Academic Writing: Exploring Types, Importance, and Avoid Plagiarism

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of academic writing, defining it as a specific style of writing preferred by colleges and universities to meet their academic standards. The essay explores various types of academic writings such as essays, research papers, book reviews, articles, dissertations, and reports, highlighting their unique purposes and requirements. It emphasizes the importance of academic writing in communication, developing critical thinking skills, and avoiding plagiarism through proper citation and referencing. The essay also delves into the issue of plagiarism, explaining its implications and providing practical methods to avoid it, such as direct quoting, paraphrasing, and proper citation styles (APA, Chicago, MLA). The conclusion reinforces the significance of original work and the necessity of citing sources to maintain academic integrity.

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Academic Writing
Introduction
Academic writing is writing preferred by specific university or college with an aim of fulfilling
the requirements of that particular institution’s academic standards. This, therefore, means that
every institution of higher learning has specific style and purpose for writing academic papers.
Students who are in different fields of professional study are required to understand a specific
style of academic writing. The writer of the paper needs to make the readers understand the
contents of the paper and be convinced about the whole idea. Despite the fact that different
universities prefer different writing styles, almost all the styles follow same formats and
referencing guides. The body structure of those papers are almost same as seen by the research
done by Suny Empire College. The main importance of academic papers is to communicate a
message form to writer to the reader. It is one of the ways the readers understand the
psychological makeup or the thoughts or a writer (mostly the student). However, it should be
noted that writer need to have the best grammars and flow of English. These are the basic
requirements of academic papers. They have to be written in a professional manner.
Types of Academic Writings and their Differences
The following are the types of academic papers written by different universities and colleges all
over the world. They all have different purposes and requirements;
i. Essay: this is an academic paper or writing that is written to specifically answer specific
questions. They can also be written to defend or support an argument using clear
evidences. A good essay must make good use of examples as evidence of the thoughts
expressed. When writing an essay, the writer needs to include an introduction or the
document, the body and finally a conclusion must be present as well (Driggers, 2012).

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ii. Research paper: this is another type of academic writing that is taught in many
universities and colleges around the world. The paper is normally based on research work
that was earlier done by a professor or a researcher in search of facts about a certain
concept or myth. It is always longer than an essay in terms of word count and many
more. Research paper, as reports indicate, can be written to provide interpretation of
earlier work done by different persons. Research papers are meant for the readers to
know and understand the reason why some things happen the way they do, and are longer
than essays (Flowerdew, 2000).
iii. Book review: it is also called literature review. The actions here involve someone mainly
students, reading the literature provided by the lecturers and then, writing a review of the
same (Irvin, 2010.). It may also involve providing personalized opinions about the just
read paper, but inform of writing. Other types of reviews include movie reviews, whereby
the writer or the student sis required to watch a certain movies excerpt and later provide
personal information about the same by writing down the opinions inform of academic
writing. There are different types of literature reviews as shown by oxford university.
iv. Articles: this is another type of writing that involves writings to present clear information
about different topics as given by the researcher or the lecture. The information given
may be based on research work that was completed earlier on. However, it should be
noted that articles are written for a specific audience and they are normal not read by
everyone (Lillis and Curry, 2010).
v. Dissertations, also called proposals writing: dissertation is very long in length and is
written to provide a unique discovery about a proposal or any other idea. It also has an
introductory part, and ends with a conclusion. However, the body is made up of several
sub topics and topics that guides the reader through the document. According to

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requirements by different universities across the world, there are specific people or
students who are needed to write a dissertation. These include people who are doing
masters, PhD and doctorate programs.
vi. Reports: in report writing, students or writers are given assignments whereby they read or
carry out a research and then they write their own findings and presentation about the
topic of discussions. It is normally the final work after carrying out a school or class
project. Reports can be completed using demonstrations as well (Hamilton and 2009).
Importance of Academic Writing
The most importance purpose of academic writing is to communicate to different people. Writing
also helps the lecturer to known and understand the thoughts of a student, however, the writer
must convince the reader of the lecturer about what he or she is writing. Academic papers such
as essays helps the writer to know how to formulate arguments. By so doing, the students train
themselves how to argue out their point verbally and strongly convince the opposite party on the
point of argument. People write so that they can acquire general writing skills. This is very
important when writing to communicate with people of different ranks. It is also important to
know academic writing so that one knows how to avoid copy pasting other people’s work. It is
the best way to avoid plagiarism as this kills the originality of the work. Writing helps the writer
to develop logical writing styles which is important in situations that require logical development
of scenes (Giltrow, et al, 2014).
Plagiarism and how it can be avoided
Plagiarism is where by a writer takes someone’s original written work and uses the same as if it
was his or her own original work. It shows lack of originality and creativity as well. This act is
punishable by university laws and academic regulations since every student is supposed to
present his or her own original researched work and unique (Lim and Nather, 2015).

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There are several ways of avoiding plagiarism as indicated below; where the writer needs to use
someone’s original work, she or she is required to directly quote the words used so that the
reader is able to know that those are not the original words used by the writer, but was rather
borrowed from external source. Additionally, the student or the writer needs to put references
against the borrowed words. The lecturer will be in a position to understand where the words
have been found and will not count the words as plagiarized. Students need to paraphrase words
from different authors. This means that the student will have to rewrite the same idea but avoid
using the same words as used by the original writer. Citing is also another way of avoiding
plagiarism. There are different citing styles such as APA. Chicago, MLA etc. citing work makes
the tutor know the words came from and how they have been used (Vishniac, 2012).
Conclusion
Different universities have different writing styles, referred as academic writing. These types of
writing help students become critical thinkers and to know how to argue out their points, be it in
public or in class discussions. However, students are required to present their own original work
and avoid copying work from other sources. Even if the work has been copied elsewhere, the
writer needs to cite or provide references for such a work so that it can be counted as original.

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References
Driggers, R.G., 2012. How to avoid plagiarism. Optical Engineering, vol.51,no.7, p.070101.
Flowerdew, L., 2000. Using a genre-based framework to teach organizational structure in
academic writing. ELT journal, vol.54,no.4, pp.369-378.
Giltrow, J., Gooding, R., Burgoyne, D. and Sawatsky, M., 2014. Academic writing: An
introduction. Broadview Press.
Hamilton, M. and Pitt, K., 2009. Creativity in academic writing. Why writing matters: Issues of
access and identity in writing research and pedagogy, vol.12 p.61.
Irvin, L.L., 2010. What Is “Academic” Writing?. Writingspaces, vol.1, p.3.
Lillis, T.M. and Curry, M.J., 2010. Academic writing in global context. London: Routledge.
Lim, E.Q.Y. and Nather, A., 2015. What Is Plagiarism?. Planning Your Research and How to
Write It, p.283.
Vishniac, E.T., 2012, January. What is Plagiarism?. In American Astronomical Society Meeting
Abstracts# 219 (Vol. 219).