Good Academic Writing

Good Academic Writing

Academic Writing is the way to communicate in science. The communication surely needs to be lucid and concise. This communication should be unique, such that it should not be exact from anywhere else. The researcher has to deliver his conducted research with the world; for this, a good academic writing is essential. The good academic writing helps in valuing the research and builds the reputation of the researcher. This short essay will light some ideas on what good academic writing is. It will discuss on cohesion, coherence, clarity, reader-friendliness, plagiarism in academic writing, which is necessary to be better communicator in the scientific world.

Good academic writings are logical and consistent; the pieces of each sentence blooms with information, information arranged in a suitable order, the ordered ideas unite and lead to the main point. The main point or the central idea is what the author wants to share. The structure of the writing is always followed in a good academic writing. Like the construction of the building; the foundation where the design will be based, the walls and pillars that will further support the storeys, the windows and doors which help to move, and finally the colours that will brighten every room — similar is the good academic writing. Every sentence, every word should have its important role to play in the writing. Furthermore, those words and sentences are being formed according to the structure. If the sentence is there, it is there with a purpose. If the paragraph has been formed, the paragraph is there to explain something. How to structure the writing and how to fill with the logic depends on the writer.

Another important aspect of the good academic writing is clarity or understandability. The writing should be clear with its purpose, and the text should be comprehensible. The writing when read should be understandable. The reader after reading the paragraphs should be able to grasp the main meaning from it. The reader should be able to know the reason for the writing and the messages, which the writer is trying to convey. Sometimes, the uses of jargon or the difficult words in the writing may make any reader confused. The difficult sentence structures may make the reader more uncertain about the ideas shared. A good academic writing is similar to a letter written for someone. Thus, the academic writing should try to accomplish the objective similar to letter by being clear in its meaning and the receiver should understand the main idea.

After clarity, reader-friendliness is what academic writing should be. The reader-friendliness means, the reader when reads the writing should be able to find the relevant information easily. The reader may want to know the objective of the writing; the objective of the piece of writing should be there. The reader wants to know the conclusion of the author; the writing should be able to provide what the conclusion is. Good academic writing should always be able to visualize what the reader wants to search and where they are likely to find that particular information. For instance, the academic writing should have the contents precise enough to tell the reader what the writing contains and where it is. The tables or figures if presented should be with the captions. The sections or sub-sections in the writing should be able to redirect the reader with the flow accordingly. The academic writing should know what the reader wants and help in another terms, to find any piece of information easily.

In academic writing, plagiarism is the most important. It is difficult to define what plagiarism really means as the term may have broad definitions. Simply, it means not to copy or adopt any others’ work without acknowledging their contribution. Plagiarism is a crime in academic world. An academic writing should always be free from plagiarism. An academic writer should always make their writing unique and they should relate any information with proper citations. Improper citations in the writing can lead to plagiarism, which is unacceptable in any cases. A good academic writer knows how to paraphrase, cite and write accordingly. Plagiarism is be easily detected by software and academic writing should be free from it.

Cohesion, coherence, clarity, reader-friendliness, plagiarism are the terms maintained by the good academic writing. The good academic writing should have a proper structure, use of suitable sentences and the ability to make the reader clearer about the information within the writing. Good academic writing is easy to follow and help the reader understand the clearest gist after reading. Also, the good academic writing is free from any sorts of plagiarism. The good academic writing is well written with paraphrasing, summarizing, and is presented with enough citations.

Good academic writing is not an easy writing. It is a hard thing to master for any academic individual. The writing has to be thought, developed, prepared, written, edited and has to go through multiple revisions. Good academic writing certainly requires years and years of practice. The ‘scientific world’ communicates with the academic writing. The more the writing is organized and written well, the more it gets through the readers. The more it gets through the readers, the more it spreads among the scientific community. To sum up, academic writing should always work towards cohesion, coherence, clarity, reader-friendliness, plagiarism. 

The writing was part of the course assignment of 15-week-long-course Academic Writing from swayam.gov.in in which I had participated around August 2019. The content has been shared here to showcase some of my learnings, and it is posted here to share about the course too. No further edits have been done to the article.