When we talk about academic writing, as usually refer to papers, books, chapters and dissertations. However, there’s a lot more to academic writing than just these four. Even if these are the most high stakes quartet going, there’s still more. A lot more.
This post is simply a list of the most common kinds of writing types that you will come across which all count as academic writing.
Caveats. This is not an exhaustive list. Texts which appear in one group below may equally work in another. Texts are not simply words on a page, but are variously multimodal, digital and hard copy. Some texts serve more than one purpose.
So with that in mind, here goes.
Texts that report academic work written primarily for other academics – and wehich m ay be audited:
Literature reviews and annotated bibliographies
Conference papers
Talks and presentations
Conference papers
Conference posters
Abstracts
Books and monographs
Encyclopaedia entries
Cases
Technical reports, milestone reports etc
Book chapters
Books
Dissertations
Journal articles
Comics
Novels and fiction
Poetry
Texts written about academic work usually also including non-academic audiences
News columns
Feature articles
Magazine style articles
Blog posts
Social media threads
Letters to the Editor
Podcasts
Film and video
Exhibitions
Exhibition and archival interpretative signage
Exhibition catalogues
Essays
Popular non-fiction
Texts that support academic work – some of which may also count for audit purposes
CV
Job applications
Promotion applications
Grant funding bids
Peer reviews, response to reviews and letters to journal editor
Book reviews
Work in progress presentations
Job interviews
Teaching materials
Papers about academic developments and associated presentations
Letters of recommendation and references
Emails
Each one of these text types has separate conventions, histories and reader expectations. Some of these text types are more open than others. Some of these text types are much more constrained than others. But, while some text types, such as fiction, are clearly open to creative practice and others appear to be less so, it is always possible to have a little fun with any genre.
However, my basic point here is that there are a lot of texts in academic work. And a lot that we take for granted. But each of these texts requires us to learn how they work and how we can use them for particular purposes.
Given the sheer range of text types and potential audiences we now work with, it’s little wonder that many of us choose to limit the number of text types we can conquer at any one time. We’d like to write some fiction but can’t put in the time to do the required practice. We’d like to make a comic but it would take a lot of time we don’t have.
And it is a big ask of anyone, let alone someone early in their academic career, to get on top of all of these text types at once. Yet this is of course exactly what institutions expect.
Perhaps making visible the range and varied nature of writing expected is a first step towards being able to challenge the expectations that doctoral, precarious and newly appointed colleagues be adept at all forms of academic writing? And to get some acceptance that to get to grips with all of these texts may take time – and support.
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That is very helpful!
I am wondering, how would you classify translations, translator’s prefaces, editor’s introductions, and other introductions to books and to other creative/academic works?
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You can add them to the relevant group… they aren’t comprehensive lists!
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I’d never thought about listing all of these. I think it’s pretty eye-opening.
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