New Trends in Academic Writing

Academic writing is as old as academia itself. However, every year new trends emerge, and if you are willing to receive stellar grades for your papers, it is better to follow them. There is a chance, though, that some of your professors don’t do it, but you can’t leave it to chance.

Move To Creativity

There are still rules, but creativity is much more welcome now than it was even five years ago. You should follow the structure of a particular paper, but at the same time, you can add your personal touch. Though you still can’t write your dissertation too creatively, you can add innovation to the less serious assignments. For example, writing an essay as a blog-bost is one of the most popular trends. In some papers, you can address the audience as if you were addressing your Instagram-followers or so. It is not for sure that your teacher or professor will be ok with it, so it is better to approve this approach before you submit your paper. However, creativity won’t be stopped, and universities and colleges will have to change their policies in order to keep students at least a bit interested in writing papers.

Students Use Grammar Checkers More

When grammar checkers came on the scene, their efficiency was very low. Students had fun making mistakes on purpose and looking at how helpless those checkers were. But in the recent year or two everything has changed. Grammar checkers became real assistants — they can spot most of the mistakes, almost 90% of technical omissions, some even give valuable tips on a chosen writing style. Of course, they can’t save you for 100% but not using a high-quality checker nowadays is just silly.

Professors Demand better References

With access to almost any academic database, students can use the most prominent sources as references, but they tend to be lazy to do it. Professors expect students to dig deeper and use the best sources, the latest ones. Previously it was ok to submit papers which are based on research which was held 10 years ago, and now the time frame is about 2-3 years maximum. Of course, some studies stay valuable over the years, but they are scarce. To follow the latest developments we recommend to subscribe for scientific newsletters and use modern academic databases to look for the updates.

More Reasoning Less Paraphrasing

Adding more creativity to writing has another side — you have to add more reasoning instead of just rewriting someone else’s thoughts. It is not an easy job, and some students can’t cope with it at the needed level of quality. You should do research, analyze and make sure to add some personal touch to writing. Of course, you are not supposed to base your dissertation on your personal opinion, but you should not be a “re-teller” of someone else’s thoughts and findings. It is not right anymore.

Cut on Passive Voice!

It is hard to write about this trend in detail because it is just as simple as that. You should use less passive voice and add more “active” energetic sentences. Previously passive voice was a must for academic papers, but that ship has sailed, you need to learn new tricks. At the same time, I and We constructions are still not very welcome in academic writing, unless you are dealing with a reflection paper or scholarship essay.

Plagiarism Checks Will Become Only More Severe

Plagiarism checks are becoming more and more severe and professional. For example, soon, AI will be able to say who wrote this paper — a woman or a man. Actually, it can do it now, but plagiarism checkers will get this feature in the nearest two years. Analyzing your previous papers, the checker will be able to tell whether you wrote the next piece, or not. Of course, as usual, there will be options to trick it, but it will be harder than now.

New trends are important, but following classic rules is crucial. You should make your content worth reading and make sure the formatting of your paper is excellent. Good luck!