Composing Tasks

North American universities value a confident, direct approach, however, the tone or style for an assignment will depend on audience and purpose. Organization, word choice, and manner of addressing the audience all convey attitude and emotion to the reader. Sentence length and complexity also influence voice. For example, Writing Center handouts aim for a neutral, concise tone so writers can skim them, know what to do, and get back to their assignment. Academic writing should:

Accurately reflect research and record sources

Treat opposing views respectfully

Be analytical

Be clear

Correctly use formal grammatical structures and/or scholarly vocabulary

The main audience for most assignments is your instructor, but it is useful to imagine another set of readers in your writing. Understanding who this audience is will affect how you make your arguments and what words you choose to use. Try imagining you are writing to an audience that knows something of the subject, but wants to read what you’ve discovered.

Grammatically, voice indicates the way nouns and verbs relate to each other. Academic papers usually use the active voice because it is more direct and concise. If you want a sentence to focus on the target of an action or want to de-emphasize the actor, then the passive voice might be the better choice; however, try not to use it as your main sentence structure.

Active Voice emphasizes the subject of the sentence, and the object is its direct target: the student wrote the paper.

Passive Voice reverses the order to make the subject of the sentence the object that receives the action: the paper was written by the student.

Unless the assignment is a reflection piece, directly addressing a reader using the pronouns I, me, you, one, we, or us can cause confusion about what the subject of the sentence is and appear either too informal or even pretentious. Simply put, when choosing a point of view for an academic piece, it should be appropriate and intentional. Use first or second person at an instructor’s request, or in a first draft if it helps you construct your ideas. In fact, revising a middle draft to third person can be a great way to refine your argumentation!