Academic Writing

What is academic writing?

Fundamentals of Academic Writing

Academic writing is one type of non-fiction writing characterised by its formality, use of evidence-based logical argument, and use of balanced, bias-free language.

Academic writing also follows certain conventions regarding text patterns, the use of complex noun phrases, hedging, and citing sources. Academic texts are expected to be coherent and have a logical flow.

Academic writing is writing produced with academic integrity. The fundamental values of academic integrity are: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility and courage. Read more about academic integrity.

This means that as an academic writer you need to be able to:

• be aware of the appropriate register for your writing;
• use different writing pattens in a logical way;
• support your arguments with appropriate evidence;
• properly cite your sources of evidence in an appropriate style;
• avoid bias;
• use careful measured language by using hedging devices;
• write concisely by using appropriate grammatical forms such as complex noun phrases;
• construct a readable and coherent text using suitable cohesive devices;
• have a good grasp of academic vocabulary and mastery of specialist vocabulary in your area of study;
• use appropriate graphical information and data and be able comment on it;
• abide by the fundamental values of academic integrity.

These are the basics. But academic writing does not take place in isolation. To be a competent academic writer you need to be able to integrate your own ideas or research with what others have written on the topic before.

Intertextuality and Critical Literacy

No text can be considered as a serious piece of academic writing without reference (explicit or otherwise) to other texts. This is known as intertextuality. In academic texts this is usually created by explicit reference to other sources, either by quotation or by paraphrase, both of which need to be cited according to specific conventions.

We have mentioned above that academic writers need to support their arguments with appropriate evidence. This doesn't mean just writing your own opinion and throwing in a few quotes which might support your opinion. You need to be organized and analytical about this. You need to be critical. You need to understand your sources in depth and work out how to use them to support your ideas, and how to refute claims contrary to your own where you disagree. This synthesis is an important creative act. It is a difficult creative act and it takes effort and time to learn how to do it well. You cannot do this if your own position is not crystal clear in your own mind or if you haven't been able to critically analyze the source texts you are hoping to use. Incorporating points of view from other sources into your own discussion is a high level skill. If you think you can use AI to help you with this, you are missing the point. If you can't do this without outside help, how could you ever develop the ability to critically analyse any text?

There are other reasons for not using AI, one of which is honesty. AI generated texts are produced from the work of others without proper attribution and without the possibility of critically analysing the sources from which they are generated. Reading and writing are human activities and we will always need to be able to read critically and write critically. This is the essence of academic writing.

(Shaw 2025) (Flower 1990) (Guest et al. 2025) (Jordan 2009) (Fairclough 1997) (Fairclough 1996) (ICAI | Values n.d.)