We’ve covered organizing strong writing and considering your audience, as well as using appropriate tone and language for academic work. Now let’s focus on the writing itself.

Effective academic writing is precise and concise at every level—document, paragraph, sentence, word, and even punctuation. Every word should serve a clear purpose.

Write Concise Sentences

Always ask yourself if you’re using your readers’ time wisely. Are your sentences unnecessarily complex or long? For example, instead of saying, “Cats have a tendency toward sleeping most of the day,” simply say, “Cats usually sleep most of the day.” Replace “The 12th day of the month of April” with “April 12th.”

Also, avoid inflating your text to meet word counts with phrases like “due to the fact that” instead of “because.” Readers will notice and find the writing tedious. If you need more words, add examples, details, or perspectives instead of fluff.

Lastly, be careful with redundant phrases like “positive benefits”—“benefits” already implies something positive. Focus on clear, direct language to strengthen your writing.

Write Clear Sentences

Writers often feel pressure to use fancy words to sound smarter, but clear sentences are stronger than complicated ones.

Complex language doesn’t make writing better—clarity does. Beware, however, that you do not lose meaning when you make a sentence simpler; cut out only the most unnecessary “fluffy” adjectives, but don’t sacrifice being descriptive.

Clear writing starts with knowing what you want to say. A lack of clarity often comes from unclear thinking or poor planning, which can confuse or frustrate readers. For many, ideas become clearer during the drafting process, making revision essential. Use revision to ensure each sentence conveys one idea and each paragraph develops a unified concept.

Avoid vague and unnecessary words

Are you very hungry, or are you so hungry you could eat everything in the refrigerator? Is your English class really great, or does it make you feel like the most creative writer surrounded by ambitious, engaged peers?

Words like very and really don’t say much. Instead of using stock or clichéd phrases, try to be more specific about what you mean.

Vary the Length of your Sentences

Your sentences should vary in length (short sentence). Avoid having too many long sentences because they take longer to read and are often more complex (longer sentence). Reserve short sentences for main points and use longer sentences for supporting points that clarify or explain cause and effect relationships (longer sentence). If you feel the sentence is too long, break it into two sentences (medium sentence). You do not want your reader to have to read a sentence twice to understand it (short sentence). (Note: you’ll learn more in a later module about using colons and semi-colons to structure your complicated and longer sentences so that they don’t get out of control, grammatically.)

Name the People

Directly state who or what group is acting in your sentences. Note the contrast in power and clarity among the sentences below.

• Without people: A citywide ban on indoor smoking in Duluth originally caused a marked drop in bar patronage.
• With people: When the Duluth City Council passed a citywide ban on indoor smoking, many people stopped going to bars.

Use Active Verbs

Consider replacing “be-verbs” (is, am, are, was, were, be, has/have been) with active verbs that allow you to compose powerful sentences shaped around action. Below the italics are the same sentences that have been transformed with active verbs.

• To be: The sharp rise in fuel prices is a serious challenge to trucking firms. It makes it hard for them to provide timely service to customers and to meet payroll expenses.
• Active: Sharply rising fuel prices challenge trucking firms by causing delays in customer service and payroll.
• To be: Primary causes of the rise in fuel prices are an issue of confusion for many citizens. They don’t know how to fight the rise because they don’t know its cause.
• Active: Primary causes of rising fuel prices elude many citizens, making them unaware of how to fight the increase.

Use Parallel Structure Effectively

Simply put, parallelism is the practice of using the same patterns in words and structures in order to provide balance to sentences and paragraphs. Just as a parallel shape has two lines with the same distance between them, a parallelism ensures you have balance with your language.

Compare these sentences:

1. Yara loves running, to swim, and then biking.
2. Yara loves running, swimming, and biking.

The second sentence is a smoother read because it uses parallelism—all three verbs are gerunds (running, swimming, biking). In the first sentence, two are gerunds (running and biking), while one is an infinitive (to swim), creating a mismatch. This lack of parallel structure makes the first sentence harder to process. Strong parallelism improves writing style, readability, and flow.

When you read the first sentence in each of those examples, it is easy to trip up over the mismatched items. Using strong parallel structure improves writing style and readability and makes sentences easier to process. However, when using parallelism across multiple sentences, be sure that you’re using it well. If you aren’t careful, you can stray into being repetitive.

Effective Use of Parallelism and Repetition

Parallelism can also involve repeated words or repeated phrases. These uses are part of “rhetoric” (a field that focuses on persuading readers).

When used this way, parallelism makes your writing or speaking much stronger. These repeated phrases seem to bind the work together and make it more powerful—and more inspiring.