2. COLOR YOUR SENTENCE WITH WORDS IN ACADEMIC WRITING
Academic Writing 101: In this segment of American Lifestyle, we review some of the basic dos and don’ts that both American and international students often overlook when writing academic essays. Writing essays may seem like a daunting task when you don’t know how to do it properly. Just like anything else, if you gain the skills, you’ll enjoy the process of using them.
Naughty Words to Avoid in Academic Writing
1. Naughty Words to Avoid in Academic Writing
↳ 2. Color Your Sentence With Words
sing, or even wanting to use, any visual features such as bold, italic, underline, caps, color code, or any of the like in academic writing suggests that you’re picking the wrong words. Trying to emphasize words with “very” is very bad too. No, “extremely” wouldn’t make it any better.
Read on to find out why you should avoid these features and when to appropriately use them in an academic essay.
1. Caps, Bold, Italics, and Underlines
If you use bold, italics, underlines, or capital letters to emphasize a certain word in academic writing, you’re using it the WRONG way! Your using visual assistance features in an academic essay implies that you haven’t chosen a word with enough impact or your phrasing is too wordy.
YOU MIGHT AS WELL TYPE IN ALL CAPS AND BOLD AND ITALICIZE THE ENTIRE ESSAY! MAKE IT RED TO GET YOUR POINT ACROSS!
Sorry. Just kidding.
We barely see journalists and writers using these visual effects in the middle of a paragraph in newspapers, magazines, and novels for a reason. They know how to select words and keep their sentences flowing.
The word we often see capitalized the most is “not.”
Do NOT capitalize the word NOT
(and pretty much any other word for that matter).
Writings that are meant to be understood by people of all ages and backgrounds, such as warning signs, often emphasize words with visual aids.
Do NOT cross the fence!
NO SWIMMING!
Thank you for being QUIET in the library.
These signs can be seen from a distance and are written in a manner to be understood at first sight. Readers of academic essays seldom attempt to read them from a distance of 3 yards, and they are almost never five year olds.
Most of the times, you can get away with simply replacing the adjective, adverb, or the verb you want to place the capital bold “NOT” on with its antonym.
Tomoki is not going to class today.
↪ Tomoki will be absent today.
(There’s a be verb in this example which is unfavorable in academic writing for a different reason. Read more on the Naughty Words to Avoid in Academic Writing by clicking here).
We want to get down to the specifics instead of stating what something is not. The unnecessary usage of not may mean that your writing is vague.
Even when a vehicle isn’t going very fast…
↪ Even when a vehicle is traveling at a considerably slow speed…
↪ Even when driving at speeds under twenty miles per hour…
You should not wear green clothes in front of a green screen.
↪ Meteorologists wear any color besides green because…
Bring the subject towards the beginning of the sentence
If you’re getting lost in the middle of your own sentence and feel the need to highlight what you’re talking about, expect to equally confuse your readers.
Writers do not necessarily need to follow the “subject, verb, object” sentence structure, but often times, instead of hiding what they are actually trying to convey in the middle of a wordy sentence, or even in the middle of an abnormally lengthy paragraph, does not necessarily make the readers think further about a given topic. Thou shall neither attempt to reproduce a Shakespearean writing style in order for it to be considered by one a formal style of speech, nor shall you attempt to mimic a historic piece of legal writing.
Did you feel like telling us to shut up? Yeah. We did too.
A good academic essay allows the readers to reflect on a given argument instead of redundantly stating a single point.
All we needed to say in the wordy example was:
Bringing the subject matter toward the beginning of the sentence allows the readers to easily understand the topic.
2. When to Capitalize, Italicize, or Underline
Capital Letters
The only times capital letters should appear in chunks are when they’re initialism, acronym, or some other sort of an abbreviation.
Initialism:
CIA, FBI, TSA, FDA, USDA
Acronyms:
NASA, NATO, ASEAN, AIDS
State/Provincial Abbreviations:
Boston, MA
Washington, D.C.
Toronto, ON
Italics
・Italicize foreign words.
In his speech regarding the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the former Foreign Minister Taro Kono shared how a resident of Hachioji, Tokyo integrated in his business the Japanese omotenashi values.
・Italicize names of trains, ships, aircraft, and spacecraft
U.S.S. Constitution
R.M.S. Titanic
↪ “U.S.S.” stands for “United States Ship,” so keep it in the standard font.
The same rule applies to the British variants R.M.S. (Royal Mail Ship) and H.M.S. (Her Majesty’s Ship).
Underline
Two decades ago, school teachers said to underline book titles. In this day and age where we assume that underlined text is a clickable link, it is becoming more common to write the title of a book in italics. What makes it confusing is that there’s not a standard rule, so you will see different websites and textbooks saying different things.
In 2019, we really cannot come up with a situation that would require underlining in academic writing.
Unless directed otherwise, we would say it’s pretty safe to write titles of large pieces of work like books and movies in italics and that of smaller ones like articles and episodes of television shows in quotation marks.
3. Quotation Marks
Speaking of quotation marks, we should only use them to either refer to smaller pieces of work as mentioned above or to quote someone’s words. Anything else is improper use of quotation marks in academic writing.
Using quotation marks to indicate a “so-called” word as if you were making “air quotes” like in this sentence is an example of their inappropriate use.
Save that usage for Twitter and Facebook if anything.
4. Very, Extremely, Tremendously
Using anything that means “very” implies that the word that follows it is very weak. It’s not a matter of how very your “very” is.
extremely, magnificently, tremendously, unbelievably, ridiculously…
We could go on forever with this list.
There are two problems with these emphasis words when found in academic writing.
1. You’re using a weak adjective or adverb.
The Christmas tree at the Rockefeller Center is very big.
↪ The Christmas tree at the Rockefeller Center is enormous.
As the word “enormous” means “very big,” we can omit the immature sounding “very” from the sentence.
2. You’re not being specific enough.
The Christmas tree at the Rockefeller Center is very big/enormous.
↪ According to NYC & Company, the 2019 model of the Christmas tree at the Rockefeller Center stands at seventy seven feet (Rosenberg).
Rosenberg in the parenthesis is the last name of the contributing author who is to be credited in the appropriate format, usually in MLA or Chicago style, in the citation when writing an academic essay. For the purpose of informal writing like our blog, it is usually acceptable to simply add a clickable link as we would with the word (source) or the like.
5. What You Need to Do
When you find yourself looking for a better word, all you may need to do is open up a thesaurus. In the 21st century, we call it thesaurus.com.
If you’re lacking on the specifics, go do the research to find out how big that very big actually is.
Academic Writing 101
1. Naughty Words to Avoid in Academic Writing
↳ 2. Color Your Sentence With Words
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