Academic Styles of Writing

This essay defines academic writing in addition to the importance. Furthermore, the essay will narrate five academic styles of writing namely: Narrative, persuasive, creative, descriptive and expository. The essay will give a brief overview of each style and their differences. However, this essay concentrates on descriptive and narrative writing in relation to nursing profession. It also emphasis on the importance on how the two writing styles overlap with each other. The characteristics of descriptive writing and how is related to nursing profession. It also demonstrates and identify how this can be related to a good nursing practice.

Academic writing is a style used in a formal writing such as: essay, report, official email within a workforce and a studying environment. Library.leeds.ac.uk, (2019), Academic writing should focus on purpose, clear, formal in tone and supported with evidence to give the reader a clear understanding of the write up. The five main styles of writing includes:  Creative, Narrative, Descriptive, persuasive and Expository. Libguides.usc.edu, (2019), defines academic writing as a style of expression used to develop intellectual boundaries in various disciplines or areas of expertise.

Expository writing explains and exposed a particular story. It also includes essays, newspaper, magazine articles, instruction manuals, textbooks, encyclopedia articles and other forms of writing, (Study.com, 2019).

Persuasive writing is a piece of writing that enables the writer to use words to convince or persuade the reader that the writer’s opinion is correct in regard to an issue. It is often used for advertising copy, which is written in an attempt to attract and convinced the reader, (Definitions.net, 2019).

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Creative writing definition is rather loose, or can be considered as any writing that is original and self-expressive, (Reading Rockets, 2019). Creative writing draws on many areas of knowledge and understanding yet it is peculiar not only in how it uses these areas, incorporating them into creative writers actions and into the artefact that emerge because of these action but also in how it negotiate between our personal and public human world, (Donnell, D & Harper, G. 2012).

Descriptive writing – (Reading Rockets, 2019). Argued that purpose of descriptive writing is to paint a picture in the reader’s imagination by describing a person, place or thing in such a way that a picture can be visuallised in the readers mind. Descriptive writing involves paying attention to the details by using all of your five senses. Cory, H. (1999) argued that a descriptive essay will be specific, descriptive in detail, precise in word and surprise the reader.

Narrative writing is based on real facts which consists newspapers, essays, reports, and other informative writings. There are many attribute associated to every piece of narrative writing. However, stories must have characters, also known as the people or subjects of the story which are needed in order to create or developed a story. One of the most important factors of a story is the conflict. A conflict is any struggle between opposing forces. Therefore, stories without problems whereby the characters simply lived their happy lives will be difficult to deal with. Such story will not interest the reader. Conflict is very important to narrative writing.

Both narrative and descriptive writing follows the same writing format with an introductory, body, and concluding paragraphs. The major difference between the two is that narrative writing includes action, while descriptive writing does not. A descriptive writing visualised a picture of a person, place, thing or event for the reader while a Narrative writing tells a story about event. Narrative writing reflects personal experience, explaining what happened during the event. “Narrative writing is an account of connected events, given to the reader in written form”. However, according to Quora.com, (2019), descriptive and narrative writings shares one principle component, both of the writings has opportunity to reflect on a past experience in an effort to understand it in a new way and to explore the significance of the event upon yourself or readers. Writer helps the reader to understand the significance of the event. As a clinical nurse, writing an incident report can come in a narrative format while patient care plan will be descriptive in style. Good descriptive and narrative writing use figurative language such as analogies, similes and metaphors to help paint the image in the reader’s mind, while a narrative essay must have a conflict a between opposing forces as it is very important in creating interesting in stories. However, with all styles of writing academic seems to cross over one another. Narrative and descriptive writing can also be written and used for an academic purpose.

In conclusion, all academic writing should focus on purpose, clear, formal in tone and supported with evidence to give the reader a clear understanding of the write up. It can often be used as a formal means of communication, assignment in schools, official email at work and report at work.

• Donnelly, D. and Harper, G. (2012). Key issues in creative writing. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
• Library.leeds.ac.uk(2019).Academic writing. [online] Available at: https://library.leeds.ac.uk/info/14011/writing/106/academic_writing [Accessed 10 Jul. 2019].
• Cory, H. (2003). Advanced writing with English in use. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Classroom.synonym.com. (2019). Narrative Vs. Descriptive Writing | Synonym. [online] Available at: https://classroom.synonym.com/narrative-vs-descriptive-writing-1043.html [Accessed 10 Jul. 2019].
• Reading Rockets. (2019). Search Reading Rockets. [online] Available at: https://www.readingrockets.org/search [Accessed 10 Jul. 2019].
• Libguides.usc.edu. (2019). Research Guides: Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper: Academic Writing Style. [online] Available at: https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/academicwriting [Accessed 10 Jul. 2019].
• Study.com. (2019). What is Narrative Writing? – Definition, Types, Characteristics & Examples – Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com. [online] Available at: https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-narrative-writing-definition-types-characteristics-examples.html [Accessed 10 Jul. 2019].
• Definitions.net. (2019). What does persuasive writing mean?. [online] Available at: https://www.definitions.net/definition/persuasive+writing [Accessed 15 Jul. 2019].