Academic Writing is one of the most common formal writing styles in schools, colleges, and universities. This style is used for reports, publications, journal or book articles, essays, or research papers, at the academic level.
Such Articles Or Essays Should:
Be error-free
Denote a crisp context
Have one-directional opinions, and
Be concise
Some Of The Common Mistakes Made By Students While Writing A Perfect Academic Essay Are:
Ignoring In-depth Research - Inadequate or incomplete information.
Over-explaining - Exaggerating with repetitive concepts.
Plagiarizing - Pirating from other resources.
Failure to Annotate - Not putting in the reference and explanations of the resources used.
Lacking Originality - Not giving clarity on your viewpoints.
Improper Formatting - Using multiple styles and format options.
Avoiding Proofreading - Ignoring to re-read your articles.
Let's Elaborate On How To Avoid Such Errors
1. Ignoring In-depth Research
"Less is more" is false in the case of research.
1. Assign some pre-writing time to decide the topics and sub-topics of your essay.
2. Research well on each sub-topic and save the resources where you find suitable information.
If no adequate information is found, request your professor or guide to allocate a new topic.
2. Over-explaining
Sometimes students are given a particular length for writing their essays. To meet the word requirement they tend to re-explain concepts by using different words.
1. Instead of re-writing an already explained concept, try to include your thoughts on the same.
2. Practicing concise, yet informative writing helps to be creative when writing a piece.
3. Plagiarizing
Read but do not copy!
Also, plagiarism removal tools are not a solution to get rid of the problem.
1. Instead of simply copying from resources, you should extract important information and cite the same.
2. Put the information copied in quotes so that the reader knows it has been extracted.
3. Put citations with proper explanations in the bibliography. With that, we come to our next point.
4. Failure To Annotate
An annotated bibliography is a must and recognizes a good essay writer. Annotating means citing all the resources and acknowledging them rather than sneakingly copying from them.
1. Cite the references with the website link, mentioning the author and his/her/its details. You should write a short analysis of why the reference was taken, the facts you support, and the facts you do not, in that reference.
2. Annotating not only helps in acknowledging and citing the resource but also helps you in meeting the word count requirements.
3. You can take the help of online resources that offer to write annotated bibliography for your essay.
5. Lacking Originality
One should not refrain from sharing ideas and thoughts of their own. This is what makes your content unique and you can actually own it.
1. Try commenting on general ideologies and universal statements related to your topic.
2. You can also question the readers and make your essay worth brainstorming.
3. Think of different viewpoints and analyze them to conclude a topic.
6. Improper Formatting
Good formatting ensures the readability of your essay and keeps a reader engaged. Apart from the nature of writing, presentability also affects how your reader reacts to the article.
1. Choose a particular font style and maintain the same throughout.
2. Stick to a common size for all the mega-headings, smaller for titles, and even smaller for sub-headings.
3. Try highlighting or bolding the important information from long passages.
4. A very long passage should be divided into crisp and short bulleted points.
7. Avoiding Proofreading
For a non-writer, writing long essays can be tough, and then re-reading the whole thing can be tougher.
We do like keeping the pens down after completing the writing piece and concluding with a sigh of relaxation.
But, submitting your essays without rechecking is a big mistake.
1. Do not immediately start re-reading, soon after completing your piece.
2. Take a break and then re-read your article from a reader's point of view.
3. Correct the errors or highlight the sentences where you feel some editing is required.
Voila! Now, you are good to go and start writing your masterpiece.
These were some of the very common errors or points that are ignored by academic writers. Keeping them in mind will ensure a good piece of writing.
Happy Writing!