Introduction to Academic Essay Writing

Academic writing is a formal type of writing that follows a particular style and structure. The writing follows established rules and allows the writers to work under a certain format. There are many types of academic essays and each requires the writer to follow different formats and writing styles. In all of these essays, the writing style of description and analysis is always there, helping establish the subject matter or a certain claim.

Academic essay writing may seem daunting, such that you might ask help from your peers or professional writers. ’’Help me write my essay,” you might say to them after finding yourself at a loss on how to write formal academic essays.

What makes this type of writing different is a particular type of structure and tone, its adherence to proper grammar and punctuation, as well as the target audience.

The structure

The academic writing structure for the essay is the traditional essay format. The structure of the essay has remained unchanged: It starts with the introduction, makes its way into the paragraphs of the main body, and finally winds down in the conclusion part.

The structure of the essay is held together by certain parts of the essay, that anchor the essay. These include:

• Hook
• Thesis Statement
• Topic Sentences
• Evidence and analysis
• Warrant
• Conclusion

The referencing and citation

Involving expert opinion and voices in your essay is essential to academic writing. Most of the evidence and examples used to support your thesis or the main claim is expected to have come out of other academic works, such as journal articles, research papers, and books.

Academic referencing and citation depend on the formatting styles used for the particular essay. There are plenty of formatting styles out there and the popular ones are:

• Modern Language Association
• American Psychological Association
• Chicago

Each format uses in-text citations and references differently.

Punctuation, Grammar, and Style

In all of the academic essays, formal writing rules are followed. Not all the punctuations are used in academic writing; Punctuations such as em dashes and exclamation points are avoided in the essays, as they give the essay an informal outlook. While colons, semicolons, commas, brackets, punctuation marks, and inverted commas are considered formal.

There should be a correct use of grammar throughout the essay. The style of writing needed for formal writing is the prohibition of using abbreviations and contractions while requiring the full form of acronyms.

The sentences should remain formal by using various styles and restrictions.

The academic tone

The academic essay tone varies slightly from one area of discipline to the other. Each discipline has its particular terms and phrases that mean different things in a different field. You should demonstrate your knowledge about the technical language. You also need to make sure that the writing is objective, which means that your emotions don’t come into play.

Before writing on a subject make sure that you have done proper research into it, and have analyzed the syle and the tone employed in the various works.

The audience of the essay

You should write your essay as if you are writing for a layman. There is no need to throw around ambiguous terms and specialized information meant for only a few. You shouldn’t write for just your instructor, as he/she will be reading the essay not as the instructor but as the general audience.

You shouldn’t state complicated and complex concepts without providing adequate information about them. You should make sure you know the audience that you are writing for and the level of writing that is expected from the reader. The key to writing for your audience is not to dumb down the contents of your paragraph but imagining the audience as intelligent people who can grasp on to complicated ideas when presented eloquently.