Writing an academic paper and also doing it well has its tricks. We tell you how to get the point to this narrative style.

The academic world has its own style. No matter how good we are at writing stories or poetry, no matter how successful our personal blog is, writing an academic paper can seem very difficult if we are not used to doing it.

Writing an academic paper is writing a scientific essay. You have to put jargon aside and bet on a more technical language, but be clear and without lengthening the sentences too much or using terms that we do not know. It must have an informative style and clarity. Emotions are left aside and personal opinions (if they are requested) must be well founded and argued.

Correction

The first thing we have to keep in mind is that an academic paper can never ever have a single misspelling. If we have doubts about the spelling or the meaning of a word, we should consult the RAE, and if the doubt is about the use of an expression, it is better to consult the Fundéu website. It is important that we make sure well and that we pass the Word corrector so that we do not miss anything. Even so, there are misplaced words that Word will not correct, for example, if we put there when we want to put there, both words are correct but not if we misuse them and our version may not see it. Therefore, if we have the possibility of giving it to a third person to read it, much better; When we are the ones who have written the text, it is much more difficult for us not to do an automatic reading and read what we want it to put instead of what it actually does.

Guide Outline

The first thing we must do to write an academic paper is to create a preliminary outline that contains everything we want to say. This scheme will include each of the sections that we are going to deal with, the bibliographical references that go in each section, the closing or conclusion if we have it and the annotations that occur to us on the fly. Many times, while we are writing something, ideas come to mind that can be useful for later, we come to some interesting conclusion or we remember that we have to consult something. Those things are what we must write down in our scheme so that we do not forget (it is better that it be written by hand so that we can have it next to the computer and thus be able to consult it when we need it).

Terminology

Each human knowledge has its own terminology and it is good that we get used to using it and understanding it, but, be careful, you have to use it well and only when necessary. If when writing an academic paper we want to appear more educated than we are, it will show. That is why it is important that we familiarize ourselves with these words little by little and that we search their meaning well before starting to put things that we do not fully understand. Also, just because a word is used often in our subject doesn’t mean we should use it all the time; For the wording to be correct and read well, synonyms must be used.

Other

When writing an academic paper it is important to take great care of the quotes that we are going to use. Citing correctly is vital if we do not want teachers to detect plagiarism in the text. In addition, when listing our conclusions, we have already said that they need to be well argued, so the quotes will play an important role in this. It is not the same to say “I think we learn better from the example we are given than from the words we are told” than to say “as Albert Bandura asserted in his theory on social learning (Bandura, 1977), we acquire behaviors through observation”.

Common mistakes

In addition to spelling and punctuation errors, it is also common for us to have errors in the way of writing. It is important that we use short sentences and that the text is not convoluted. We must write simply and thinking about the reader. The fact that we have read indecipherable academic texts over and over again does not mean that they are well written or that it should be written that way. Writing is a form of communication and should convey your message as directly as possible.

Nor should we use “the same” in an anaphoric sense, because even if our teachers do it, it is not well done. The same goes for the expression “based on” which should be replaced by “based on”. You have to put full stops so that the text breathes, avoid gerunds as much as possible (especially the posterior gerund ) and not go over the same idea over and over again.