US Academic Writing for College: Ten Features of Style

Written by Rene D. Caputo

One big shift from high school to college is that different disciplines of academia have distinct approaches to writing. That is, writing a lab report for your biology course differs substantially from writing a policy memo or a literary analysis of a Shakespearean play.

That’s not surprising, right? (After all, you don’t expect every conversation you take part in to have the same structure or approach to content.)

But while it’s impossible to generalize that academic writing for your various college courses in the United States would be approached in the same way, professors here often have some similar expectations on writing style. Intercultural preferences for writing style tend to vary, so some of the stylistic choices we’ll explore may differ from those you may have learned elsewhere.

What are some typical features of US academic writing at the college level? We’ll walk you through 10 of them!

1. Being direct: structure

The overall structure of college-level papers will likely differ from what you might have learned in high school—the five-paragraph essay format in the United States or perhaps a different standard structure in another culture of writing. The five-paragraph essay tends to first introduce several points that will be made, spend one paragraph on each of those points, and conclude by summarizing what was said.

In college, you’ll tend to create a more complex essay than that. (For more information on moving beyond the 5-paragraph essay, check out this handout from the Writing Center of UNC-Chapel Hill.) Your essay’s structure will largely be driven by your paper’s thesis statement, which proposes your main argument or idea. In college courses in the US, this typically means that your thesis statement will be stated early in a paper.

One professor told me that when he reads a student paper whose main idea or thesis is stated at the end of the paper, he assumes that the student has turned in a first draft. That’s because in the United States, students are often expected to share the thesis—again, your main argument—near the beginning of the paper. But that structure would not be typical in some other cultures of writing, where stating the main idea so early might be considered rather abrupt.

Support for your thesis (in the form of evidence and analysis) in US college writing should be directly shared with readers throughout your paper. For more information on thesis statements and support, check out features 4 and 5 below.

A stereotype about US writing 

You might hear that in the United States a writer should “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.”

The “tell them, tell them, tell them” stereotype is partially true, but is also a bit too simplistic. You don’t want the conclusion, for example, to simply repeat or summarize what you’ve said earlier in your paper (your reader got it the first time). Instead, extend and expand upon your ideas somewhat in the conclusion (sometimes, for example, by discussing wider implications—”“to draw conclusions” doesn’t mean “to end”), but don’t completely surprise your reader with a set of new ideas. See the Conclusions section of our literary analysis resource for additional guidance.

Key takeaway: While you don’t want your writing to be overly repetitive, you do want your readers to be able to understand the structural logic of your papers. And that logic—for college writing in the United States—tends to be fairly predictable. Straightforward. Linear.

Paragraph structure

Body paragraphs (i.e. the paragraphs that fall between your introductory and conclusion sections) also have a standard structural model you can use.

The opening sentence often serves as a topic sentence, alerting the reader to the main topic of the paragraph. After sharing that overview, you might include more specific details about the idea you have introduced. And you’d provide evidence and analysis to support those ideas. The end of the paragraph will often provide a link—or transition—to the next paragraph.

This structure of a paragraph is sometimes called the MEAL plan. This Duke Writing Studio handout explains the MEAL plan approach in detail for you. 

What are some typical sections that scholars use in academic writing when structuring an argument? 

• Context. You’ll often open by sharing some background of the issue you’re going to discuss so that your reader will have some preparation for better understanding your paper.

• Thesis statement. You will often share your main claim or argument somewhere near the beginning of your paper. Making this statement compelling—grabbing your readers’ attention—can help them care more about what you’ll say next.

• Literature review. Through your literature review, you inform the reader of the perspective of various scholars on the issue your paper addresses. Creating a literature review shows that you are aware of what other scholars have written about the topic. And it gives your readers a sense of where your paper fits within that context.
  
  Purdue’s Online Writing Lab also offers guidance on writing a literature review. You can see where the literature review fits within a sample APA paper here.

• Counterargument. At some point, you will likely want your reader to know that you’re aware of a scholarly perspective that does not agree with yours. In a counterargument, you fairly and honestly lay out that opposing argument, then explain why your perspective is the stronger one, supporting that view with evidence and analysis. Be careful to choose a reasonable counterargument to defend your argument against. And be aware that if you don’t present the other perspective in a fair manner, your reader might not take you seriously.
  
  Here’s more detail on arguments and counterarguments from the Writing Center of UNC-Chapel Hill. And this HarvardWrites resource addresses the possible structural pieces of an academic argument.

2. Creating a thesis statement and sharing your opinion

College writing assignments in the U.S. often ask students to share their opinions and to support those opinions with evidence, possibly from research (i.e., readings, interviews, experiments). You typically will not be asked to simply share the opinions of experts (your professor or the authors of academic journal articles or textbooks). And you will generally be asked to go beyond summarizing the materials you read. In US college writing, your well-supported opinion will take center stage.

Rather than writing a research paper that simply summarizes facts or information that you’ve gathered, you will often be asked to create a paper that shares an argument or thesis statement, also called a central claim. This claim or statement will often serve as a foundation for your paper. 

Writing a thesis statement takes a bit of practice. Start with your basic idea and then polish it.

Two pieces of the puzzle:

1.  Your thesis statement should go beyond simply stating a fact.

2. Your thesis statement should say something that some scholars might disagree with. 

Let’s take a look at an original thesis statement and its revised version from the Writing Studio at Duke University.

Here’s an attempt at a claim about two cities in North Carolina:

“Durham and Chapel Hill have much in common, but are also different.”

True. But that’s going to fail as a good thesis—it’s essentially a statement of fact, and (because of that) you’d be hard pressed to find scholars who would disagree.

And it’s not particularly interesting. Readers might say, “So what?” 

Here’s an improved version:

“Although Durham’s industrial past has created a more deeply troubled economic caste system than found in Chapel Hill, it has also created greater cultural diversity that is helping to guide the city’s renewal.”

This thesis statement shares much more detail than the original statement, and we can imagine that a reader might find something here to disagree with (for example, about the economic caste system, or diversity helping drive renewal). It’s also more compelling—it piques curiosity in a way that might draw a reader into reading more of the paper. 

For more in-depth guidance on building a better thesis, see our How to Write a Strong Argument resource. 

3. Providing evidence and analysis

If your paper shares a main claim that you believe is true, your professor will expect you to provide evidence and analysis to defend it. What type of evidence might be expected will depend on what kind of course you’re taking.

Your biology professor might expect you to share evidence from an experiment that you’ve done and/or from related experiments that others have conducted. If you’re analyzing a poem for an English course, you might include some lines from that poem to support your ideas.

The chart at the top of this Rider College page shares some details on different types of evidence used in different disciplines. That chart’s information comes from page 103 of the book A Writer’s Reference with Writing in the Disciplines by author Diane Hacker.

4. Providing clear transitions

Your professors will expect you to provide connections between your ideas throughout your paper. If you do not create those connections, a professor might say that your paper lacks clarity or flow.

You can prepare your reader for what’s coming next—and clarify your perspective—by providing connections between sentences, paragraphs, and sections of your paper. 

These transitions can take different forms. Sometimes, you might simply use a transition such as “in contrast” to indicate (not surprisingly!) a contrast. Or perhaps you might use a phrase such as “the effect of…”  to indicate a cause and effect relationship. In some cases, you might create a sentence that relates to a previous paragraph and then moves your idea forward. Perhaps a new paragraph might open with “One of the main advantages of x is…”  This opening would suggest that the writer had discussed x in the previous paragraph.

For more, the University of Melbourne offers specific words/phrases you can use depending on the relationship between the pieces you’re trying to connect, as does this Writing Center at UNC-Chapel Hill handout.

5. Citing sources 

In your US college courses, you will need to carefully inform your reader of where the ideas you’re sharing came from. We call this sharing of information about your sources citing or providing a citation. Not citing your sources can lead to charges of plagiarism, a very serious academic offense—one that can even lead to expulsion.

For example, for a source with written text, you would share:

• Who the author was

• What article, book, or website you read

• When that text was published

When you use exact language from a source, you’ll need to put those specific words within quotation marks. Otherwise, your professor might think that you’re trying to pretend that you wrote those particular words.

When you’re sharing the ideas of another author or scholar while using your own words and sentence structures (i.e. paraphrasing), you’ll still need to tell readers what sources you consulted.

Citing sources well takes knowledge and practice, so we’ve created resources to carefully guide you on these matters:

• What are citations? 

• Avoiding plagiarism

6. understanding Intercultural norms of citation and memorization

Again, the consequences for plagiarizing and not citing your sources can be severe in U.S. colleges, perhaps more so than in some other cultures. A student might fail a course, be suspended for a semester, or even be expelled from their US school. Do not assume that nothing will be done if you plagiarize. 

In some cultures, students are expected to memorize definitions and other material from textbooks exactly—and to share that as exactly as possible from memory when they’re asked a question in class or on an exam.

However, this is not a typical practice for students at colleges in the United States, so be very careful. In the United States, when taking a quiz or exam or writing a paper, you would not want to use much text you had memorized from a textbook or other reading, even if it shares common knowledge. If what you wrote in an exam had a lot of memorized text from your textbook, your professor might think that you cheated. And if that memorized material were in your paper, it would be easy for your US professor to decide that you were plagiarizing.

7. Being direct: language 

In US academic writing, writers tend to say something directly so that their readers will more easily understand their message. Aim for this style of clarity in your writing for US college courses. In some writing cultures, the reader has more responsibility for understanding what was written, and the writer has less responsibility. In those cultures, it might be more acceptable to not directly state one’s ideas, and it would be more natural to not indicate exactly what nouns the pronouns represent. In cultures where the writer tends to be less direct than in US academic writing, a paper that is too direct and obvious in sharing ideas might be considered insulting to a reader’s intelligence.

However, in US college settings, the responsibility is on the writer to compose papers that their readers can easily understand. Readers should typically not have to read between the lines; the meaning should be stated in a straightforward manner. Here are some common ways you can strengthen the clarity of your writing:

Clarify what or whom your pronouns refer to

Your text should clearly identify what he, she, it, and other pronouns represent. In some cultures of writing, identifying what each separate pronoun represents is not the norm, but you need to clearly identify those when writing for your US college courses.

• Less clear: When the group of students brought their concerns to the director, she asked to see them. 

• Problem: Did the director ask to see the students? Or ask to see their concerns?

• Clearer: When the students brought a document with their concerns to the director’s office, she invited them in and asked to see it. 

Clarify what “this” or “these” refers to

When you use a word such as this, that, these, or those, your meaning will tend to be clearer if you add a noun or noun plus an adjective afterward.

• Less clear: This had a major impact on the rights of laborers.

• Clearer: This legislation had a major impact on the rights of laborers.

• Even clearer: This legislation had a major positive impact on the rights of laborers.

Be specific 

Do not use a noun whose meaning is quite general when you could choose a more specific noun.

• Less clear: People have discovered that …

• Problem:  What specific people does this mean?

• Clearer: Researchers have discovered that …

• Even clearer: Research geneticists have discovered that …

8. Writing concisely

Being concise means using fewer words to share an idea. You want to clearly articulate an idea, but the aim is to do that quickly and concisely when possible.

Try to avoid overly complicated sentences and unnecessary repetition. In US academic writing, you will frequently remove repetition that doesn’t add depth to the meaning conveyed.

How could the sentence below be made concise?

The educational norms of participation in college classes in the United States have some aspects that are different from the educational norms of participation in colleges in Japan. 

Look for repetition and unnecessary words: 

• That are different = that differ

• “The educational norms of participation in college” doesn’t need to be fully repeated 

Try to rewrite the original sentence before reading onward. 

One possible rewrite:

The educational norms of college participation in the United States differ from those in Japan. 

Our new sentence is much shorter, but shares the same information as the original. And its meaning remains clear! Your professors in the U.S. might tend to prefer the revised version to the wordier original.

Reducing nominalizations

One strategy for making sentences more concise is to shift abstract nouns to verbs (or to avoid turning what probably should have been verbs into nouns). Professor Helen Sword calls such abstract nouns “zombie nouns.” Beware of those Zombie Nouns!

Using strong verbs instead of such abstract nouns is referred to as “reducing nominalizations.” Let’s take a look at how that works. 

In the sentence below, what zombie noun could be shifted to a verb?

The director suggested we make an adjustment to the program schedule.

Hint: make an adjustment …

The zombie noun is adjustment. (“An adjustment” is the noun form of the verb “to adjust”)

So, try revising the sentence to be more concise:

The director suggested we make an adjustment to the program schedule.

What could the new sentence look like? 

Maybe:

The director suggested that we adjust the program schedule.

Or:

The director suggested we adjust the program schedule. 

For more on this topic, check out these CEG resources: 

• How to Edit a College Essay

• College-Level Writing

9. Writing precisely 

Aim to use strong, specific verbs in your writing. When you do this consistently, your writing will be clearer and more impactful. 

Let’s consider a few strategies for strengthening verbs:

Sample sentence:

There are some students who are continually involved in volunteer work and have a lot of compassion for others.

Strategy 1:

Try to replace forms of the verb “to be” (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, and been) with more specific verbs.

What weak verbs do you notice in that sentence? Perhaps you notice “are” and “are” there.

Strategy 2:

If a sentence uses forms of the verbs have, make, or get, try to replace those with more specific verbs.

Apply these two strategies as you revise the sample sentence: 

There are some students who are continually involved in volunteer work and have a lot of compassion for  others.

Hint 1: What’s a verb for “involved in volunteer work”?

Hint 2:  Does the sentence need “there are”?

Hint 3: What’s a verb that might work well with “compassion”? See what you find at the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary or in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English          

— — —

Answer 1:  volunteer

Answer 2:  probably not

Answer 3:  feel, show, demonstrate

Your revised sentence? 

Perhaps:

Some students who continually volunteer demonstrate a lot of compassion for others. 

Strategy 3:

If a draft includes verb phrases that have two or three parts, try to replace those multi-part verbs with one-word verbs.

For example: 

We will look into that question during our research study. 

What one-word verb could replace “look into”? Perhaps: investigate, explore…

Avoiding generalizations

For academic writing in the United States, we tend to avoid using words such as always, never, everyone, and all.

Why avoid such absolutes? Because there might be an exception.

At an international conference, one scholar said that she tells her international students that readers in most countries in the world understand that “always” does not actually mean always, but that in the United States, academic readers somehow don’t understand that. The scholar was joking, but wanted her students to remember to avoid using absolute words in their US academic writing!

Alternatives? You could instead consider choosing words such as: often, rarely, sometimes, most …

10.  Choosing the appropriate vocabulary for your audience

In some academic cultures of writing, students are expected to try to impress readers with their vocabulary. That’s typically not the case in US academic writing for undergraduate students. (In fact, Professor Daniel Oppenheimer has demonstrated that using “more impressive” vocabulary can actually hurt perceptions of your writing.)

Avoid thesaurusitis (overuse of a thesaurus)

When choosing vocabulary, consider the situation, your audience, and your purpose, but do not continually use the biggest words that you find in a thesaurus when you are writing papers. Doing so can lead to your writing sounding artificial and possibly pretentious. And because it’s possible that you do not yet know how to appropriately use those words (differences in connotation and usage can be subtle), incorporating them could make your writing feel awkward. You might even end up communicating something you don’t really mean to.

What words might someone use to convey the idea of the word “important”?

• Examples: Big, big-league, great, meaningful, significant, momentous, weighty, salient, grave, pressing

When considering word choice, reflect on the following questions: 

• Which words sound the most informal or casual?

• Which words feel a bit more formal, but comfortable for you to use?

• Are there any that you’re not quite sure how to use? 

Generally speaking, you'll want to use words that fall into that second category, meaning you understand their meaning and they are formal in tone.

Perhaps you could try to learn how to use those unfamiliar words, but not actually use them just yet. Two good dictionaries for exploring words online are the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 

Conclusion

We’ve explored aspects of style with you here that are often considered best practices for US academic writing in college. As we mentioned at the start, however, writing can vary depending on the disciplinary focus of a particular course. And your professors might share other style preferences with you.

For some resources for writing in specific fields:

Here is our guide to writing history. Guides for field-specific writing are offered by the Writing Center of UNC-Chapel Hill for Literature, Political Science, and the Sciences, among others. And if you’re interested in learning about particular genres of college writing, take a look at these guidelines from Duke University.

Special thanks to Rene D. Caputo for writing this post and contributing to other College Writing Center resources