: Re: Do academic papers have to be necessarily grammatically correct? I notice that a lot of beautiful literature contains sentences that are not grammatically correct. Here are some examples:

@Correia211

An important purpose of writing is to organize thoughts and communicate them to an audience. You would not write in French if the audience was fluent in only English. If the goal is to communicate, then all aspects of the writing should be tailored to the intended/expected audience.

The answer to your question must come more from the style guides governing publication than from some absolute rules of grammar. Most publications have some published style guide that provides insight into what is and is not acceptable for submitted works. Reading recent published works adds to the effective set of rules. Readers use these rules to understand how the material is organized and presented. Abstracts have this size and shape and appear at this point in the paper. Conclusions come here. Appendices go there. And so on.

In any case, the overriding rule is to communicate. If you write it and the reader understands it, then you are done. If you comply with every style guidance but the reader misses the point, then you are not done.

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