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For a much fuller version of this advice, see Chapter 10 of How to Get a First…
The main reason I ended up writing a book about study skills and how to do well at university was that when I made the transition from student to lecturer and started to read undergraduate essays, I realised that most students were labouring under some serious misapprehensions about how to write well.
Academic essays (and academic books and articles) should be in plain English. They should not be full of jargon. Nor should they be pompous, pretentious, obscure, long-winded, excessively abstract, or hard to follow.
The more undergraduate essays I struggled through, the more I began to realise that they were written in a foreign language, namely "Essayese". Essayese is an unnatural, cumbersome and awkward language with only a passing resemblance to English. It is a language that many students, apparently involuntarily, slip into when asked to write an academic essay.
An academic essay is an opportunity for you to say in plain English what you think; to try to persuade your reader to agree with you; and to offer evidence to support your case. You should be careful and precise in order to communicate your views effectively, and you may occasionally have to use technical terms that are not part of everyday English. However, for the most part, you should not use any words or phrases that you would not use in a normal conversation. Plain English is the opposite of Essayese. The following table gives some examples of Essayese and some plain English alternatives:
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It can reasonably be propagated that…
It is arguable to propound the view that…
The argument being postulated here is that…. |
I think that… |
This point of view must be seen by us here as being utterly fallacious.
We must observe that this flawed position is nonsensical and can obviously not be allowed to be upheld
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This argument is wrong. |
Expounds, propounds, decrees, asserts, proclaims, dictates, assures us, reminds us.
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Says, states, argues |
Two top tips for Essayese-busting:
1. Replace passive phrases with active ones.
2. Cut out adverbs.
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