Introduction to Academic Writing

As you begin your journey at university, you will likely quickly encounter the term academic writing. Although you will hear this term often, it can be surprisingly complex to define what academic writing is.

Consider the following examples. Are they examples of academic writing? Why or why not?

Example 1 is a commentary on the difficulties of writing an academic paper. It is a tweet written by an advanced scholar Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega (2022). Pacheco-Vega likely wrote this tweet with an intended audience of other academics. But is this academic writing? You might conclude that it is not academic writing because it is a social media post with an informal tone. Most academics would agree with you here.

Example 2 is the introduction from an opinion article by Sara Sunderji that appeared in the University of Alberta student newspaper The Gateway. You might have been tempted to think that this passage was academic writing. Indeed, it does share many of the same features of academic writing. The author is setting up an argumentative text, and she uses specific details to provide the context for her argument. This text might be considered academic writing if produced for a particular course. However, as it is published in a newspaper and is intended to reach a broad audience of University of Alberta students, it probably wouldn’t be considered academic writing in its current form.

Example 3 is a passage from the article “Between the Drafts” by writing studies scholar Nancy Sommers (1992). You might have been inclined to reject this passage as academic writing because it uses the first-person pronoun “I.” However, this piece would unanimously be considered academic writing because it appears in an academic journal and contains critical thinking about revision. While using the first-person pronoun in academic writing in some disciplines, like engineering, is frowned upon, using it in other disciplines, such as writing studies, is acceptable.

I’ve used these examples to demonstrate there are different ways to consider what academic writing is and is not, and what you were taught about academic writing in high school might not reflect the diversity of academic writing you will encounter at university. That said, we can identify some general characteristics of academic writing across the university. These general characteristics are explored in more detail below.

Academic Writing Is for a Particular Community

Academic writers are part of a discourse community, a concept introduced by applied linguist John Swales. Swales (1990) defines discourse communities as “groups that have goals and purposes and use communication to achieve their goals.” From this perspective, we can understand academic writing as a communication tool that helps build and maintain a community of scholars. As undergraduate students, you are the newest members of our community. Welcome!

You will learn quickly that several discourse communities exist at the university. Your science and English professors likely have different ideas about what academic writing is and what it does. In this textbook, we will explore writing in the disciplines, an approach to academic writing that reflects the idea that the various academic communities have their own values about what makes for good academic writing. Understanding this and paying attention to the different values of each community will help you succeed at academic writing for the various academic communities you will interact with at the university.

Academic Writing Fulfills a Particular Purpose

One key feature of discourse communities is their “broadly agreed set of public goals” (Swales, 1990). The goal for academic discourse community members is to share learning and knowledge with each other. To achieve this goal, we have established standards assessing the quality of our knowledge-making efforts. For instance, the scientific community uses the scientific method to assess the quality of research in that community. We also have standards for what constitutes good argumentation and evidence. However, these standards are often unspoken and differ among academic communities, creating difficulties for students learning to write for academic discourse communities.

We can isolate some features of academic writing that are common across disciplines and reflect the overall goal of academic discourse communities. For instance, writing studies scholars Chris Thaiss and Terry Zawacki (2006) argue that academic writing should demonstrate that the “writer(s) have been persistent, open-minded, and disciplined in study” and that there is “a dominance of reason over emotion or sensual perception” (p. 5). In other words, all scholars care about thoroughness and reasoning in academic writing, no matter their discipline.

When we talk about reasoning in academic writing, we are talking about critical thinking. Critical thinking is analyzing, questioning, interpreting, and evaluating information to form sound conclusions or make valid judgments.

Academic Writing Uses Particular Genres

Discourse communities establish particular channels or mechanisms for members to communicate. Often, these mechanisms are genres or particular types of text that help structure communication in noticeable ways. For example, you are probably familiar with the five-paragraph essay. The five-paragraph essay is a training genre that helps familiarize you with the basic moves of argumentative writing. It is structured according to common patterns in arguments, and this structure shapes your thinking in ways that your audience expects. When your high school teacher assigned you a five-paragraph essay, the patterns and structures of this genre helped you to write and helped your teacher assess your writing. This genre, therefore, was a tool for the high-school discourse community to achieve the goal of learning argumentative writing.

The five-paragraph essay trains you for the genres you will write in university, but it is never the end goal of academic writing. University-level academic writing uses a more diverse set of genres because our discourse communities need to accomplish more specific goals. Here are some of the academic genres you might encounter at the university:

• Critical essay
• Reflective essay
• Research paper or essay
• Lab report
• Trend analysis
• Research or conference poster
• Research or conference presentation

Each genre will come with a particular set of patterns and conventions that the audience expects. Analyzing the patterns and conventions of academic genres will help you master this aspect of academic writing.

Academic Writing Uses Particular Rhetorical Moves

We can also characterize academic writing by particular rhetorical moves that academic writers make. A rhetorical move is a strategy writers use to communicate effectively with their audience. For instance, you use a rhetorical move when providing examples to illustrate your point or using neutral language in an argument. Different genres will emphasize particular rhetorical moves and combine them in particular ways.

Here’s an example to help you understand the distinction between genres and rhetorical moves. Think about two types of dances: swing dancing or country dancing. Both types of dancing incorporate spins, but the spins will come at different times and are combined with other moves in different ways. Genres are like the types of dance, and rhetorical moves are like dance moves.

In academic writing, we make some common rhetorical moves, and identifying and practicing these moves will help you become a more proficient academic writer.

Academic Writing Uses Particular Language and Conventions

If I asked you to define academic writing, you’d probably tell me that correct and formal language is an important feature. You are right. Academic writing should follow the conventions of Standard Written English, meaning you should follow grammar, punctuation, and spelling rules. Academic writing is also formal and has a serious and precise tone.

Academic writing also uses language specific to academic writing and each discipline or field of study. Sometimes, this specialized language is called jargon, which can have a negative connotation.

In addition, academic writing uses specific conventions to indicate when the writer is referencing the ideas of other writers and researchers. This practice is called citation, which is most likely a convention you have heard of. Different disciplinary groups like the American Psychological Association (APA), the Council of Science Editors (CSE), and the Modern Languages Association (MLA) have established citation rules to help standardize the process of referring to other ideas in your writing, and this, in turn, helps your reader to find your sources and assess the quality of your argument.

References

Pacheco-Vega, R. (2022, May 30). I had a fever last night and also nightmares. In one of them, a disembodied voice kept telling me how to structure a paper I’ve been struggling with, and I’m like “dude, just let me sleep, there’s no way I’m going to wake up and write in the middle of the night.” [Tweet]. X (formerly Twitter). https://x.com/raulpacheco/status/1531282179149508609

Sommers, N. (1992). Between the Drafts. College Composition and Communication, 43(1), 23–31. https://doi.org/10.2307/357362

Sunderji, S. (2025, January). Family rights and patient autonomy must be balanced in MAID reforms. The Gateway. https://thegatewayonline.ca/2025/01/family-rights-and-patient-autonomy-must-be-balanced-in-maid-reforms/

Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge University Press.

Thaiss, C. J., & Zawacki, T. M. (2006). Engaged Writers and Dynamic Disciplines: Research on the Academic Writing Life. Boynton/Cook. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/landmarks/engaged/

Attributions

“Introduction to Academic Writing” by Nancy Bray, Introduction to Academic Writing, University of Alberta, is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0