Kick the academic habit †academic writing vs business writing - Emphasis

Kick the academic habit – academic writing vs business writing Kick the academic habit – academic writing vs business writing Most students are familiar with that morning-after feeling. But academic life can leave you with another kind of hangover youll want to shake off before heading off to work: an academic writing style. When your key reader is more likely to be found in a boardroom than a staffroom, you need to change your approach. The focus should be less on displaying every last bit of knowledge and more on the results you want your document to produce. Plus, its pretty likely your new reader wont have the patience of your university lecturer. So save the flowery prose and make sure to leave these three typical habits behind, along with your lava lamp and Pink Floyd poster. Confusing transitions No, not the last few stops on the pub crawl. This is the careless use of linking words such as moreover, however, furthermore and nevertheless. Theres nothing inherently wrong with these words, but using them doesnt automatically make the connection between paragraphs clear, or even guarantee that what you write is connected to what went before. If you imply a link that is unclear or non-existent, youre going to end up with a confused reader or, worse, an ex-reader. Ask yourself if you can make the connection more explicit to help your reader follow your argument. A good way to do this is to bring a phrase or reference from the previous paragraph into the next. For example, if in one paragraph youve been describing the benefits for a certain department of using a particular system, you might follow with something like: However, the benefits for HR have been outweighed by problems elsewhere One too many Hey, were not here to judge what you do after you clock out. But in working hours, try to show a little restraint with how much you try to fit into one sentence, that is. The overeager student starry-eyed with newly acquired knowledge and an excess of Red Bull is often moved to squeeze every last thing they know about a topic into one paragraph, or even one very long sentence. Post-graduation, give your reader (and yourself) an easier time and a better chance of understanding and acting on your information by sticking to one idea per sentence. Be selective with your information, too. The goal is to give your reader the information they need to know, not a brief history of everything that could possibly be related to it. Short paragraphs can be helpful too, as huge blocks of text on a page can be overwhelming or offputting for the reader. But dont break at a random point just to accomplish this: it will be disorientating and disrupt the flow. Make sure that while every sentence contains only one idea, every paragraph contains just one theme. Sesquipedalian* show-offs * (adj.) pertaining to or given to the use of overly long words Your lecturer may have sighed rapturously at displays of a wide and poetic vocabulary, but the reader of your report may be less entranced. In fact, if you send them off to find a dictionary, they may never return. So make sure you swap unnecessarily long words and phrases for simpler alternatives. For example, is it really vital to write in close proximity to rather than near? Not only are shorter versions understood more readily, being more direct will help the connections youre making come across more clearly: a bold because is preferable to a detached due to the fact that. And avoid nominalisations (the use of a verb as a noun), as they attract unnecessary extra words and disguise the action in a sentence. Why say undertake the implementation of when you could simply say implement, or an even more everyday alternative such as put into place? Why, academia, why? And now, class, let us draw to a close with this question: would it be better if students werent encouraged to write in the academic style in the first place? Richard Dixon, a freelance journalist and commentator who was chief revise editor of The Times for nine years, would say a resounding yes. He recalls having to defend the clear, precise language in his PhD thesis to the external examiner: She criticised my thesis as having some paragraphs with only two ideas, as if this were a mortal sin, and being written in a simple (or maybe simplistic) style not usual in academic writing. I told her that those were the early benefits of training as a sub-editor on a properly edited research journal. And, having himself helped recovering academics grope towards a clear journalistic style, he notes: Very few of them have felt they needed to buy a Dixon voodoo doll and stick pins in it in retaliation. Some have even been grateful. Sadly, even with Richards input, we probably cant expect to change the entire university systems writing habits in the immediate future. But if you can take on board a few of these tips, at least we can help you graduate into the world of business writing with flying colours.