Writing Style: The Differences Between Academic and Informal Writing

Everyone knows that you should write your term papers differently than your Facebook posts, and that your journal submissions should be written differently than newspaper columns. What exactly are the differences between casual and academic writing? Between formal and informal writing?

the biggest difference

The most important difference between informal writing and academic writing is style. That is, informal writing does not require you to adhere to any published style guides. Academic writing, or any formal writing, requires that you adhere to a style guide. Some schools and teachers will go so far as to specify which style guide to use.

What is a style guide?

A style guide is a manual, or document, that specifies a set of rules and regulations followed by writers to facilitate clear communication. The EzineArticles.com guide is a web page that tells you how to write articles to be included in the EzineArticles directory, for example. Each school and corporation can have their own personalized style guide.

However, there are major style guides.

one. The Chicago Manual of Style it was one of the first style guides published in the United States. Currently (as of 2010) in its 16th edition, this style guide was first published in 1906. People often refer to the “Chicago style” but people also refer to it as CMS or CMOS .

2. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is in its sixth edition (as of 2010). This style guide was developed to make papers easier to read for teachers and students, thereby increasing comprehension. APA style requires only two fonts in an article, and the body of the article must be written in 12-point Times New Roman. Underlining, bold, and italics are allowed in some places.

3. The elements of the style it was written to help people write clearly. While the book has its critics, it is one of the shortest style guides.

4.The MLA Manual of Style, 3rd edition, is the style guide of the Modern Language Association. First published in 1985, this manual is used by many universities, colleges, and students.

5. Microsoft wrote The Manual of Style for Technical Publicationsand this document is used for internal and external Microsoft documentation.

Common style guide conventions vs. informal writing

contractions

In general, it’s okay to use contractions (as if they were) in informal writing. Academic writing requires writing both words.

Technical terms

If you are writing informally to a group of people in the same field, you may frequently use technical terms and never explain them. If you’re writing to a group of people who have nothing to do with your industry, try cutting out the technical words altogether. If you are writing academically, you should explain the term the first time you use it.

Active passive

This is no different between informal and academic writing. Most of the time, active sentences are better. Both the APA and the Chicago style guides agree with this.

grammatical person

The grammatical person is the point of view, or you may have heard it expressed as first person, second person, third person, and fourth person. The first person perspective contains many “I” or “we” statements such as “I fed the dog.” The first person is the perspective of the writer. The second person is you, the person the writer is writing to. The third person is associated with pronouns like he, she, it, and they. The third person is not me (the writer) or you (the reader). Scholars sometimes use fourth-person sentences such as “One should always behave when he is in public.”

Informal and casual writing uses the first, second, and third person point of view, as appropriate. While academics often write in the fourth person, I have yet to find a basis for that style of writing in style guides. Style guides make it easy to write clearly and fourth person, single person statements are anything but clear.

The grammatical person needed for a sentence often depends on whether the sentence is active or passive.

Quotes

Academic writing requires citations. If you say that “X is true”, you must cite the place where you found that statement. If you created that statement, your words should clearly show it.

sentence length

Casual writing tends to have short sentences. (Informal bad writing has run-on sentences.) Academic and formal writing uses longer sentences. However, take your head. The point of any piece of writing is to get a point across, and if your sentence is too long, you will defeat that purpose.

Colloquial expressions and clichés

While “awesome,” “bombshell,” “bees’ knees,” “kids,” “nose to whetstone,” and “friend” pervade Facebook, these words and phrases aren’t used in academic writing.

abbreviations

All your friends may know what LOL (and in the case of the ferret community, DOL) is, but any time you use an abbreviation in an academic paper, you must first write it down and connect it to the abbreviation so people know who you are. talking about.