: Re: How to write in an academic way and sound professional? For example, how could I write the following sentences in an academic way? After I have contacted Dr. .., he has accepted to be on
Generally, when I had to write grant proposals and other professional scientific materials for my administration, I followed a few guidelines:
No contractions or slang, and try especially hard to avoid typos and grammatical errors.
For example, you seem to have a grammatical error in "if you are interesting" ("if you are interested"). You also appear to have placed a comma where you should have put a semicolon ("...on my supervision panel; he told me...") Even where you've written "After I have contacted..." that should probably be "After I contacted." Overall, the grammar of this piece of writing needs a bit of work, unfortunately.
Mistakes reduce the professional sound of your writing, and while you should avoid this in any piece of writing, you should especially be careful in professional writing. My research group had a grant proposal sent back for revision due to a mistake in one of our subheadings.
Speak in the third person, and use passive voice.
Instead of saying, "I measured the properties of the chemical," you would say, "The properties of the chemical were measured." This seems very counterintuitive, because active voice is highly encouraged over passive voice in narrative writing, but in professional and technical writing, passive voice is actually the way to go most of the time.
Use compound sentence structure, and avoid fragments and short sentences.
In narrative writing, it's perfectly fine to use fragments and shorter, choppier sentences, and many people use it as an integral part of their style. However, in professional writing, you want all of your sentences to be clear, complex and fully fleshed out, with commas and connectors appropriately placed. Instead of saying:
The substance was placed in the accelerator. The accelerator was turned on. The reaction was observed. The results were recorded.
You would probably revise it to say:
The substance was placed in the accelerator, after which the accelerator was turned on; following this, the reaction was observed and the results were recorded.
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