5 Academic Writing Mistakes
Write an excellent dissertation or peer-reviewed journal article by avoiding these common mistakes
You can easily improve your academic writing by avoiding common mistakes. In doing so, your reader is much more likely to stay interested in your document to the end, that you’ll get a better grade on your dissertation or get your paper accepted for publication.
Remember, as an academic writer it is your job to clearly explain your research to your reader.
If academic papers are well written, complex, technical and dense content is easily understandable and accessible to the reader. This takes practise and avoiding simply mistakes will set you on the right track.
As an academic copyeditor it’s my job to carefully read through my clients’ documents — usually a manuscript prepared for an academic journal — and check that it makes sense, is grammatically and linguistically correct, formatted appropriately and generally accessible to the intended reader.
I’ve copyedited hundreds of academic manuscripts, and written a few of my own, and in doing so I’ve noticed a few mistakes that regularly pop up.
If you’re new to academic writing this article on publishing your dissertation may be useful or how to write an academic paper.
1. Information in the wrong section
You may think that including key information somewhere in the paper or dissertation is important thing, and there ‘where’ doesn’t matter. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. There are rules and patterns your academic reader will expect to follow in your document, often subconsciously.
If the information is jumbled, then the message will not be clear and the reader will have to work hard to extract your key points.
Before you can properly engage in a story or book, and follow the twists and turns of a plot, you need to understand the character, the setting and key contextual aspects.
It’s the same with academic writing. There is a structure to information delivery, and it needs to flow.
I most often see these mistakes:
· Introductions that painstakingly detail the methods or miss key information (like why the study is important).
· Methods that include extensive background information (that’s text of the Introduction).
· Methods described in the Results — this is either repeated information or misplaced.
· Results interpretation in the Results section. Remember results interpretation (i.e., what they mean) is for the Discussion, not results.
· New background or context information in the Discussion — we need that up front in the introduction so we can understand the study, not at the end of the paper.
· Citations in the Abstract, Results, and conclusion. These sections are about your study and, in most cases, should not include citations.
For more guidance on what information goes where in academic writing, take a look at this article on how to structure an academic paper.
2. In appropriate use of linking words
We can become so familiar with our research topic that it is easy to assume the reader is too. But non-specifically referring to a concept or previously stated idea can lead to confusion and make your paper difficult to follow.
Avoid starting a paragraph or section with linking or transition words, including:
This; Additionally; Also; Moreover; Furthermore; However; Indeed; Similarly etc.
Paragraphs should always start with a topic sentence, which provides a brief overview of the general topic of the paragraph.
For example:
Avoid: Additionally, it has been argued that FA is particularly effective in higher education (Bennett, 2019).
Use: It has been argued that FA is particularly effective in higher education (Bennett, 2011).
3. Unsupported statements
In academic research papers, all information and evidence should be supported with appropriate citations. Citations often get skipped, likely because it can take time to find the right one or you may think that information is now general knowledge, but they are vital.
It increases the credibility of your work and shows that you have explored the relevant literature. If you are using the same reference for several sentences, you may need to use the citation more than once.
For example:
Avoid: Glaucoma is the leading cause of blindness worldwide.
Use: Glaucoma is the leading cause of blindness worldwide (Bill, 2022).
and
Avoid: Bilbao et al. (2017) found that trees grow best in wetter climates. It was also found that tall trees have the most access to light.
Use: Bilbao et al. (2017) found that trees grow best in wetter climates. It was also found that tall trees have the most access to light (Bilbao et al., 2017).
4. Not reporting statistical methods or results
There seems to be a trend for leaving-out statistical information, which completely undermines the credibility of the research being presented. My concern is that this worrying trend is founded in a lack of statistical knowledge, though sometimes it is clear that authors are trying to obscure non-significant findings. This is dangerous territory. Findings should be transparent. If your copyeditor can spot this, then so will most reviewers.
Without overtly describing your analytical or statistical methods and presenting the findings, you are asking the reader to take your word for whatever finding you report — that’s not how research works. I always recommend transparency and clarity.
Make key statistical results easy to find, rather than hiding them in the legend of a figure or an obscure table relegated to the supplementary section.
Including the test statistic (e.g., F value for ANOVA or t value for t tests), not just the P value, in the text of your results.
For example:
Avoid: Mean peroxidase activity varied significantly between healthy and diseased trees (P = 0.002)
Use: Mean peroxidase activity varied significantly between healthy and diseased trees (F(1,16) = 13.77, P = 0.002; Fig. 1)
5. Skipping the conclusion
Yep, you read that right. A lot of manuscripts that cross my desk tend to sort of fade-out at the end without presenting a powerful and concise conclusion.
The conclusion is an important part of an academic paper as it tells the reader what the key outcomes of your research are and why or how they are relevant. If you’re struggling to draw your research to a punchy conclusion, try going back to your main aim or hypothesis, see if your findings addressed them and consider what this means in the real world — how will your findings change the world (even the tiniest amount).
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