Academic Writing Tips

noun a boring or dull person or thing

adjective boring or dull in character or appearance

• The professor's lecture was so dryasdust that half the class fell asleep.
• I couldn't get through that dryasdust book without nodding off.
• That movie was straight up dryasdust, I almost walked out of the theater.
• Her personality was as dryasdust as the desert sands.

noun physical shape or condition

adjective of a high standard; excellent

• It is important to maintain good form while performing the exercises to prevent injuries.
• Make sure you keep good form when you're lifting those weights.
• Dude, you gotta have good form if you want to see gains at the gym.
• In order to succeed in the competition, you need to have good form both physically and mentally.

noun a dogmatic statement

• The judge's ruling was based solely on ipse dixit, without any supporting evidence.
• Don't just believe him because of his ipse dixit, do some research yourself.
• I call ipse dixit on that claim, it sounds too good to be true.
• Her argument was strong, but it relied too heavily on ipse dixit and lacked concrete examples.

noun a person who is excessively concerned with minor details and rules or with displaying academic learning

• The pedant in the group always corrected people's grammar during meetings.
• Don't be such a pedant about the details, just enjoy the story.
• The pedant kept nitpicking everything I said, it was so annoying.
• Her perfectionism made her a pedant when it came to decorating her house.

verb past tense of 'stilt', meaning to raise or support on or as if on stilts

adjective having a formal, unnatural, or stiff manner of expression

• The speech delivered by the politician sounded stilted and rehearsed.
• The conversation at the party felt a bit stilted, like no one really knew each other.
• The dialogue in that movie was so stilted, it was cringeworthy.
• Her emotions seemed stilted, as if she was holding back from truly expressing herself.

adjective characterized by the use of many or too many words; wordy

• The professor's writing style is often criticized for being too verbose.
• She talks so much, she can be quite verbose at times.
• He's a real chatterbox, always being so verbose.
• Her words flowed like a river, endlessly verbose in their expression.

noun excessive wordiness or long-windedness in speech or writing

• The professor's verbosity made it difficult to follow his lecture.
• I couldn't understand what he was saying because of his verbosity.
• His verbosity was so annoying, I zoned out halfway through.
• Her verbosity was like a never-ending waterfall of words.

adjective describing something that contains too many words or is excessively verbose

• The professor's writing style is often criticized for being too wordy.
• I don't like reading wordy articles that go on and on without getting to the point.
• Stop being so wordy, just get to the point already!
• Her speech was so wordy, it felt like she was trying to drown us in a sea of words.

noun a shortened form of the word 'conjunction'

• The professor explained the concept of conjunctions using the term 'conj.'
• I used the shortcut 'conj.' in my text message to save time.
• Let's meet up at the 'conj.' later tonight.
• The partnership between the two companies acted as a 'conj.' to boost sales.

noun a grammatical error that occurs when two independent clauses are joined by a comma without a conjunction or proper punctuation

• The professor marked down the student's essay for using a comma splice.
• I got points deducted on my paper for a comma splice.
• My English teacher hates when we do comma splices in our writing.
• Using a comma splice is like mixing oil and water in your writing.

noun a punctuation mark (,) used before the conjunction 'and' or 'or' in a list of items

adjective describing the specific comma style used in the Oxford University Press style guide

• The use of the Oxford comma is a common practice in academic writing.
• I always use the Oxford comma when I'm writing for school.
• Forget about the Oxford comma, no one cares about that stuff.
• The Oxford comma is like the cherry on top of a well-written sentence.