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In order to write a good academic essay and thesis, you must use appropriate language and concise words (and make sure there is plenty of proofreading and editing!).


It can be hard to ensure your essay follows proper conventions so we have compiled a list of things to do and things to avoid to make your essay sound more academic.

As you plan and prepare to write the essay, you must consider what your argument is going to be. This means taking an informed position or point of view on the topic presented in the question, then defining and presenting a specific argument.

Here are the main academic format essay types:

Remember before reading this, that you should be planning your essay, and important things to remember include: thesis and introduction, a well-structured body of text, research, and more.

Contractions are the enemy of a formal academic essay. Use them in your everyday conversation, but it is important to leave them out of your essay.

Procrastination is a complex concept which manifests itself in different types of behaviour yet is experienced by individuals universally. A useful definition of procrastination is ‘the voluntary delay of important, necessary, and intended action despite knowing there will be negative consequences for this delay’ (Ferrari and Tice, 2000, Sirois and Pychyl, 2013 cited in Sirois and Giguère, 2018). The influences on procrastination are multi-faceted, which makes their study incredibly challenging. Researchers are now producing a body of work dedicated to procrastination; including meta-analyses such as those by Varvaricheva (2010) and Smith (2015). Influences on procrastination can be considered in two categories, factors with external, environmental, sources and factors with internal sources due to individual differences. However, these external and environmental categories are not completely independent of one another and this essay will seek to explore the complexities of this interdependence. This essay will discuss how different factors influence individual procrastination, by first examining how gender, age and personality affect the procrastination trait under internal factors, before discussing the external factors; how task aversiveness, deadlines and the internet affect procrastination behavioural outcomes. This will be followed by a brief exploration of how the two interact. Finally there a number of gaps in the literature, which suggest avenues for future research.

Clichés are not always obvious, so you have to be thorough in your proofreading to ensure that no clichés have made their way into your academic essay.


Below are key elements of academic essay formatting:

Rather than writing a single draft and then merely editing its sentences one by one, they attend to the whole essay and draft and redraft—rearranging the sequence of its larger parts, adding and deleting sections to take account of what they discover in the course of composition.

The format for an academic essay has three main parts:

Ensure that you use academic vocabulary in your essay to strengthen your argument. Avoid words such as think, use and lots as these sound less academic. If you’re looking for more ways on writing better then our ‘‘ may be of interest to you.

To start an academic essay, consider the following:

When writing an academic essay, there is important to use academic words throughout the paper. By writing answers to the paper questions with a well-thought-out structure and use of academic vocab, then you’ll be well on your way to pleasing the reader of your paper.

To write an academic essay, you should follow these steps:

Student essays are responses to specific questions. As an essay must address the question directly, your first step should be to analyse the question. Make sure you know exactly what is being asked of you.

[PDF] A Brief Guide to the Elements of the Academic Essay

When writing an academic essay, one of the most important things is to ensure that your argument is clear, obvious and is clearly stated in plain language.

Academic Essay: From Start to A+ Finish

Similar to topic sentences, transition sentences make your paper flow from one idea to another within a paragraph. Having these smooth transitions make your academic essay clearer and easier to read.