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Check your tone: A blog post on keeping it professional

photo of Hannah Greenbaum
By Hannah Greenbaum Date created: April 1, 2024 2 min read 0
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Greenbaum, H. (2024, April 1). Check your tone: A blog post on keeping it professional. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/scholarly-tone

Check your tone: A blog post on keeping it professional

The goal of APA Style writing is clear communication. When writing an APA Style paper, present ideas in a clear and straightforward manner. In this kind of scholarly writing, keep a professional tone.

The tone used in professional, scientific, and scholarly writing is different from the style used in creative or less formal writing. For example, in APA Style writing, do not use creative writing techniques such as suddenly shifting the topic or tense. Also, avoid an informal writing style such as using contractions, colloquialisms, and slang.

In the following example, the tone is too informal for APA Style writing.

After reading Boman (2022), apparently, poor kids don’t get as good of grades in school compared to rich kids. This result hits different when you remember all that poor communities already have to deal with. I guess more studies like this are needed to provide evidence for policy changes so poverty doesn’t continue.

However, do not go so far in trying to sound professional that you overuse jargon (i.e., specialized vocabulary known only to experts) or use only the most sophisticated words you know, which can overcomplicate clear scientific writing.

In the following example, jargon is overused.

Boman (2022) revealed that low socioeconomic status (SES) evinced a significant correlation with suboptimal academic achievement in juveniles—an unsurprising consequence, given that these communities grapple with resource paucity and ancillary inequities. Subsequent empirical forays are necessary to illuminate the adjustments to public policy needed to dismantle the pernicious cycle of poverty.

Instead, write with your intended audience in mind using words you and they understand.

In the following example, the tone is appropriate for APA Style writing.

Boman (2022) found that low socioeconomic status (SES) predicted lower academic achievement in youth. This highlights the injustices that communities with lower SES encounter. More studies like this are needed to provide evidence for policy changes that can disrupt the cycle of poverty.

A technique that might be helpful when you are writing an APA Style paper is to envision one person in your intended audience reading your paper. For example, imagine your instructor reading your paper. If you are writing a paper for a particular journal, imagine a reader of that journal reading your paper. Ensure you are writing clearly for your intended audience to understand—and that you understand your own writing as well. To ensure you understand your own writing, you can try reading your paper out loud to yourself or imagining someone reading your paper to you.

Keep in mind that as you become more expert in your APA Style writing and as you read more APA Style papers, your scientific and scholarly tone will improve.

Reference

Boman, B. (2022). The influence of SES, cognitive, and non-cognitive abilities on grades: Cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence from two Swedish cohorts. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 38, 587–603. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-022-00626-9

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