Academic Success Center

What is Academic Writing?

Academic writing combines existing knowledge as a gateway to share new ideas. As students, your academic writing will show readers that you understand the topic at hand, have critically thought about the content in your courses, and demonstrate you have meaningfully interacted with the existing research in the field. 

Academic vs. Reflective Writing

Academic papers in APA writing method should use:

• Clear and concise sentences
• Use bias-free language
• Adhere to the APA mechanics of style

Scholarly Voice

Academic writing uses a formal and informative tone, with an emphasis on clear language. Avoid using:

• Idioms, metaphors, or "fluff"
• Generalizations, such as "always" or "never"
• First-person language is allowed in APA style, though it is best to confer with each instructor on required voice for student papers
• Avoid biased language such as "minorities", instead use a specific group label such as "African American mothers"

Evidence-Based

Academic papers should be rooted in evidence to demonstrate how you came to your understanding of the topic and to allow your readers to trace claims back to the original context. Accurately providing in-text citations is the best method to allow this, as well as give credit to the authors that have contributed to your assignment. Paraphrasing and summarizing are two common strategies to integrate the works of others into your own. See the content below for more. 

APA Style

An academic paper must be formatter according to specific scholarly writing guidelines. Erikson Institute adheres to the American Psychological Association (APA) style as it is mainly used in social sciences and education. APA style is typically formatted as follows:

• A cover page
• Headers
• In-text citations
• A reference page

Contents

Unless specified otherwise by your instructor(s), all papers assigned in class should include:

• An introduction
• A thesis statement
• The main body of text
• A conclusion