Basics of Academic Writing
Many new researchers feel difficulty in writing a scientific paper. This may be due to the lack of any formal training on academic writing that results in facing various hurdles in writing and publishing in good research journals. Recently I conducted a Pre-conference workshop on the Research Paper Writing. It was a part of the First International Conference on Pharmacology and Allied Sciences at the Department of Pharmacology, University of Karachi, Pakistan. The workshop was attended by many undergraduate and postgraduate students. Here I am covering some points that are related to the Basics of Academic Writing. It will be very helpful to those who want to excel in academic writing and research.
- Make an Outline : Before starting a writing assignment, it is necessary to make a skeletal outline that will cover main heading and subheadings. It may be change with time as required but will give you framework of writing in confined boundaries. A mind map with keywords may also be a good starting point before writing a manuscript. It summarizes information in the form of keywords. The most important point(s) are kept in the center with branches and sub-branches. In this way transition of ideas from one point to another point is clearly expressed.
- Write Daily : The next important thing is to spare some time for writing daily. It may be 15 minutes or 30 minutes exercise at a place most comfortable to you (office, café, library, home, park etc). This should be the time where you concentrate totally on writing assignment without any sort of distraction and worries from outside world. When a writing session is completed, write few key words for the next session. It will motivate you to write in the upcoming session without losing interest.
- Be concise: The writing style should be clear, brief and concise. The purpose of scientific writing is not to impress the reader using difficult English words, phrases, idioms etc. rather to communicate a message in plain English clearly to the recipient without using colorful words, expressions, personal judgment etc. Many researchers first language is not English. Writing in plain English will be very helpful for the dissemination of research. The writing style should be adopted according to type of type of the selected journal. Read the instruction for authors and adhere to it.
- Lively and engaging : The first draft may be written as the words pour down and later it is trimmed, polished and tightened. The message should be conveyed concisely in few simple words using direct sentences. The order of sentences should be linear like story telling. The sentence order may change at the time of reviewing to make the content more lively and engaging. The main thing is to write in a consistent, logical and coherent manner. The numbers (data) should be used where required. The numbers are more precise and meaningful and can be presented in many ways that further enhance the text quality.
- Avoid Plagiarism : One caution to writing is to avoid plagiarism during writing. Simply, it means to take ideas, data, tables, figures, and statistics etc from other source without giving due credit to the researchers and authors. The plagiarism is regarded as an academic dishonestly and should be avoided. It will ruin one academic career. The plagiarism may be avoided by immediately writing the source during note taking. It should be rephrased before incorporating in the paper. Simply a change of one or two words of the actual text is not rephrasing. Rephrasing means to get the idea of the text or data and to write in your own words.
- Craft effective Paragraphs : The final word is about paragraph writing. One paragraph should contain one idea. The ideal paragraph may comprises of 3-4 sentences. If more than 5, it is necessary to revisit the paragraph, check the sentences and break it into two paragraphs. However, it may vary from discipline to discipline. The first sentence is the lead sentence. It may be a fact, statistics or sentence that grasps the attention of readers. The subsequent sentences simply support the first sentence and thus the sentences move in a linear fashion. The final sentence may give concluding remarks. The subsequent paragraph starts with the subject or the object of last sentence.
I hope that you will find this blog very useful. In case of any further discussion, feel free to comment box and I will be happy to assist you!
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