Academic Style
Liza Long
When writing academically, here is a general list of dos and don’ts:
Do use:
- Academic (formal) tone—no “you” or “one” because these pronouns are broad and vague (but “I/we” are fine)
- Appropriate language
- Sentence variety (simple, compound, complex)
- The active voice (“I wrote the paper”)
Don’t use:
- Clichés and colloquial language
- The passive voice (“The paper was written by me”). Note: the passive voice may be acceptable for science disciplines, but you should generally avoid it in humanities writing.
