The 4 Essential Academic Writing Formats You Must Know

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academic writing formats
  • 16 May
  • 2023

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Learning about the basics of academic writing involves familiarizing yourself with academic writing formats. Our Academic Writing Basics course has covered the subject, which forms the basis of our discussion. It’s not enough to know academic writing features, characteristics, types of academic writing, and the best ways to observe its rules. This information is pointless if you don’t know the most important part of scholarly literature – academic writing formats.

Academic writing formats form the heart of any piece of scholarly paper and practice in academic writing. Scholarly writing exists because of the framework academic writing referencing styles provide to guide obtaining, discussing, and presenting academic information. Therefore, meeting academic writing standards mandates academic writers to learn about the origin, types, and characteristics of academic writing formats.Let us introduce the considerations you must know before we introduce the first referencing style: APA format.

The Origin of Academic Writing Formats

Academic writing formats, also known as referencing styles, are products of publishing companies and scholarly associations. Only one format is attributed to an academic institution (Chicago style) and another is associated with an academic institution yet isn’t truly the institution’s product (Harvard style). These formats introduce referencing methods academic scholars and writers should use in their work.

Referencing is an approach that writers use to demonstrate their thoroughness in conducting an appropriate search of literature and reading. You may define referencing as a method for giving credit to information sources that have influenced your writing. The concept (referencing) serves to:

  • Acknowledge the ideas and written information from another author, which a writer includes in their work.
  • Enable the scholar to conduct research successfully.
  • Provide readers with evidence of how the writer conducted the research.
  • Enhance the presentation of the writing by showing its basis in knowledge and demonstrating academic reading as the information source.
  • Enable readers to give the writer credit for the work quality and research efforts as they trace sources used in the writing’s development.
  • Avoid accusations of plagiarism.

The Purpose of Academic Writing Formats

Note that the purpose for academic writing formats existing is different from the need for referencing. Referencing styles are tools that facilitate referencing by dictating all the considerations involved in obtaining and using information for academic purposes. Referencing, on the other hand, address organizing the information obtained according to academic standards. Having explored the need for referencing, the tools that enable referencing (referencing styles) are crucial because they:

  1. Enable a logical flow of ideas.
  2. Provide proper credit to appropriate sources of information.
  3. Provide a consistent and predictable organization method.
  4. Restriction to language that affirms human worth and dignity.
  5. Facilitates planning for ethical compliance
  6. Provides an opportunity to report important research protocol details, which readers can use to evaluate findings and researchers can use to replicate studies.
  7. Provide a system to present data in a consistent and engaging method.

Types of Academic Writing Formats

There are three main academic writing formats used in academic writing by students, namely APA, MLA, and CMS (Turabian style). The training shall cover all three, and include a fourth format known as Harvard style. Each format has a specific mode of document presentation, creation of citations, and referencing. The specifications only apply to academic publications. We shall discuss the academic standards for each format in this segment.

A distinction has been made in the form of two types of academic formats. Academic writers may use either a referencing style or a referencing system. A referencing style refers to a generic citation approach, whose style may vary because there lacks a single authority to standardize the stylistic approach to use. Examples of such academic formats include Harvard, Oxford, and Vancouver. A referencing system, on the other hand, refers to a citation style with a systemized approach published in a style guide by an authoritative figure. Examples of such formats include APA, MLA, Chicago, and IEEE. Both formats rely on citations, which are the basic information that enables a reader to identify and locate a publication used within a published text.

How to Choose an Academic Format to Use

The choice of a referencing style depends on various factors. The main determinant would be the recommendation an instructor gives. The academic writing format an instructor recommends, which may be according to personal preference, is the most suitable to use. Otherwise, the discipline a subject area falls under can inform the type of style to choose. Priorities tend to differ per class, so a reference style may suit one subject but be insufficient for another area.

Another consideration is the academic expectations. Different standards would apply to papers for publication compared to mid-term assignments. The final factor is the research aims an assignment seeks to fulfill. A paper that requires a lot of citations can apply MLA to cite page numbers without interrupting the flow of arguments. A scientific paper that requires numerous citations for studies would work well with Chicago or APA. Whatever approach becomes suitable should enable academic writers to avoid plagiarism by providing accurate citations.

Characteristics of Academic Writing Formats

Academic writing formats tend to take two styles for referencing. They can be either author-date systems or documentary-note styles. The author-date approach (aka parenthetical system) uses the author name and publication date within the text. Documentary-note styles (aka note system or notes and bibliography system) use footnotes at the bottom of each page, which indicate the author. Endnotes may be used at the end of a paper instead of footnotes. Footnotes use a superscript number while endnotes use a number within square brackets at the end of the information. A third, less common referencing style category, numbered styles (numeric system), which uses Arabic numbers, either in superscript or square brackets, and lists references in a numbered list on the last page.

An additional consideration in note and numeric systems may apply. You may use a citation-sequence or citation-author approach for referencing. Citation-sequence uses superscript numbers in citations, which correspond to a numbered but non-alphabetized entry (not organized according to alphabetical order) in the reference list. Citation-author uses numbered and alphabetized references (organized according to alphabetical order) in the reference list. In-text citations for the references use superscript numbers. Citations in numbering styles can also be consecutive or recurring.

  • Consecutive numbering involves numbering in-text citations and using a new number whenever you cite a reference. References appear in the reference list according to their numerical order of use in the text.
  • Recurrent numbering also involves using numbered citations but which reuse a number if a reference is re-used within the text. References also appear according to their numerical order of use within the text when compiled in the reference list.

The two approaches determine the presentation of references in the reference list.

Parts of Referencing Styles

Each referencing style contains two parts. Part one includes citations and the other is a reference list. Citations appear within the main body of the text as in-text citations, footnotes, or numbered entries. Their purpose is to indicate details about the source of an idea the text presents if another author developed the concept. Such ideas can include direct quotes and summaries or paraphrased information.

The sources of information a writer needs to reference should reflect the interpretations, facts, ideas, words, or theories from another source of work. These may arise from a quotation, in which the writer copies words in their exact form. The same also applies when summarizing and paraphrasing, whereby a writer uses a fact or idea from another piece of writing without following the exact wording.

Reference Presentation

Another common characteristic among academic writing formats is inserting a list of all the sources a document has used on the last page. The list may take the form of a bibliography or a reference list. The reference list appears after the main body of the text to provide more details about the publications referenced within the text through the citations. Details to capture for the references include:

  • Authors/editors
  • Publication date
  • Item title

Other details writers can incorporate, depending on the source of information, can include:

  • Publisher name
  • Location of publication
  • Page numbers
  • Volume number
  • Issue number
  • Webpage address (URL)
  • Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
  • Report numbers
  • Secondary authors for books or conference material
  • Secondary titles in books or conference titles
  • Journal titles
  • Date of access

References in the list may take the form of a bibliography. A bibliography includes sources of information a writer has consulted while researching but failed to cite in the paper. Such items would appear in a separate list after the reference list under a section titled ‘Bibliography’. Such material will provide the reader with evidence of your extra research effort. You would use the bibliography only when required to do so after inserting the reference list.

Information Sources

Sources of information on academic writing formats

We have cross-checked our learning material on academic writing formats against other academic publications to ascertain the quality of our information. Doing so has allowed us to ensure the descriptions and illustrations we provide for concepts the lessons discuss are accurate and up-to-date. Some of the methods we use may be inaccessible in other publicly-available academic literature because they are our inventions. However, any other approach we have not developed is accessible through academic literature available for public use. Academic publications we have used to cross-check the academic writing concepts we have captured include:

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