Te Kete Wānaka
Learning, Teaching and Library
Polishing your writing
Academic writing has its own set of rules. Here you’ll find advice on how to write correctly and in an appropriate style.
Here we have advice on how to take your academic writing to the next level.
Writing accurately and using appropriate academic vocabulary are key skills for success at university and in your future career. Check out our helpful tips for clearer sentences.
Sentence structure
Using different types of sentences allows you to highlight different relationships between ideas and to add variety to your writing. This tip sheet on sentence structure is designed to help you to construct sentences accurately, so that your meaning is clear.
How to include and cite summaries, paraphrases and quotes
Here are tips on how to 'fine tune' the way you include and cite summaries, paraphrase and quotes so that they support your points and are smoothly integrated with the rest of your writing.
Bonus resource – Academic Phrasebook
This Academic Phrasebank is an excellent resource that provides a wide range of phrases commonly used in research writing (Collated by University of Manchester). This resource will help you expand the range of phrases you use in your academic writing.
Punctuation basics
Punctuation helps the reader to understand the meaning of your sentences. The helpful punctuation basics booklet has information about some of the basics of punctuation, especially aspects which are important in academic writing.
Tense use in academic writing
Using different tenses can change the meaning of your sentences. This summary of tense use in academic writing covers the most commonly used tenses in undergraduate academic writing, with lots of examples and explanations of their uses. Tense use in academic writing...for writing about research provides more detail about common uses of tense in writing up research.
Using linking words in sentences
Find out more about how to correctly include linking words in your sentences.
Using relative clauses
Tips on when to use 'which' and 'that', and how to write reduced relative clauses.
Articles for common nouns
If you have difficulty deciding whether to use 'a', 'an', 'the', or no article, check out our tips on using articles with common nouns.
Revising, editing and proofreading are essential stages in the writing process, not just an optional extra to be done only when you have time. There are strategies you can use that will help make your revising more effective:
- After writing your draft, leave it for a few days before revising, so you can look at it with fresh eyes.
- Get feedback from someone else on the general clarity and sense of your writing.
- Don’t try to check for everything at once. Use a revision checklist to identify and prioritise the features you want to concentrate on; then read through your draft for one feature at a time. Using a checklist is one way to edit more effectively – even professional writers use them. You could use either this essay checklist or this report checklist to ask yourself about the content, structure and style of your work. Even better, adapt one of the checklists to suit your own needs.
- Adapting a check list allows you to build up your own personal revision checklist, particularly for editing and proof-reading at the sentence and word level (for identifying grammar, spelling and punctuation errors).
For your checklist
Identify the errors you commonly make. Use the marker's comments on completed assessments or ask for feedback on your writing from a friend or Academic Success.
Rank the errors so that you can concentrate on the types that are most common for you and/or those that are most serious. Find out how to correct the errors. Book an appointment with Academic Success to chat about this or use a basic self-help grammar book. These will have specific strategies that you can use to find and fix the errors in your writing.
- Once you are ready to check your paper at the sentence and word level, print it out and use a piece of paper to hide most of the work so you are forced to read one line or sentence at a time. Also, try reading your paper aloud, slowly.
- Get into the habit of using a dictionary, a grammar book, or a style guide whenever in doubt.
- Ensure your spell check is set to NZ (or UK) spelling as that is the convention in New Zealand.
- Be very careful around the use of any apps that provide grammar and writing advice, including in MS Word. These use Artificial Intelligence and may break the guidelines around the use of AI in your assessment.