Diction in Academic Writing Academic Diction should be
Diction in Academic Writing
Academic Diction should be… • Precise, not vague (often requires specialized vocabulary) • Formal, not colloquial • Written for a subject matter expert (don’t patronize your readers) • Written in the third person • Reviewed for bias • Free of “feeling” words attributable to the author (that’s you!) • Free of cliché
Specialized Vocabulary • When to define and when to assume audience understands you? • Canonical or seminal definitions
Significance • Likelihood • Helps determine if something occurred by chance, or because of an intervention under study • Can be strong or weak • Expressed as a p-value • Smaller the p-value, more likely results are significant (more likely to be due to intervention, not chance) • If less than 0. 05 (p<. 05), results are not likely due to chance • NOT the same as practical significance • Used this way in quantitative research • Significant= intervention had an effect
Accuracy vs. Precision • Accurate: How close something is to the true value • Precise: How close repeated trials are to one another • Example: Students are running a chemistry experiment. The instructor has set up concentration of a solution at 20% Student Group A Student Group P Student Group AP Student Group NO Trial 1 20% 60% 20% 1% Trial 2 21% 60% 20% 73% Trial 3 23% 60% 20% 186% (!) Trial 4 19% 60% 20% 14%
Verbs • Avoid phrasal verbs • Verb plus a preposition • E. g. , “get out of, ” “put up with” • Tense consistency • Avoid perfect tenses, especially pluperfect • Watch tense nesting • No contractions • Precise and specific • Voice (passive in lab reports, active elsewhere)
Academic Verbs • This handout provides excellent summaries of which verbs to use in different circumstances. • Full Link: http: //www. utsc. utoronto. ca/twc/sites/utsc. utoronto. ca. twc/files/re source-files/Verbs. pdf)
Commonly Confused Words • Accept/except • Advise/advice • Among/between • Presume/assume • Casual/causal • Cite/sight • Consequently/subsequently • Correlation/causation
APA Guidelines for Language • Use labels your participants use to self-identify, except in circumstances where such language is offensive • AVOID the use of terms like “normal” that prejudge the reader • Avoid gendered pronouns • Convert nonspecific subject from singular (“Teacher”) to plural (“teachers”) • Replace pronoun (“his”) with an article (“the”) • Replace with nouns like “individual, ” “participant, ” “researcher, ” “student” • APA has specific discussions on language related to race, gender, SES, sexual identity, and disability. Go here for these resources.
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