25 topics
Academic writing, in the register your marker expects
Academic writing is a register before it is a genre, and most of its rules are never stated out loud. Nobody tells you that writing proves where suggests would do will cost you marks, that the first person is forbidden in one department and expected in the next, or that a paragraph carrying two ideas reads as disorganised even when both ideas are correct. Those conventions are learnable in an afternoon once somebody names them.
Where students get stuck
I keep getting told my writing is too informal, without being told what to change
It is almost always a short, specific list rather than a general vibe. Contractions (don’t, it’s). Phrasal verbs where a single verb exists — look into becomes investigate, go up becomes increase. Vague quantifiers: a lot of, loads, tons. Rhetorical questions aimed at the reader. Direct address using you. Intensifiers like hugely, really, super. And placeholder nouns — things, stuff, aspects — which usually mark a spot where you had not yet decided what you meant. Be careful of the opposite failure too: formal does not mean ornate, and a thesaurus-heavy sentence reads as insecure rather than scholarly.
My claims come back marked as overstated
Academic prose calibrates confidence to evidence, and the vocabulary for doing it is called hedging. Proves becomes suggests or indicates. Always becomes typically or in most cases. Everyone becomes participants in this study. One survey supports may indicate, not demonstrates conclusively. The mirror-image error matters just as much and is less often mentioned: writing so hedged that it asserts nothing — it could possibly be argued that there may perhaps be a relationship — is also penalised, because the reader cannot find your position. Make one clear claim per paragraph, then attach exactly as much certainty as your evidence can carry.
My paragraphs wander and I don’t know how to fix them
One paragraph, one claim. The topic sentence should state that claim rather than announce the topic — "Rationing altered household diets in measurable ways" works; "This paragraph is about rationing" does not. Then evidence, then your analysis of the evidence, and the analysis has to be the last thing in the paragraph rather than the quotation. Two tests will find nearly every problem. Read only the first sentence of each paragraph in order: those sentences alone should form a coherent outline of your argument. Then check whether any paragraph contains a second idea that arrived halfway through, which is a paragraph break you have not made yet.
I’m told to be concise but I also need to reach the word count
These pull in opposite directions only if you pad, and padding is visible to anyone who marks essays. The usual culprits are nominalisations, where a verb has been turned into a noun and needs a weak verb to carry it: conducted an investigation into means investigated, and made a decision means decided. Then the empty openers — it is important to note that, in today’s society, since the dawn of time. Cut those and you will lose two hundred words and gain clarity. Get the count back by adding argument, not adjectives: a counterargument you answer, a second piece of evidence, a paragraph on the limitation of your own claim. Markers reward all three.
Am I allowed to write I in an academic essay?
It depends on the discipline, and the blanket ban most students are taught in high school is not a universal rule. Reflective writing requires the first person. History and philosophy usually accept it for signposting your own argument — I argue that, this essay contends. Empirical sciences traditionally avoid it and prefer the passive, so the method rather than the researcher is the subject: the samples were heated. Check the assignment sheet first, then look at how articles in the journals on your reading list do it, because that is the register you are being trained into. What is never acceptable in any of them is the hedged personal opinion: in my opinion, I feel that.
What's covered
Academic Writing topics you can work through with a tutor, generate practice on, or turn into flashcards and a study plan.
Register and style
- Formal versus informal diction
- Hedging and boosting
- First person conventions by discipline
- Nominalisation and concision
- Objectivity and tone
Argument and structure
- Thesis statements
- Topic sentences and paragraph unity
- Signposting and transitions
- Counterargument and concession
- Introductions and conclusions
Working with evidence
- Integrating quotations
- Signal phrases and reporting verbs
- Description versus analysis
- Defining key terms
- Presenting data in prose
Academic genres
- Literature reviews
- Lab and field reports
- Case studies
- Reflective writing
- Abstracts and executive summaries
Editing and feedback
- Cutting padding and redundancy
- Cohesion between sentences
- Proofreading strategies
- Working from a rubric
- Acting on marker comments
Academic Writing questions
Can it rewrite my paragraph so it sounds more academic?
It will not hand you a rewritten paragraph to paste in, because a paragraph you did not write is a paragraph you cannot defend and, in most courses, is a submission offence. What it does instead is point at the specific words in your own sentence that are creating the problem — the contraction, the nominalisation, the claim that outruns your evidence — and explain what each one is doing, so you make the change and can make it again next time without asking.
My feedback just says needs more critical analysis. What does that mean?
It usually means your paragraphs report what a source said and then move on. Critical analysis is the sentence after the evidence: why this evidence supports your claim, what its limitations are, why it matters more or less than a competing account. A rough test is whether any sentence in the paragraph could only have been written by you. If every sentence is a fact or a summary, there is nothing critical in it yet.
Does it know my professor’s rubric and my department’s style?
Not by default. Share the rubric or the assignment brief — screen share, or hold the printed sheet up to the camera — and the feedback is generated against those criteria rather than a generic standard. This matters because departments genuinely disagree about the first person, about passive voice, and about how much signposting is too much. Whatever your marking scheme says wins over any general advice.
English isn’t my first language. Is that a different problem?
Partly. Article use, prepositions and collocation take longer, and those are worth separating from the register conventions on this page, which trip up first-language writers just as often. Talking through a draft out loud tends to surface both faster than reading it silently. If the sentence-level grammar is the bigger blocker, it is usually worth working on that alongside, rather than trying to fix everything in one pass.
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