How to write a clear comparison sentence
· 6 min read
Let's talk about comparisons.
Comparisons, or comparative sentences, are a blind spot for many academic writers, but especially those for whom English is not a native language.[^1]
Three ways to improve your academic writing
· 4 min read
Academic writing can and should be clear and easy to read.
In my experience, academic writers only need a few strategies to drastically improve the quality of their text. Will you start using these strategies?
Three ways to quickly improve your academic writing
Let's break the cycle of long, complicated, hard-to-read prose. How do you write about your research clearly? It takes effort and focused attention, but if you understand a few basic ideas, it does not have to be so hard.
Form matters
Most higher education is focused on content, not on form, yet the form that the content takes determines its accessibility and its impact.
To improve your writing, learn these three strategies first:
- Use parallelism everywhere
- Use precise verbs instead of zombie nouns
- Use the (given to new) information flow principle
Elevate Your Academic Writing: Claim Your Free Writing Consultation
· 2 min read
Get a free writing consultation for your current project
November marks academic writing month, and we have just launched ReallyWrite, a platform dedicated to improving your writing skills.
We want to help you with your writing and get valuable feedback at the same time.
The question every academic writer should be asking themselves
· 3 min read
Make the biggest impact with your research
You're deep in your research and you're excitedly writing a paper to share all the details with the world. But how can you make the biggest impact?
Most of us are so involved in our text that we forget to pay attention to the other player in this game: the reader. We find it hard to stop and think about where our reader is, what our reader is thinking of, and what our reader needs. Instead, we focus on ourselves: "What do I want to say here?" and "What do I find important?"
Pitfall
If you are only focused on yourself, you will not be seeking to communicate in a way that makes sense to your reader.
Many readers struggle to read academic articles. But you can make a difference by making your article easy to read and thus increasing its reach.
There is one basic way to improve your writing skills: shift your perspective.
Welcome to ReallyWrite
· 2 min read
Better academic writing starts here.
We simplify the most relevant ideas about clear writing for academics, researchers, scientists, lawyers, and anyone else!
The ReallyWrite Editor is a free editing tool for informative writing. It gives you line-by-line feedback your text based on established writing principles. Just paste a section of text into the app and start revising!
new to writing?
You may not be familiar with all the principles that ReallyWrite evaluates in your text. Don't worry, you're in good company! Many people do not write consciously-- they are unaware of the underlying principles that impact clarity.
If you don't understand the issue that the ReallyWrite Editor points out, you can just click to the learn page to learn how it works. If you need more explanation, later you'll be able to sign up for an extensive online course or schedule a one-on-one feedback session with an experienced writing teacher.
The teachers will not edit your text for you: they will talk you through what is happening in your text so that you understand how to fix it. We want you to learn to do it well yourself -- and to share that information with others!
If we can make this information freely available worldwide, then everyone who aspires to advance their field by writing about their research clearly has the support to do so.
We also hope to give you the confidence and courage to dare to write clearly, especially early in your career.