The Do’s and Don’ts of Writing in an Academic Tone

By Wendyikemoto
When writing an essay, it is important to argue your
points in a clear and concise way, and of course to try to
sound intelligent as a speaker. Finding the right tone in
your written voice is an essential part of writing, yet
many students find it difficult to strike the right balance.
It is easy to fall into the trap of writing in either too
formal or too casual of a tone. Both extremes can make
your argument sound ill-researched and weaken the
strength of your essay. However, it is easy to avoid
these issues, by taking care to use a direct and active
tone in your writing.
Here are some Do’s and Don’ts that will help guide you
to find the right voice in your writing and achieve a
strong academic tone in your essays.
1. What is the point of an academic paper?
This may sound like a silly question, but many students
fail to recognize the main point of essay writing—
which is to put forth an argument! Understanding that
your essay should make a claim, put forth a new idea or
interpretation, or argue a set of points, will ultimately
help you to write in a strong academic tone.
If you set out to put forth an argument, and then provide
evidence to support it, rather than set out to sound as
smart as possible, you will find that your writing sounds
clearer. A direct tone and simple language is usually the
best route!
2. Avoid writing in an overly formal tone
Make sure that you use words whose meaning you
understand, and sentence structure that makes sense—
even if it appears simple.
For example, in a paper on climate change, an overly
formal sentence might read:
“The staggering volume of synthetic organic
compounds accumulating in large bodies of saline water
has engendered a colossal moral quandary for behemoth
manufacturers—should they continue the course, or
innovate new methods?”
You don’t want to sound like this!
Instead, in clear and direct language, the following
sentence means the same thing, but in a more readable
way.
“The large volume of plastic waste that has
accumulated in the Earth’s oceans has created a moral
question for companies that produce large amounts of
plastic materials—should they continue to produce
plastic? Or phase into producing products that will
degrade over time?”
As you can tell, the second sentence is in much plainer
English, and sounds far more academic in tone than the
first!
3. Avoid colloquialisms
Although it is important to avoid using too formal of a
tone in your writing, you also want to be sure that you
don’t use colloquialisms—informal words or phrases
that are common in spoken English—in your writing. It
is easy to avoid slang words, but students often struggle
to rid less obvious colloquialisms from their writing.
Most often, these colloquialisms are words or phrases
that we use in everyday language when we speak out
loud or in informal text conversations. In spoken
English and informal text conversations, these phrases
are perfectly acceptable. But, you want to avoid them in
your writing, because often they are placeholder words
and phrases that merely help to bridge together ideas
that draw upon the context of the conversation.
For example, you might text a friend:
“I got tickets to that concert Friday night. You in?”
Here, the word “got” and “you in” are colloquialisms.
They make sense in context, but in writing—where you
must assume the reader will take what you say literally
—it is not clear what you mean by this.
For example, how did you get the tickets? Did you buy
them? Did someone give them to you?
While it might sound formal for a text conversation, in
an academic tone this sentence would read “I bought
tickets to attend that concert Friday night. I can give
you a ticket if you want to attend with me.”
To avoid colloquialisms, it is usually a best practice to
try to be as specific and direct about what you mean as
possible.
4. Don’t use exaggeration or hyperbole
Sometimes when students intend to create emphasis or
articulate the importance of a piece of evidence or point
in an argument, they rely on exaggeration or hyperbole
to try to convince the reader to agree with them. Don’t
do this! Most often, hyperbolic phrases make your
writing sound corny, and most importantly you must
assume that your reader is taking everything you say
literally and needs proof of every statement you make.
You might write in your paper on climate change:
“Plastic waste is now clogging the oceans, choking the
life out of sea-creatures and threatening to end all
ocean-life as we know it!”
This phrase is hyperbolic, and doesn’t actually point to
any evidence to support the claim. A better phrased
sentence might read:
“According to the Plastic Oceans Foundation, humans
have dumped more than 8 million tons of plastic into
ocean water each year for several years in a row. This
plastic waste does not degrade, and clumps together—
which creates large blocks in the ocean that hurt ocean-
life.”
As you can see, in this sentence the cited facts do the
work to emphasize the points, rather than hyperbole.
5. Avoid making generalizations
Another bad habit that students often have a hard time
dropping is making generalizations in their essays.
Usually, these generalizations come as a way to
introduce material, or make an emotional appeal to the
reader. It is important to avoid using generalizations in
your essays because like hyperbolic phrases, they sound
corny, they are hard to prove, and often they don’t even
really relate to your argument.
For example, in an essay that argues that the passage of
the 19th amendment failed to promote equality for all
women, because racist Jim Crow laws prevented black
women from also voting, you might say:
“On July 4th, 1776 the United States of America was
born with the undertaking that all Americans should be
treated equal. Since then the U.S. has been working
hard to achieve this promise and it moved one step
closer after it passed the 19thamendment, but not close
enough.”
This introduction to the idea of equality reads as corny,
and isn’t necessarily specific to the exact topic of the
paper.
A better sentence might read:
“Although the passage of the 19th amendment was a
significant step for women’s rights in the US, at the
time of its passage it did not actually achieve total
voting equality for women, as black women were still
largely prevented from voting.”
As you can see, this introduction is much more direct,
and specific to the topic.
In order to avoid making generalizations in your paper,
try to be as specific as possible, and avoid moving too
far away from the topic at hand when you lead into your
essay.
6. Don’t use personal pronouns or invoke the reader
In academic writing, it is important to maintain an
academic distance from your essay. You want to avoid
using personal pronouns because it makes your tone
sound too personal, and less factual. You also want to
avoid using phrases that will invoke the reader, because
you cannot be sure of who your reader is.
For example, a professor of Economics might write a
paper on how government spending after the 2008
Financial Crisis helped the economy to recover and
publish it in a major Economics academic journal, and
write:
“In the wake of the 2008 financial collapse, our nation
experienced a crisis which our government addressed
first through a stimulus package.”
In this sentence, the phrases “our nation” and “our
government” appeal to the reader as being the same as
the writer. This is a problem because you cannot
assume who your reader will be. In this example,
economists from other countries might read this paper.
A better sentence would just replace “our” with “the
United States,” to be more specific and more detached
from the information.
Many students find it difficult to strike the right tone in
their writing. However, that is no reason to fear writing
your papers! As you can see from these suggestions, it
is easy to cut out simple bad habits and write in an
academic tone.