Writing University Essays In A Good Academic Style

Many students struggle with writing style when they move from school to university essays. Comments such as "poor style" and "non-academic language" are often found scrawled across student essays, and this can continue right up to masters level. As a general guideline, remember that academic style is:

IMPERSONAL and OBJECTIVE: your tutors are not interested in "your opinion"! They want to see you making ARGUMENTS based on academically approved sources of evidence. Your writing style needs to reflect that.

PRECISE: detailed, explanatory language is needed at all times. For example, don`t say "Certain people believe". State who these people are (give me names!). Provide detailed explanations and definitions.

WRITER RESPONSIBLE: It is YOUR job as a writer to ensure that your reader can follow your arguments clearly. This means you have to use a lot of "reader-helping language" to help the reader to see the relationship between ideas (e.g. by contrast/Similarly/ the final, and most important reason is.....).

One final point....

Using the first person (I, we, you...) is usually fine when you are factually describing what you have done (e.g. the steps in an experiment) or what you will/have been doing in an essay (i have argued that..). However, the first person is NOT OK as a way of personalising your writing (I think I believe....) except in a very small number of arts and humanities subjects. Your view/opinion has to be presented in a much more IMPERSONAL way, using impersonal language which suggests to the reader that your conclusions are based on external and verifiable evidence (e.g. The evidence suggests... it appears that....). If in doubt, always check with your lecturer, who will tell you how they want you to write.