Thin line between Academic and Newswriting

So this was also a review for me. It kinda surprises me that I remember so much from 11th grade when I first learned about writing news stories. The inverted triangle takes me back...

But now that I look at it in this chart, I didn't realize how much my news writing skills transfer over into my academic writing skills. Although the two are significantly different, some skills can and should be lent to each other. For one, wordiness should be avoided at all costs in a news story. The same thing applies to a good acadmeic piece. Even though it's important to meet the word or page quota, professors aren't all that impressed by starting a sentence with "However, the truth is, neverthe less, that unlike the something, the so-and-so is therefore much..." Okay, you get the point.

Passive voice is a big no-no too. Oops. I just used passive voice. That's probably one of the hardest habits to break as an academic or news writer. It's really difficult sometimes to write a sentence with no passive voice without sounding awkward.

As for staying unbiased, I admit that I end up writing a lot of my academic stuff without as much emotion as I used to. It's just easier to remain objective to get your point across than to throw in a bunch of "this made me feel like" nonsense...

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