How to improve your academic writing skills | Top 10 Hacks

Let’s clear one thing once and for all. If you are looking for hacks that will improve your academic writing skills overnight, you are going to be disappointed. There is no quick fix to poor academic writing. You need to put in a lot of effort and time. After all, Rome was not built in a single day. However, you can certainly reach your goals faster with certain tricks.

Like any other skill set, one can also master academic writing with the right approach and some useful tricks. If you often struggle to produce a quality academic paper on your own, you need to follow a few measures that can improve your writing significantly. In fact, most academic writing experts use the following tricks and tips to produce quality content.

Thoroughly study the requirements:

Before you start working on an academic paper, it is absolutely important that you understand the basic requirements of the task. Your approach towards writing an academic paper should vary depending on the subject of the academic paper, your academic level, the type of the task, and of course, your professor’s instructions.

Study the requirements of the paper thoroughly to understand what you need to do for the task. As you may realize, an essay has a different writing approach than a business report. So, make sure that you have clarity about the requirements before you start working on the paper.

Choose a distraction-free environment:

For effective academic writing, you need to give your undivided attention to the task. However, students often fail to do so due to several distractions. So, it is recommended that you choose a quiet room for studies and remove all the sources of distractions from the room. This includes comic books, television, gaming consoles, magazines, and more.

You should also consider keeping your smartphone switched off for the time being or simply silent the notifications on the phone while you work on your academic paper. Also, ask your roommates and/or family members not to disturb you while you study. This will help you concentrate better on your task.

Work on your time management:

A lot of students prefer to hire expert writers and ask them to “make my assignment.” This is because a majority of these students struggle to manage their time well. If you have better control over your schedule, you can invest the right amount of time in your writing. So, start improving your time management skills.

Instead of keeping your academic papers for the eleventh hour, try to start working on the papers as early as possible. This will give you enough time to perform all the necessary academic writing measures without any rush. The quality of the paper will automatically improve. Moreover, you should start following a timetable for effective time management.

Keep the class notes handy:

A lot of students these days do not take notes in class just because all the information is available on the internet. But what they do not realize is that these class notes are great to reference materials for the academic paper. You can find not only crucial details about a topic in the notes but also get additional facts and examples shared by the professor.

So, when you start working on the academic paper, keep your class notes regarding the topic at your disposal. Also, you should consider referring to other books besides your textbook. Since online sources are not always authentic, you can seek suggestions for reference source materials from your instructing professor as well.

Prepare an outline for your paper:

It is always recommended that you create an outline for your academic paper before drafting its content. The idea behind this measure is to give shape to your academic paper and decide how to present the information and arguments in it. In other words, the outline tells you what goes where in the paper.

While the outline allows you to organize your thoughts and ideas for the academic paper, it also serves as the roadmap for your content. It keeps you on track while you write the paper and restricts you from performing any unnecessary steps. So, you get to prepare a well-structured and concise piece of content.

Get straight to the main issue while writing:

Ideally, you should start your academic paper from the introduction and then move to the main body and conclusion. But for effective writing, you should consider drafting the main body first. Usually, most students waste a lot of time wondering how to write the introduction part. Instead of doing that, if you simply start writing about the main issue, you will find the flow in your writing.

Since you know what to discuss in the main body, the content comes easily to you. Once you are done drafting the main body, you will not only have a better flow of writing but also have enough ideas about how to introduce the paper to your readers. I am not suggesting you change the format of the paper, but only to leave the introduction for later.

Draft short and simple sentences:

While drafting the paper, keep your sentences short and simple. This improves the overall readability of your content. Long and complex sentences often seem confusing. Also, you are more likely to make mistakes while writing longer sentences.

Try to keep the average length of your sentences between 10-15 words. If you usually write longer sentences, make a conscious effort to make them shorter.

Use sub-headings to segment your content:

Another trick to improve the readability of your content is to break your content into smaller segments using effective sub-headings. This measure allows you to divide your content into more easily consumable sections.

Every time you explore a different aspect of the topic, use a different sub-heading. This will give your readers a breather after reading one section and also help them easily find out what the next section is about.

Proofread and edit the paper well:

Even when you draft the paper with precision, it is important that you proofread the paper thoroughly. Proofreading of the paper should not only involve spell check and punctuation check, but you also need to look for grammatical accuracy, Punctuation Checking formatting consistency, compliance with academic guidelines, and more.

It is recommended that you take a break of several hours or a day before you edit the paper. Since you are the writer, you may fail to see certain errors in the paper while editing. You can even ask your sibling or a roommate to review your paper and see if he/she has any suggestions to improve the content.

Use online tools to your advantage:

If you still don’t feel confident about your writing abilities, you can use a few online tools for your assistance. For instance, there is Grammarly which allows you to identify errors in your writing and also suggests where you can improve your writing. Similarly, Hemingway Editor also provides you with editing suggestions for your writing.

Besides, you have Referencing Generator tool from MyAssignmenthelp.com and plagiarism checker from DupliChecker. All these tools can be quite useful in producing quality content. So, you can give these tools a try.