Good Academic Writing Is Like a Beautiful Face

Do you write as beautifully as a human face?

Good academic writing is as inspiring and refreshing as a human face. Human face is most probably one of the most proportionately beautiful creation of the Creator.

Good academic writing can be seen in the light of a human face that inspires, refreshes, and motivates us to move in the direction of perfection.

Take for example the human face without any cosmetics being used. What we have is equally distributed features from skull to the chin. We cannot deny the fact that including the brain and the eyes, most of human capabilities are found within the area of the face.

Good academic writing is essentially analogous to this beautifully created part of human body. Yes.

To further define my analogy, I would break down an academic work into its integral or required parts.

An academic work such as a research dissertation or a term paper consists of the most important portion called the abstract, executive summary, or thesis statement (yes, it is only in the few first line that the reader has to decide whether your effort is worth going through or not!).

It has to be carefully crafted. It does not need lofty language expression; does a human head look anything different from a human head? Absolutely not. More than the words, what counts is the clarity of your thought that ensures the work attracts attention. Good words are just like a good hair-dye and a hairstyle.

Next comes the body of your research work. It contains different chapters, sections, and paragraphs. Each one of it is proportionally connected to the other parts and contributes to the whole picture. From A to Z, from starting paragraph to the conclusion, each part has to fit in well just like the eyes, ears, nose, the lips and other minute facial features.

Unless each part is carefully crafted and garnished, it is difficult for the whole picture to emerge as something inspiring.

Other than language and its mechanics, it is important that the writer has the clarity in the thought they're trying to present. Clarity of thoughts alone makes up for the major part of your picture.

Most of the writers, contrarily and wrongly, try to beautify their writing with sophisticated words, expressions coupled with complex grammatical structure when their thought lacks clarity.

Once your thought is clear, your chapters, passages, paragraphs, and sentences connect to each other logically from the beginning to the end without requiring you to put any unnecessary efforts to cloud it with anything like not so common vocabulary.

Clarity of thought comes from the smaller parts just like the parts of a human face that has subtle details for the eyes, nose, eyebrows, lips, cheeks and what not.

The human face tells us that there it is created with so much at the background.

Thus, you need to clearly understand why you're doing what you're doing. It is always a better way to ask the three basic questions while doing any single activity on your academic writing: (i) what, (ii) why, and (iii) how.

Trust me once you've learned to address these three WHs above, you'll get clarity of the thought which would help you a great deal in forming the beautiful face of your work.

Last comes the role of cosmetics. What do cosmetics do to a human face? These are different substances used to care the human face - in simple terms cosmetics help enhance the beauty of the face.

Just like cosmetics, your presentation of your work enhances its overall appearance. It includes everything from typeface to line spacing, from margins to indentations, and so on.

As they say, the best cosmetics are the simplest ones. You must follow the simplest possible strategy toward your presentation. Simplicity is the best cosmetics. Choose most common formats for presenting your work

With clear thoughts you paint a beautiful picture; with good presentation you embellish the face of your research work that has every part defined with great and careful details.