5 Reasons why you Should not be Afraid of ‘Academic writing’

Writing is an important skill in life. Whether it is writing a letter, a job application, or a press release, the writing ability is a relevant and important life skill. Academic writing is a segment of writing where the purpose of the written work is to get good grades in school.

As with everything, which precedes an assessment, many people find academic writing scary and impossibly hard. This discussion identifies 5 of the most common fallacies about academic writing.

1. Good Writers know how they will Finish Before they even Start Writing

This is perhaps the biggest fallacy of all. Like an explorer, writing typically moves from the known to the unknown. Most writers rarely know at inception how a paper will progress and end. Instead, they navigate slowly, developing new ideas as they go. This is perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of writing.

2. A Draft should be Able to Project the Final Work Perfectly

There is no perfection when it comes to writing a draft. No draft, however good, is perfect. A writer usually has to make changes as s/he goes. These changes usually violate the original draft.

This is because as work develops, a writer notices new things that need to be included and others that were initially included but now need to be exempted. These changes make it impossible to create a perfect draft.

3. Some People were Born to be Writers others were not

No person can be said to be irredeemably daft in academic writing. Similarly, no person can claim to be very bright in writing. In most cases, peoples’ writing skills improve as they participate more and more in writing.

The more experience you have, the better you are at writing and vice versa. Therefore, as long as you keep practicing, you can be sure that your writing skills will keep improving.

4. Good Writing can only be Evidenced by use of Good Grammar

While good grammar is a prerequisite of any good written work, not all work that is good grammatically is good written work. You can still deliver good written work even if you are not good in grammar.

All that every person needs to remember is that it is necessary to proofread your work upon completion. On the same note, you can ask someone else to proofread it for you to remove any further errors but you should not be discouraged from writing on account of poor grammar.

5. The Word ‘I’ is Bad for your Writing

While it is true that in academic writing, it is important to avoid first person pronouns, it is not true that this should never be used in all academic work. While in most cases, the use of ‘I’ is forbidden, personal essays, personal experiences and other specialized types of writing require the use of ‘I’.