Writing academic papers is one of the most dreadful activities that a student faced in school. As academic writing features a serious tone and presents theories and facts, it proves to be vital for the intellectual growth of every student.

Here are some tips on improving academic writing skills and enhancing students’ academic papers.

1. Use Active Voice

Using an active voice often improves clarity. It keeps the sentences from becoming too complicated and makes your sentences clearer for the readers.

2. Mix it Up in Terms of Punctuation

Punctuation is essential, it is used to convey your meaning clearly, and help strengthen your arguments and reasoning in the text form. 

There are a few commonly misused punctuation marks that a lot of people aren’t sure about.

The semi-colon (;), is used to separate two independent clauses.

The colon (:), which used to give emphasis, present dialogue, introduce lists or text, and clarify composition titles.

The dash (–) is made by typing two hyphens (-), which is used to mark parenthetical clauses and to bracket off some explanatory information.

3. Varying Sentence Structure

In academic writing, sentence structure is important because it provides a framework for the clear written expression of ideas. 

To vary sentence structure, add prose to give life and rhythm to the sentences. Alternate short and long sentences to enliven paragraphs, and allow effective emphasis. 

4. Avoid Choppiness

Writing feels choppy when the sentences are very short and the ideas seem disconnected. Although short sentences can give an impact on writing, consecutively using them becomes distracting to the reader.

To avoid choppiness, connect some of the ideas together with conjunction, use subordination to combine the main idea with an incomplete clause, add extra information about a noun in the sentence by using appositives, and another way to combine two sentences is by turning one of them into a modifying phrase.

5. Avoid Repetition

In academic writing, repeating the same sentences might lose the interest of the readers. 

To avoid repetition and to make the sentences more exciting for the readers, change the rhythm and vary the sentence structure.

6. Be Concise

Conciseness is very important in academic writing, it provides clarity and does not include unnecessary, unclear words or language. It also helps grab and hold the reader’s attention and make a lasting impact. 

To write concisely, eliminate unnecessary phrases and redundancies to help create stronger, more direct sentences. 

7. Use the Vocabulary That You Know

Using simple language is fine, but it does not mean settling for very weak vocabulary choices. 

Having a strong word choice can use the vocabulary and language to the maximum effect that can create clear moods and images, and can make the student’s academic papers more powerful and vivid.

8. Work on Expanding Your Vocabulary

To strengthen your vocabulary add new words to your existing writing skills. Make a list of words that are unfamiliar to you and study how they use so you can properly include them in your writing.

9. Keep Language Formal

In academic writing, the tone used is usually formal, and it should not sound conversational or casual. Informal and colloquial language is often imprecise, which can lead to misinterpretation.