Academic Writing

Genre analysis is one salient field of applied discourse analysis. For academics and students of all disciplines, it is important to be aware of (i) general academic writing conventions, (ii) traditions and practices of the particular field, and (iii) publication policies and selection criteria of the specific journal/publisher to which an article/book is being submitted.

A number of websites offer guided analysis of the genre of academic writing (including scientific research papers, technical reports, essays and other assignments).

1. General academic writing

The Learning Lab at RMIT University in Australia has an excellent set of interactive online tutorials and information files to download covering a wide range of writing skills, e.g., summarising, synthesising, academic style and editing.
'Tips on how to write a paper for an academic journal’ by Leigh Thompson, Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, is a brief and precise list of recommendations. She focuses on style and substance, and suggests six action items to take right now – including thinking in terms of always having one article under review at any one time, and always working on one empirical/data and one theoretical/conceptual paper at all times.
The Academic Writing Module at Victoria University of Wellington takes users through the stages of writing an essay, focusing on topic sentences, building paragraphs, incorporating sources and types of paragraphs. A full sample essay is also provided.
Writing Tutorial Services at Indiana University provides a series of information pamphlets on topics such as ‘How to Use Evidence’ ‘How to Write a Thesis Statement’, ‘Plagiarism: What It Is and How To Avoid It’ and ‘Writing Book Reviews’.
Glasgow University’s EFL Unit provides guidance to students on ‘Writing an Assignment’, with information and/or activities on unpacking assignment titles (sciences and humanities), taking notes, referencing, reporting verbs, summarising, quoting and beginnings and endings.
Elements of Style is the classic of classics of good writing. Written by William Strunk, Jr. and first published in 1918, this is a genuine must-have reference guide.
Basic Prose Style is a shorter (hand-out style) reference guide provided by the Rensselaer Writing Centre. It points to some of the key elements of style.
The "Academic Word List" (Coxhead 2000) lists the most frequent headwords used across academic fields. Group 1 lists the 60 most frequent, Group 2 the next 60, etc. (pdf)

2. Academic writing in particular fields

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering at John Hopkins University has a well-structured article giving advice on ‘Writing a Research Journal Paper’. Starting with the planning stage, it takes readers through the writing of the paper, discussing titles, abstracts, introductions, etc.
Social Scientists could benefit by reading the lengthy article on ‘Writing the Empirical Journal Article’ by Daryl J. Bem of Cornell University. This paper includes a five page section on ‘Matters of Style’, e.g., omitting needless words, avoiding metacomments on the writing, using jargon, and avoiding language bias.
Experimental Biosciences at Rice University provide a helpful article on ‘Common Errors in Student Research Papers’ as well as further information on writing (technical) research papers.
Students in Humanities, Social Sciences and Sciences can find specific tips and information at the Dartmouth Writing Program, which has pages on writing papers for film, music, philosophy, sociology, history, chemistry and biology. It also has a section for speakers of English as a second language and one on planning and writing the final thesis.
In ‘Four Keys to Writing in the Humanities’, Mark T. Unno of the University of Oregon argues that, despite the challenges of writing for the diverse field of humanities, ‘there are certain things that tend to be consistent across the curriculum, such as focus and simplicity, basic forms of argument, documentation, and writing as a craft.’

3. Guidelines for specific journals

Most journals now provide information on their websites. Some more comprehensive than others.

Nature provides extensive information for prospective authors, including details of their editorial and peer reviewing policies, and advice on how to get published and how to write a scientific paper.
The Academic Emergency Medicine website publishes, in addition to explicit instructions for submission, additional advice to authors on how to get published in the journal, including sections on ‘Why Manuscripts Fail’ and ‘Avoidable Errors in Manuscripts’.

4. Using a corpus

Corpora can be immensely valuable in showing how language is actually used today. Search for particular words in the following:

MICASE, the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (1.8 million words of spoken academic English)
Collins WordbankOnline English sample (56 million words, written and spoken, contemporary English)
BNC, British National Corpus (100 million words, written and spoken, contemporary British English)

5. Further useful links and reading tips

How to Write a PhD Thesis (School of Physics; The University of New South Wales)
Writing Tutorial for Graduate Students
Guide to Grammar and Writing (Capital Community Technical College; Hartford, Connecticut)
Paradigm Online Writer’s Guide and Handbook
Writer’s Guide (Department of English; The University of Victoria)
Common Errors in English (Washington State University)
Writing Resources on the World Wide Web (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Advice on Academic Writing (University of Toronto)
Online Technical Writing - Online Textbook
Writing Literature Reviews (The University of Queensland)
Conducting a Literature Review (The University of Melbourne)
Guidelines on Style for Scientific Writing (University of Otago, New Zealand)
Citing Sources, Referencing and Avoiding Plagiarism (Monash University Library)
InfoTrekk Tutorial on Referencing
Internet Resources for the Learning, Teaching and Research Community

Links in §4 via the University of Manchester's Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences.

Discourse Analysis