if you stop using parasite words like “duh” or the f-word. You see, parasite words tend to replace dozens of other words and it is really comfortable – no need to think of an inventive synonym to express your thought, you’ve got a simple word right on your tongue. Some lousy teenagers might allow themselves such luxury, you – academic writer – might not. Your task is to expand your vocabulary, not to shorten it.

Don’t Read Bad-Quality Stuff

We all know that every academic writer should read classic literature and scientific papers to improve his taste. What some people forget is that there is also bad-quality writing and authors, who wish to keep their style clean and clear, should avoid reading such things. If you don’t want to get under the bad influence, stay away from fanfiction and yellow press. Most works from these sources are written in a very bad manner, besides, there are many grammar errors in such “masterpieces” as well.

Create Templates

An essay template, created by yourself, would make your work on the writing style much easier - especially if you give preference to a specific essay type, for example, to a descriptive, argumentative or persuasive essay. A qualitative template would allow you to put new content into a fixed form that consists of definite structures and expressions – and with every new order you could improve the form (and style) and make it more perfect.

Remember – clear writing style makes a lion’s share of a success in the career of academic writer.

National Handwriting Day: My Experience

Once upon a time the members of the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association realized that their sales are going down with incredible speed and decided to create a new holiday – National Handwriting Day. This holiday takes place on January 23 and its idea is very simple – to use the opportunity and to practice your handwriting. WIMA’s Executive Director David H. Baker even supported this idea with the following words: "Though computers and e-mail play an important role in our lives, nothing will ever replace the sincerity and individualism expressed through the handwritten word".

Inspired by Baker, I decided to remember the power and poetry of handwriting and tried to rewrite one of my orders on the paper. It wasn’t too big, 2,5 pages essay written in 12-point Times New Roman font. I thought the whole work would only take half an hour from me.

What about no?

In the dreams of my childhood I always imagined that I would have been a scribe in the Middle Ages. Now I realize I would not.

It took me one and a half hour to finish writing down this horrible essay. And I will not even post a photo of what I managed to get at the end of my experiment. Okay, my handwriting was not too good when I was a schoolgirl, but now it became plain awful. It is so bad that now I seriously think I should have become a doctor (only they manage to write down English words with symbols that slightly resemble the ones from the Arabic language). And just to imagine that some teachers still require handwritten assignments from their students! Pure torture if you ask me.

Honestly, I love my job as an academic writer, but if I had to use pen instead of my laptop in order to write every single order, it would be the end of my career. God bless the person who invented computers!