How to write an academic writing

Main features
▪
Structure Use formal language. Do not use contractions (e.g. in a formal writing)
▪ Do not mix British and American spelling.
▪ Cover page
▪ Table of contents ▪ Indent the first line of every paragraph, except the first line after a heading and
▪ Introduction the first line after a figure or table.
▪ Analysis
▪ Conclusion ▪ Use justified margins.
▪ Bibliography or references ▪ Include quotes and information from different sources, but do not forget to
acknowledge the source, otherwise that is plagiarism.

1 Cover page
1
▪ Title: written in the middle of the page.

▪ Student’s name and name of the subject: written on the lower right-hand corner.

2 Table of contents
▪ Include a table of contents with different sections and subsections, which must be represented by Arabic
numbers (i.e. 1, 2, 3, etc.).

▪ All pages except for the cover page and the table of contents should be numbered.

3 Introduction
▪ The purpose of the introduction is to justify the importance and significance of the topic that is analysed in the
paper (i.e. My paper is about the history of tea, so I have to prove why that is worth mentioning).

▪ In the case of a research paper, you must establish a niche, that is, an area of study that has not been properly
researched yet. Then, your research paper should intend to fill that gap.

Useful language
▪ The increasing interest in... has heightened the need for….
▪ Of particular interest and complexity is/are…
▪ Recently, there has been a growing/wide interest in…
▪ The study of …. has become an important aspect of…
Making
▪ The…. has become a favourite topic for analysis…
generalisations
▪ It is common knowledge that…
▪ It is widely accepted/believe that…
▪ It is often suggested/claimed that…

▪ Although considerable research has been devoted to…., less attention has been
paid to…
Establishing a niche ▪ However, few studies attempt…
▪ So far, investigations have been confined to…

▪ The purpose/aim of this paper is to…

Filling that niche and
▪ This paper was designed to…
indicating paper
▪ This paper is structured/organised as follows…
structure
▪ The remainder of this paper is divided into …. sections….
 4 Topic analysis
▪ Divide your paper into sections and subsections but do not write a colon (:) at the end of the title.

▪ Use Arabic number for the sections (e.g. 1, 1.1, 1.2, etc.)

▪ When adding a graph, illustration, figure or table, remember to number it in case you need to refer to it later
(e.g. As can be seen in Figure 2…) and provide a short description of it under the image.

▪ Names of books and foreign words go in italics, better than between commas.

▪ Short quotes (two lines) should go between commas whereas longer ones should be indented.

▪ Remember to acknowledge the source every time you add some idea or thought that is not yours.

As someone says “quote” (year: page) // “quote” (author, year: page)

5 Conclusion
▪ The conclusion should have the same length as the introduction, and it should summarise the content (and
findings in case of a research paper) analysed in the paper.

Useful language
On balance Before bringing the paper to a close, I would like to ….
In summary In conclusion, the overall picture seems to be that…
To put it briefly, it could seem that… To summarise the issue in a few words…

6 Bibliography / References
▪ A bibliography is the list of works that has been consulted in order to write the paper. On the other hand, a list
of references includes the works that have been cited in the paper.

▪ Both the bibliography and the references should follow a strict alphabetical order.

How to include references

Books
Surname, Name’s first letter (year) Name of the book. Place where it was published: Publisher

(e.g. Fairclough, N. (1989) Language and Power. New York: Longman Inc.)

Websites
Name of the person who published it/name of the page (date when it was published) Name of the article/content.
Link (Consulted on 00/00/00)

(e.g. BBC News Middle East. (26/08/2014) Gaza-Israel conflict: Is the fighting over? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-
east-28252155 (Consulted on 05/02/2014))