Writing is an important skill to have, whatever your profession. Writing, in its own right, is a form of communication that can convey different ideas and different communicative purposes.
Based on the writing purposes, many different forms of writing can be distinguished, with academic and business writing being just two of many. Let’s consider the differences between them.
What is Academic Writing?
Academic writing is a type of writing suited to an academic context. As such, academic writing is long and elaborate and focuses on the details of the meanings that should be conveyed. It insists on the exact meaning of words and offers very little to no idiomatic expression. It is very different from business writing.
As such, academic writing can be difficult to do, especially if you are about to start writing a thesis or a research paper. Luckily, you can pay someone to write research paper for you and avoid all the hassle of formatting both your ideas and your writing. With a professional by your side, you can focus on what matters the most to you – your research.
What is Business Writing?
On the other side of the spectrum is business writing. Business writing is not as formal as academic writing, and it is generally much shorter. Even if you did a research of your own (let’s say in the foreign market potential), business writing would summarize the results in a short form, usually no longer than a few pages.
For these reasons, business writing is much easier to do than academic writing, but it comes with peculiarities of its own. A new form of writing and a new way of conveying ideas are all difficult to master, so a few writing tips go a long way. In reality, most people can do business writing on their own.
What’s the Difference Between Academic and Business Writing?
But what exactly is the difference (or differences?) between these two forms of writing? To start with, the communicative purpose is different. In academic writing, you write to instruct, educate and inform. In business writing, you write to inform a future (business) decision. Both should contain plenty of information, but while academic writing deals with the process and tries to avoid bias, business writing deals with results and pays no attention to bias.
Academic Writing
So, academic writing has a set of characteristics of its own:
- Usually a long-form,
- Short-form is made for publication purposes only,
- Long and elaborate sentences,
- The precision of meaning,
- The precision in information delivery,
- Plenty of graphs and tables, but considerably little compared to the overall text,
- A high reliance on other authors’ works – to justify methodology, research flow, and your own conclusions.
Business Writing
Business writing, on the other hand, has a completely different set of characteristics:
- Usually not written for publication,
- Usually written in short form,
- Short and precise sentences,
- Using business language,
- Information is delivered precisely, but idiomatic language use is allowed to a small extent,
- Plenty of graphs and tables, considerably a lot compared to the overall text,
- The text is formatted in such a way as to enable skimming and easily targeting the necessary information,
- Little reliance on others’ works, except within the same company or a partner company.
How Communicative Purposes Determine the Writing Style?
As we’ve mentioned communicative purposes several times already, we should also explain how they influence the style of writing. The communicative purposes will influence the type and the scope of information that you should deliver, as well as the intention of communicating them. Presenting academic findings of other researchers and the business results of other companies are both informative in nature, but the purpose determines the way the information will be presented.
For this reason, academic writing is long and elaborate. This can be seen in both overall text length as well as the length of paragraphs and sentences. The background is also very important and should be seen from multiple perspectives to ensure you can understand the complexity of the topic.
Business writing, on the other hand, should present information in a simple and easy-to-absorb style. It should also be easy to skim and skip and not have parts you, as a reader, may not need. With this in mind, business writing offers simple information delivered in a short form. The information should still be well-developed, rooted in research, and with no mistakes that could undermine the final result of writing (business expansion, for example).
Final Thoughts
As writing is an essential skill in any workplace, it goes without saying that knowing the basics of different styles of writing is necessary as well. While it is true that some forms of writing are more difficult to master than others. In any case, you can always rely on professional writing services for assistance in writing or to delegate writing tasks to them. This way, you can ensure that your writing is impeccable and can focus on other aspects of your work.
