Academic Writing vs Professional Writing is one of the hottest topics discussed in today’s academic and professional world. Academic and professional writing are critical writing styles every individual needs to excel. College and university students need to learn academic writing to excel academically, while professional writing will help them excel professionally. Knowing the similarities and differences between them is crucially important. You need to know their intricacies to analyze and present the information effectively in both settings.
Now, let’s look into both of them in detail.
What is Academic Writing?
Academic writing is used in academia: research papers, thesis, science-based projects, empirical evidence, and thorough research. It is a formal writing style used primarily in universities and colleges. Academic writing follows a particular writing process with specific content, structure, and style. Academic writing aims to communicate information, knowledge, and facts to the readers and present arguments and conclusions based on suitable evidence. Within this form of writing, you need to analyze the topic along with in-depth research critically. An academic writer needs to research vigorously, collect data, find evidence, and support their research with facts and figures, concluding their statement with supporting evidence.
Knowledge is crucial for academic writing; gathering ideas, facts, and research work and converting it into evidence-based information is essential. Academic writing is also known as scholarly writing and thus is divided into 4 main categories of writing: descriptive, analytical, persuasive, and critical.
These four categories are intended to be submitted in scholarly journals, reports, or edited chapters of books. Thus, students are expected to present their assignments as an essay, a research paper, a dissertation, a research proposal, a literature review, a lab report, and an annotated bibliography. Therefore, a student needs expertise in academic writing skills; they will be expected to get them published in journals and other scholarly publications. So, to get your article published in a known journal, you need to focus on its academic style, sentence structure, grammar, and style consistency.
Academic Writing Essentials
Academic writing is a formal and biased writing style. You need to follow specific criteria to get your work published. The guidelines below are your life-saving tips:
- Convey your information with evidence, not preconceptions.
- Using informal language like slang, contractions, cliches, and conversational phrases is strictly excluded. Instead, use clear and precise language and be as specific as possible. Using specialist language and jargon is necessary as it helps convey information accurately and concisely.
- Using a complicated and long-winded approach is meant for something other than academic writing. Avoid redundant phrases and replace them with straightforward ones.
- Keep your writing focused and well-structured. Academic writing is not about collecting ideas; organizing them and presenting them in a coherent structure is the essence. Consistency and well-structured content are essential.
- Academic writing is not personal reflections and opinions, so do not include your thoughts and feelings. Therefore, inspiring emotional responses from your readers is not appropriate.
- Academic writing is a formal writing technique, exaggeration or flowery language is not acceptable.
What is Professional Writing?
Professional writing is communicating a message within an organizational setting to educate, instruct, and persuade an audience. Professional writing is a concise, clear, and direct writing style that professionally conveys information and ideas to the targeted audience. Within professional writing, you use a professional, formal, and respectful tone; no emotions or conversational tone are used. Your targeted audience is your colleagues, employers, and your clients. Professional writing includes emails, newsletters, memos, press releases, project proposals, business plans, executive summaries, letters, and resumes.
Professional writing style involves conveying need-to-know information. You must be cautious with information; it has to be delivered quickly, precisely, and expected to be received right away. Time is essential in a professional setting, so in-depth presentations are unnecessary. Skimmed and quick narrations are expected within professional writing.
Professional writing has spread its distributaries in many fields; therefore, it is used by various audiences in various communication materials. From explanatory documents and articles to sales material in technical fields, professional writing skills are essential. Within the medical field, you may need professional writing skills to produce educational material. Moreover, general and business news coverage also considers this a highly potential skill.
Academic Writing vs. Professional Writing
Now, let’s look into the primary differences between academic and business writing styles. Some key differences are the purpose of writing, language, structure, audience, approach, citation, references, and types.
Purpose Of Writing:
Academic writing aims to present theoretical research on a particular topic backed up by academic references. Moreover, the academic writer narrates the acts and knowledge with the spice of their opinions in an extended document. The text focuses on the research of the topic, personal reflection, and acknowledgment is given in the end only.
Professional writing communicates the message to a targeted audience on a particular topic to influence actions. The writer is bound to any opinion and thus has to present a concise and precise document.
Language
both academic and professional writing use formal and sophisticated writing styles. However, in academic writing, formality is significantly higher. Academic writing uses discipline-specific jargon, includes scholarly sources, uses a third-person point of view, and employs a passive voice.
On the other hand, professional writing discourages jargon, uses active voice and first-person point of view, and involves limited research. Compared to academic writing, professional writing is less formal.
Structure
Academic writing structure is not only complex but reflects the complexity and analysis of the particular topic. It is an in-depth, well-structured document with long sentences, lengthy paragraphs, and high-level vocabulary.
Professional writing structure is direct yet substantial—a precise document using simple words, short sentences, and short paragraphs with visual appeal. The audience has limited time; therefore, the document must be skim-read and focus on only vital areas.
Audience
Academic writers’ audience is professors, students, researchers, and industry experts as scientists and historians. Professional writing’s targeted audience is colleagues, employers, employees, business people, managers, and clients.
Citation and References
Most importantly, academic writing must be well-cited, created, and based on previous research. Only credible and known sources are considered; Wikipedia and website information are highly discouraged. Known sources are extracted from scholarly articles and published journals that can be extracted from academic databases or university libraries. Moreover, citing your sources is equally essential, i.e. you need to acknowledge the quote or paraphrased work of other authors in your work in in-text citation and the reference list. You need to learn specific citations for academic writing, i.e., APA citation, MLA citation, Harvard Citation, and Chicago citation. These are the most common citation styles used in universities and colleges.
Professional writers do not need to follow specific guidelines in citations and references. They need to add references at the end of the document to back up their results. In-text citation is optional as compared to academic writing.
Approach
Academic writing employs an indirect approach, not directly stating the document’s purpose. The academic writers hold on to their best argument till the end, mostly in their conclusion. Their reader stays in the mystery period till the document ends. In contrast, professional writing employs a direct approach. They clarify the purpose of their writing in the first sentence or paragraph. They use cover letters, abstracts, executive summaries, and introductions to emphasize their key points.
Types
Academic writing types are research papers, thesis writing, and report writing. Whereas, professional writing is identified as reports, cover letters, business letters, emails, memorandums, presentations, grants, and proposals.
Similarities In Academic Writing And Professional Writing
Both academic and professional writing styles need formality, accuracy, clarity, unity, and simplicity. The essence of both writing styles needs practical communication skills; your message/ information needs to be delivered effectively to your potential audience. Therefore, when you are delivering the document, it should be well-structured, clear, and error-free. It should be free from grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes. It should be proofread several times to make it error-free.
Moreover, vagueness, lack of organization, and lack of supporting evidence would also categorize the document as a failure. A document flowing in all directions would interest no one; they would be bored and confused simultaneously. So, academic and professional writers should make their documents organized, adequately cited, and well-structured. They must inspire their readers, respond to their needs, target their interest with a topic, and persuade them with their findings.
Conclusion
Academic writing and professional writing are essential styles that will assist you across various life domains. Guided by experts like The Mentor and other seasoned academic writers, you can excel in college and university settings, honing your writing skills to perfection. Meanwhile, business writing, a key component emphasized by V Mentor , prepares you for success in the professional realm. Through academic writing, you not only demonstrate your research capabilities but also conduct thorough analyses on specific subjects. In the commercial and professional world, business writing enables you to inform and persuade your audience effectively, using a style that is both professional and respectful. The distinctions between academic and professional writing lie in their purpose, language, structure, audience, approach, citation references, and types, each tailored to meet different needs and expectations.
