Difference between Academic and Journalist Writing Styles

This report discusses the difference between academic and journalist writing styles, including their structure, language, and purpose. It also highlights the factors that make academic writing distinctive, such as objectivity, formality, precision, and hedging. Examples from various books and journals are provided to support the discussion.

UNDERSTANDING THE
SOCIAL WORLD

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Key difference between the academic and Journalist writing:....................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Writing style enables the person to develop a point or the way to convey the story, but it
should be done in a certain manner. It is the Specific way of communication of the words, writer
develops the style with tone, personality to apply it on the text (Butler, 2018). The main purpose
of the writing styles as for the consistency it helps the readers to have consistent experience,
even the content can be written by the different author. Different writing style gives the unique
approach which helps as to describing the way as how to agree people on certain point. This
report will cover the difference between the academic and journalist writing, and also define the
factors which make academic writing distinctive.
MAIN BODY
Key difference between the academic and Journalist writing:
Academic writing define as the formal style which is mainly used in the universities and for the
scholarly publications. It is written in a clear, concise structural form and it is also backed up
from the evidences. The main aspect of the academic writing is that it enhance the understanding
and knowledge of the user. It can be majorly seen in the journal articles and on books and on
academic subjects. Whereas journalist writing style is defined as it is used for the news purposes
to assemble or define the story. It is the style which is used by the journalist to put the story in
newspaper, TV, internet, they cover the stories about the social issues, crimes and politics etc.
The main difference between the academic writing and journalist writing is that journalist
writing simply define that the writing style is more lyrical more like the story telling, which can
easily help the reader to develop the interest to read the story (Rogerson, 2020). Whereas
academic writing style is much colder which involves the tough words, fewer adjectives include
the figures statistical data. For example the author Owen jones describe in the newspaper article
about the private school unfair dominance which is damaging all. In his article he use the
journalism writing style to describe the whole scenario in a story format which makes the reader
to develop understanding about the topic.
Academic writing use the hypothesis for the argument and use the evidences and logical
process to approve or disprove the text. It is aimed to be persuasive and enables the reader to
convince or agree on some points which is cooperated by the academic findings and analysis.

Whereas the journalist writing style is aim to give the facts representation as well as explanation
to the readers. Academic writing is more structured and use the English sentences in a formal
manner along with the paragraphs which reflects the discussion about the topic. On the other
hand in journalism writing the paragraph can be only one line which is aim to keep the paragraph
too short and precise and to avoid the present of the too large paragraph when writing in column
for the newspaper. For an example the journal article written by the author Rita Hordosy and
Tom clark (2018). They have used the academic tone to write the sentences in their article it
draws the attention about the trend which define the higher education approach to setting the
undergraduate course as the “human capital investment” where the staff return degree consider
as the monetary (Nikolaev, Sukhomlinova and Nikolaeva, 2021). As this paper drawn an
attention on researching the longitudinal, qualitative assessment which is followed the 40
undergraduate local student of 4 years in English Red Brick university. As for this example the
academic English focus on the colligative process which requires more diction in a formal
manner. But the journalism writing style focus on the public as to understand the topic which is
written by the author.
Another main difference is the use of commas traditionally the commas (,) used for the
journalism writing in newspaper avoid the maximum use of the comma. The writer keep it
minimum also the character space (__) is required more it is the major consideration of the writer
to put the space in the newspaper journalism writing. Journalist are tended to write in the
inverted comma style without describing the deep understanding, therefore for the journalism
writing style the main things are written in the inverted comma which attract the reader to read
the part. Unlike the academic writing style it is written in the essay format (Martin, 2021). For
example in the newspaper article it is observed that the special character to make article
interesting which is about the private school dominance, author also used the question mark
character as a form of question which enables the reader to read the whole article (Murray,
2019). The basic style of academic writing which involves the introduction about the topic, main
body and the summary, in which the introduction and the summary written in short way as
compare to the main body. The language terminology for the academic writing is that it involve
the complex Grammar, short texts, more clauses and the passives. While the journalism writing
structure is inverted pyramid form. In which the information is organized in descending order as
the main point can come first. The language terminology for this type of writing is factual

quality, in which the story is written in a colourful manner which highlights the interesting
points.
The ways which makes the academic writing distinctive:
The things which makes the academic writing different as it written in the clear or in a structured
form. It is considered as more than just a convention writing, it enables the reader to think more
logically and clears the doubt over the topic for the assignment. As the main purpose of this
writing style is that it is written to describe the ideas which enables the reader to further explains
the theory. It provide the better way of conveying the message as it written in the formal or
structure manner.
Objectivity:
Writer aims to present or describe the causes and comes at the objective point, a point which
mainly aims at and is well instructed by the findings and conceptualizing instead of describing
the personal emotional feelings and perceptions. In this writing style the use of the pronouns
which are I, We, you is avoided and instead of this it includes the subjective opinions which are
basically influenced from the personal perceptions and biases. But in other form of writing there
is no formality (Yastrebova, 2020).
Formality:
Academic writing is more explicit and gives all information to the reader which makes them
understand the topic. It uses the Spoken English language with few formal contexts. It is
depended on readers to provide the additional data to complete the sentence or message. As to
write the academic writing involves the reducing of informal words, avoidance of the rhetorical
questions for which the reader is not able to answer. This style is written in a academic
disciplines whereas other writing styles are not written in concise, formative manner.
Precision:
Precision is most important in the academic writing as it enables the writer to completely follow
the approach and argument. It enhances the likelihood which allows the reader to understand the
findings of the topic which is written in the assessment. For the academic writing it is important
to select the verbs which describes the concept succinctly, as some verbs are more imprecise for
this type of writing, in which they do not give the clear information which is essential. Therefore,
for the academic writing the use of formal language is essential.

Hedging :
Hedging process used in the academic writing aims to define the caution and to not use the
unqualified statement which can be result as disproven. For avoiding the strong meaningless
statement user can use quantifier which can be “few, many” or to use the adverbs which are
“often, usually” or to use the modals which are can, might, may (Hanoli, 2020).
Therefore, these are the factors which makes the academic writing more different from the other
form of writing. It is the formal writing style which is used in universities to prepare the
assessments.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it is concluded that both academic and journalism writing are
effective in their aspect. As for the academic writing it is more formal and involves the
complexity in languages as due to the clauses and passives. But in the case of journalism writing
it is written in the story format to make reader to understand every aspect of the study. This
report described the difference between the academic and journalism writing style along with the
examples. It also involved the discussion which is about the structure of both writing style. It
lastly described the factors which makes the academic writing different from other writing styles.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Butler, P., 2018. The Writer's Style: A Rhetorical Field Guide. University Press of Colorado.
Hanoli, V., 2020. Literary journalism as a clash of genres between journalistic literature and
fiction. UBT Knowledge Center, p.87.
Martin, J., 2021. Navigating Narrative Journalism: Blurred Boundaries and Uncertain
Beginnings. In Emotions and Virtues in Feature Writing (pp. 17-44). Palgrave Macmillan,
Cham.
Murray, R., 2019. Writing for Academic Journals 4e. McGraw-Hill Education (UK).
Nikolaev, S., Sukhomlinova, M. and Nikolaeva, S., 2021. Systemic genre-and-style relations in
the english-language student academic essay: paradigmatics, sintagmatics, epidigmatics.
In E3S Web of Conferences (Vol. 273, p. 12165). EDP Sciences.
Rogerson, K., 2020. Teaching mind style in contemporary fiction. In Teaching English
Language and Literature 16–19 (pp. 88-95). Routledge.
Yastrebova, E., 2020. Writing in Style: From a School Essay to Academic. Available at SSRN
3740101.