FEATURES OF ACADEMIC WRITING

 FORMALITY – reflects your dignified stance in your writing as a member of the academic
community. The language that you use requires “precision” to make it a legitimate piece of
academic writing.

Formality can be achieved through the following ways:

1. Choosing expanded modal forms over contracted forms, such as using cannot instead of
can’t, do not instead of don’t.

2. Choosing one verb form over two-word verbs, such as damage instead of mess.

3. Choosing expanded terms over their abbreviated equivalents, such as as soon as possible
instead of ASAP.

4. Avoiding colloquial/trite/idiomatic expressions, such as kind of like, and as a matter of fact.

Note: Please also refer to the RULES presented in the video as well as the RULES discussed
when we did the SENTENCE ANALYSIS. Following the RULES in PUNCTUATION,
CAPITALIZATION and GRAMMAR are also included.

 OBJECTIVITY – your piece of writing must be impersonal and you should maintain a level of
social distance.

Objectivity can be achieved by:

1. Avoiding the use of personal pronouns such as you, I and we.

2. Avoiding rhetorical questions as it marks “closeness” with the reader, and constantly seeks

his/her attention.

3. Avoiding emotive language that shows biases and lessens objectivity.

 EXPLICITNESS – Academic writing demands the use of sign posts that allow readers to trace
the relationship in the parts of the study.

If you intend to show a change in your line of argument, make it clear by using however.

 It is apparent that government hopes to provide assistance to the poor. However, giving
dole outs to the “poorest of the poor” does not work in the long term.

The following phrases may be useful in making ideas explicit:

This is due to the…

 A number of MERALCO consumers trooped to the City Hall to claim a Php500 cash
incentive. This is due to the Supreme Court ruling that overcharges must be returned to the
end users whose electric consumption for April-May period was below 100kw/hr.

This resulted in…

 With the Supreme Court ordering MERALCO to return overcharge to the end users,
government offices have been tapped to operate as claim centers. This resulted in the
number of MERALCO consumers trooping to the City Hall to claim the Php500.00 cash
incentive.

If you intend to give extra information in your sentence, make it explicit by writing “In
addition…”

If you are giving examples, do so explicitly by writing, “For example…”