academic writing

In academia, writing and publishing is conducted in several sets of forms and genres. This is a list of genres of academic writing. It is a short summary of the full spectrum of critical & academic writing. It does not cover the variety of critical approaches that can be applied when one writes about a [login to view URL] scholarly writing has an objective stance, clearly states the significance of the topic, and is organized with adequate detail so that other scholars could try to replicate the results. Strong papers are not overly general and correctly utilize formal academic [login to view URL] order for a writer to become familiar with some of the constraints of the discourse community they are writing for, a useful tool for the academic writer is to analyze prior work from the discourse community. The writer should look at the textual ‘moves’ in these papers, focusing on how they are constructed. Across most discourses communities, writers will: • Establish the novelty of their position • Make a claim, or thesis • Acknowledge prior work and situate their claim in a disciplinary context • Offer warrants for one's view based on community-specific arguments and procedures (Hyland) Each of the ‘moves’ listed above are constructed differently depending on the discourse community the writer is in. For example, the way a claim is made in a high school paper would look very different than the way a claim is made in a college composition class. It is important for the academic writer to familiarize himself or herself with the conventions of the discourse community by reading and analyzing other works, so that the writer is best able to communicate his or her ideas. (Porter) Contrary to some beliefs, this is by no means plagiarism. Writers should also be aware of other ways in which the discourse community shapes their writing. Other functions of the discourse community include determining what makes a novel argument and what a ‘fact’ is. The following sections elaborate on these functions.