Most students people do not differentiate between academic versus non-academic writing. A well-written blog post is vastly different from a paper published in an academic journal.
There are many reasons why, including the following:
The purpose of an academic journal article is to share new information with other experts in your field. That means you must do extensive research using original sources and peer-reviewed literature. You also need to demonstrate that you understand the research that has already been done on your topic.
To accomplish this, you need to use a much more formal writing style. The language is more technical, and the structure is less conversational than in an article or blog post for anyone other than experts.
For example, academic writing requires precise citations. Rather than signal phrases like “according to” or “as Sternberg (1985) stated,” academic writers include quotation marks and page numbers so their sources can be easily located.
Article/Blog Writing takes many shapes and forms depending on what the author’s objectives are, who they’re trying to reach with their message, and how they go about doing it. While articles may contain some of the same components as academic journal articles.
Article/Blog Writing is divided into sub-categories, the most common of which are feature articles, op-eds, and blog posts. Many newspapers have weekly or monthly column space devoted to an Opinion Page that features editorial pieces by academic experts. These are also known as opinion editorials or Letter to the Editor.
Feature articles are longer than op-eds–which usually run between 1000-2000 words–and may go through several rounds of editing before publication. A feature article might use extensive quotes from interviews with experts, whereas an op-ed piece often limits quotes to one or two sentences at most.
Sometimes academics write blogs for popular magazines like Psychology Today. Blogs typically follow the same format as online news stories. They include lots of quotes; they’re written in the present tense; and they may include some personal anecdotes.
The bottom line is that article/blog writing can be a great way to get your research out into the world, but you need to know where it fits within the structure of a particular publication. That’s why it’s important to understand different types of articles and blog posts before you start writing.
Knowing how your piece fits into its genre will help you figure out what sorts of sources to use, who might be interested in reading about your topic, and where it might fit within publication guidelines.
An essay can be thought of as a short piece of prose writing on some particular subject. There are several different types of essays, all with their own unique style and purpose – descriptive essays, reflective essays, argumentative essays etc.
You probably have heard of at least one or two types already. Knowing which type of essay to write is important because the type that you choose effects how your paper looks in terms of its structure, content, organization etc., but more importantly, they effect what your reader gets out of it.
For example, let’s say you are writing a descriptive essay on some famous painting, but you only have a week to finish it. If this is the case, then what should your main focus be? Content? Structure? Organization?
The answer: content. A descriptive essay is meant to give the reader a clear and detailed description of something – in this case, a painting. Whether or not your paper has good structure and organization does not matter as much as the fact that you described the painting well . The point is that whichever type of essays you write, they all have specific purposes and goals which are outlined by their types.
To help you further understand what differentiates an essay from a blog article , here’s some helpful information on both.
Summary on the difference between academic and article writing
For example, compare these two sentences: “The people were tired of living under a ruler that was corrupt. They wanted someone who would run the country fairly instead.”
This is what an essay looks like when it’s written in complete paragraphs.
Vs…
“The people were tired of living under a ruler that was corrupt. They wanted someone who would run the country fairly instead.”
This is how it might look if it were written without paragraph breaks because of its informal nature. As you can see, this blog post doesn’t have an argument, but it still has most of the characteristics of an essay.
Now let’s take a look at blogs…
A blog is something you write for free on the internet with the intention of entertaining or informing people. Although there are many different types of blogs (such as informative, personal etc.), they all basically contain information that is written by someone who knows what they’re talking about – meaning that the writer is experienced in their field and does not need to do extensive research to provide accurate facts.
Most bloggers either write about their personal experiences (which is called a personal blog) or they write articles that either inform, entertain or both for other people (which is called an article blog).
As you can see, there is a big difference between an essay and a blog. If you were choosing between two different types of writing for school, make sure you know what the expectations will be for each one: whether they want a written essay filled with facts and research or merely something informal and entertaining – like a blog post. Then make your choice accordingly!
