3 Ways to Improve Your Academic Writing Instantly

Oh! Students These Days!

“Students don’t know how to write” is a common refrain of professors worldwide. This lament echoes behind closed office doors even in graduate school. However, as often as these dreaded words are uttered, few professors take the time to teach their students how to improve their academic writing.

Apparently, you are supposed to figure out the secrets of excellent academic writing from vague feedback like unexplained crossed-out words and notes about confusing sentences in the margins. Those professors who have time to grouse rarely have time to explain why your writing is inadequate. This leaves you guessing and repeating the same mistakes over…and over…and over again.

Improve Your Academic Writing

If you are lucky enough to have a supportive professor who can explain what makes for strong academic writing, then you can skip the rest of this article. However, for those with professors more content with complaining than providing constructive criticism, you’ll be glad you’re here because we are about to teach you three simple ways to improve your academic writing instantly.

The Purpose of Academic Writing

Academic writing serves one purpose: to inform your reader. Unlike a conversation or a social media post, academic writing is not a two-way street. If your reader does not understand what you are communicating, you have failed. The essence of excellent academic writing is clarity, which is at the heart of every tip you are about to read.

1. Keep it simple.

As a child, adults often used words that you did not understand. A major focus of your early education was on increasing your vocabulary. You were rewarded for knowing multisyllabic and esoteric words. You might have been enthralled by the variety of options that you had for expressing yourself.

However, there is a time and place for everything.* If your academic writing sounds like you swallowed a thesaurus, you’re doing it wrong. The primary objective of scholarly writing is clear communication. At the graduate level, you are trying to communicate complex concepts and research findings to your audience. The more complex the concept, the simpler your language needs to be. Your readers should be focused on understanding the concepts you are writing about, not trying to parse the language you are using. Good academic writing should fade into the background, leaving only the concepts behind.

*For example, we would never use the word “enthralled” in academic writing, but this is a blog post and we want to make you smile 🙂.

2. Eliminate unnecessary words.

Perhaps the worst lesson that primary schools teach students is to pad their essays to reach minimum assignment lengths. It has led to a generation of students believing that more words are better. It is utter foolishness.

The most powerful thing you can do to improve your academic writing is to eliminate unnecessary words. Unnecessary words are infected pimples on a page, distracting the reader. See for yourself:

There are, I believe, a good number of reasons for a renewed interest in problems of capillary permeability. To begin with, it is clear that we are dealing with a basic process in the physiology of metazoa¹. In these complex organisms, the life of the multitude of cells in the intimacy of tissue depends, in ultimate analysis, on the ample and continuous exchanges that take place across the wall of capillary vessels² between the blood plasma on one side, and the interstitial fluid³ on the other. To continue, many pathologic conditions can be traced back to circulatory disturbances in general, and to variations in capillary permeability in particular, an out standing example being the inflammatory process. And to finish, the mechanisms involved in the exchange of large quantities of water and solutes across the capillary wall are still poorly understood.

1. For you curious non-biologists, metazoa are all organisms that have cells that are differentiated into tissues and organs. 2. Capillary vessels are small blood vessels. 3. Interstitial fluid is the fluid around cells.

Kossmann, CE., & Palade, GE. (1961). Blood capillaries of the heart and other organs. Circulation, 24(2), 368-384.

vs.

There are several reasons for a renewed interest in problems of capillary permeability. First, it is a basic process in metazoa physiology. Tissue cells depend on ample and continuous exchanges from the blood plasma, through capillary vessel walls, and into the interstitial fluid. Many pathologic conditions, like inflammatory processes, are related to circulatory disturbances in general and to variations in capillary permeability in particular. However, the mechanisms for exchanging large quantities of water and solutes across the capillary wall are poorly understood.

Notice how eliminating the unnecessary words focuses your attention on the details of the subject matter rather than the words themselves. Good academic writing should fade into the background, focusing the reader on the content so they do not notice individual words or sentence structure.

Also, observe how eliminating unnecessary words sometimes means small deletions and simple changes, while other times it requires reordering or restructuring sentences. When you are editing, consider ways to restructure sentences to eliminate unnecessary words.

This brings us to our final tip.

3. Pay attention to sentence structure.

Until now, we have focused on the words; let’s look at how you string those words together. Your choices for constructing sentences matter as much as the words you choose to build them.

That is why it is vital to understand the primacy effect. Whatever you lead with is what the reader will think is most important. Take the following two example sentences:

1. Although there is little data available for the past 10 years, research suggests that there is a high burden of mental distress among graduate students.

vs.

2. Research suggests that there is a high burden of mental distress among graduate students, although there is little data available for the past 10 years.

Notice how the first sentence emphasizes the lack of recent data, whereas the second emphasizes mental distress. Neither sentence structure is wrong, but they convey a different focus. If the purpose of the sentence is to communicate the lack of recent data, the first structure is optimal. If the purpose is to communicate the prevalence of mental distress, then the latter sentence is optimal. But wait, there’s more, how about this…

3. Research suggests that graduate students have a high burden of mental distress, although there is little data available for the past 10 years.

In Example 3, the emphasis is on graduate students. We might choose this sentence structure if we are focusing on the experiences of graduate students, whereas Example 2 might be more appropriate if we are writing about the experience of mental distress among varying populations.

This isn’t just true at the sentence level. Whatever you start a paragraph, section, or chapter with is what the reader will think is most important.

Happy Academic Writing!

Those are 3 tips to immediately improve your academic writing skills. We hope that they will help you build your toolbox for excellent writing or, at the very least, get your professors to stop grousing 😜.

If you’re looking for more strategies to improve your academic writing and haven’t joined us at My.GradStudentSuccess.com, we highly recommend you register. It’s free and you’ll get access to amazing, members-only resources like tip sheets, guides, courses, challenges, a private Discord channel, and invitations to private events, like the Acceptable to Amazing academic writing masterclass.

All you have to do is:

1. Click the register button.
2. Fill out the registration (a name and email is all you need)
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Wishing you the best in your academic success,
-Dr. Cristie Glasheen, your Graduate Student Success Coach

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