Hacking Academic Writing: 8 Tips for Today's Students

Academic writing is usually associated with a set of rules and requirements concerning the structure, style, vocabulary, and grammar. Students are supposed to follow them to the dot to create neat and interesting scholarly papers. Very few of them find academic writing to be a piece of cake, though. The majority requires the help of essaywritingservice.com to get the idea of how to write killing essays. Fortunately, knowing just a few tips and tricks can help you hack academic writing and significantly improve your grades. This article is committed to shedding some light on how to write essays that can impress your professor.

Choose the Best Topic

The key to writing a great essay is to be genuinely interested in the topic. Your urge and passion for knowledge will be your driving force. If you fail to pick something you are really keen on discovering and researching, there is a 90% probability that the paper won’t be good. Of course, some assignments don’t offer topic selection. These essays are usually a part of a bigger task that is rather obligatory than creative. Most writing assignments, however, let you choose the topic, so you must critically think and assess each of the given options to make the right choice.

Read

This tip applies before choosing the topic and right after doing it. First, you read some scholarly papers on each of the topics on your list. That helps you get some background knowledge and realize what it is that you can write about this idea. Sometimes, topics that appeal to you the most may turn out to be quite shallow after preliminary research. When you have chosen the topic, literary research becomes essential. At this stage, you create your reference list by searching for books and journal articles that meet your goals of writing. When reading, try to highlight parts that you can further use in your text as citations or quotes. It will save you lots of time. Based on the expected length of the paper, you can count how many sources you need to have. Usually, writers are expected to include 2-3 academic sources per page.

Plan Your Essay

Every writing professional will tell you to plan your essay before getting to write it. This is the best way to stick to the topic and keep the required structure. Usually, all academic papers have an introduction, body, and conclusion. Their content may change according to the instructor’s requirements, but a text qualifies for an academic essay only if all these components are in order. When you create an outline, you focus on both the structure and the content. Then, this plan serves as a skeleton for your text. It helps not to deviate from the topic even if you are bombarded with new ideas.

Take Notes While Writing

Every student is recommended to have an extra paper and a pen with them while writing an essay. These new ideas mentioned above can be great and useful. It would be a pity to forget them or completely ignore them. At the same time, you may not be able to use them right away when writing. That’s why it makes sense to take down these ideas. You can add them later or change your outline based on your notes. Note-taking helps you be in control of your writing. It does not let you lose creative ideas along the way by keeping them in order.

Do not Be Harsh on Yourself

All writers need to edit and proofread their papers when they are finished, even those working for cheap essay writing service Canada for years. This process is normal for academic writing. One cannot write an excellent and error-free paper on the first try. However, you are expected to submit such a paper. To meet this goal, let yourself write in your own unique way and at your own pace. Do not focus that much on the mistakes that will happen here and there. However, do take enough time to rectify all those errors when you are done writing. After all, the editing and proofreading process is essential for academic writing.

Reference Correctly

You should rely on scholarly evidence in your essay. A paper with no references to credible sources is a waste of time and effort. No one will take it seriously. However, it’s not enough to mention the author and the name of the paper in passing. The art of academic writing demands you to reference your sources correctly for them to count. First of all, determine what referencing style is expected from you. Based on this, the way a reference is created can change. You can easily find a manual on how to reference a scholarly paper according to a certain referencing style online. However, you can also look for a citation generator that automates this process for you on the Internet. Google Docs does a pretty good job with this. Yet, we still recommend checking every generated citation against the newest manual’s edition.

Work on Text Flow and Vocabulary

As a part of your post-writing work on the essay, try to polish your language. Read the text and identify the words and sentences that can be improved. This advice is especially relevant for those who are not writing in their native language. For them, this is not about editing but rather sophisticating what they have written. The better your essay is worded, the more attention it gets from the instructor. Do not try to impress them with too difficult words. However, try to make sure they do not stumble over complex sentences and archaic collocations when reading.

Check Grammar and Plagiarism

There are lots of tools online that can help you check your paper for plagiarism and grammar issues in seconds. Do not ignore these technological developments. They are pretty useful for both writing gurus and amateurs. The slightest hint of plagiarism in your essay can cause you trouble in school. This issue is very serious, and it’s getting even more attention recently. As for grammar, spelling, and punctuation, we can still have some mistakes even upon proofreading. Run your text through Grammarly or another tool to become positive that your paper is correct.

Wrapping Up

If you develop your writing algorithm and apply it whenever you are supposed to write an academic paper, you’ll develop a habit and writing won’t be so scary anymore. Remember that success comes with practice, so all you have to do to hack academic writing is to keep practicing.