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Academic Writing – How to Write for the Academic Community

What is Academic Writing? Academic writing refers to all of the texts produced by academic writers, including theoretical, empirical, or experience-based works. Examples: Different academic fields have distinct genres, writing styles and conventions because each academic field possesses its own set of rules and practices that govern how ideas are researched, structured, supported, and communicated. ...

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Tough, Sweet, & Stuffy Prose Styles

What are Tough, Sweet & Stuffy Prose Styles? In 1966, Walker Gibson theorized “the way we write at any given moment can be seen as an adjustment or compromise among these three styles of identifying ourselves and defining our relation with others”: The Tough Talker “The Tough Talker, in these terms, is a man dramatized ...

Professional Writing – How to Write for the Professional World

What is Professional Writing? Professional writing refers to writing that helps get work done in business, industry, government, non-profit, and civic settings. Whether it’s a brief office memo or a complex technical report, professional writing is action-oriented and aims to solve problems within or between organizations and publics. While some professional writing is performed by ...

Writing Styles

Summary Writing Styles refers to Synonymous Terms Writing Styles may also be called Related Concepts: Audience – Audience Awareness; Genre; Rhetorical Stance; Persona; Purpose; Register; The Elements of Style; Tone; Voice. Guide to Writing Styles In life, writers and speakers face innumerable exigencies–calls to write and speak. Each of those circumstances challenge writers (and speakers) ...

Writer-Based Prose

What is a Writer-Based Prose? Writer-Based Prose Style is Discourse — aka a composition, prose, or texts — may be called writer-based when it A writer-based prose may also be described as abbreviated, self-centered, vague, developmental, or underdeveloped. Writer-based prose is the antithesis to reader-based prose. It is self-centered, based on the whim of the ...

Reader-Based Prose

Reader-Based Prose Style is a style of writing that accounts for the emotions, knowledge, interests, and needs of the reader as opposed to the writer. Unlike writer-based prose, which is self-centered, reader-based prose is reader centered. Texts classified as reader-based prose use Key Words: Sweet Language The term reader-based prose was coined by Linda Flower (1979): [A Reader-Based ...

Substantive Prose

Substantive Prose is a style of academic and professional discourse. Prose that is characterized as substantive tends to be People who can produce substantive prose are thought leaders, knowledge workers, rhetorician, symbol analysts. Key Words: Inductive and Deductive Reasoning Substantive Prose tends to However, those stylistic attributes are not what actually defines Substantive Prose. In ...

You-Centered Business Style

Considering the rhetorical aspects of any writing situation, such as purpose, stance, and audience, is an essential part of adapting the style of a message for any audience. Adopting a you-centered business style can help you achieve your purpose, choose a stance, and analyze your audience.  A you-centered business style employs the you view and an audience-centered tone to choose particular words and adopt a targeted tone in a message.

The “you view” analyzes and emphasizes the reader’s interests and perspectives. Because the reader’s interest or benefit is stressed, the writer is more likely to help the reader understand information or act on a request.

Academic Language vs. Colloquial Language

In what ways have you fulfilled the assignment requirements as they relate to audience, appropriate persona/tone, and rhetorical stance? Why is this word choice/diction inappropriate (conversational) for your audience? What might be more appropriate?

For students and teachers alike, most writing occurs in non-academic settings—notes, e-mails, Facebook posts, blogs, shopping lists, etc. In these writing settings, it is perfectly fine to “write as you speak,” using a conversational tone and slang terms.