Do academic papers have to be necessarily grammatically correct?

Question

I notice that a lot of beautiful literature contains sentences that are not grammatically correct. Here are some examples:

“Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept." [This lacks an "and" at the end of a list.]

“And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” ["We" is probably referring to people so there should be a "like" before boats.]

“There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind — wrapped tight like skin. Then there is the loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive. On its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.” [There are incomplete sentences.]

In the examples, if the authors had added the grammatically required words and commas, it probably wouldn't have sounded as beautiful. So, what is allowed in academic papers such as research papers and essays? For example, in high school essays, are you allowed to write incomplete sentences that make the sentences and words flow smoother?

Answer 1

An important purpose of writing is to organize thoughts and communicate them to an audience. You would not write in French if the audience was fluent in only English. If the goal is to communicate, then all aspects of the writing should be tailored to the intended/expected audience.

The answer to your question must come more from the style guides governing publication than from some absolute rules of grammar. Most publications have some published style guide that provides insight into what is and is not acceptable for submitted works. Reading recent published works adds to the effective set of rules. Readers use these rules to understand how the material is organized and presented. Abstracts have this size and shape and appear at this point in the paper. Conclusions come here. Appendices go there. And so on.

In any case, the overriding rule is to communicate. If you write it and the reader understands it, then you are done. If you comply with every style guidance but the reader misses the point, then you are not done.

Answer 2

The primary criterion for academic writing is that the meaning must be clear and unambiguous. You seek to avoid misinterpretation of your message by all your readers, irrespective of their familiarity with the languare.

Generally speaking, that does require grammatical accuracy as inaccuracy can lead to ambiguity.

However, grammar can be a flexible thing. As long as your meaning is clear, even if that leads to extra verbosity, your paper is valid.

Answer 3

Academic writing intends to be clear and authoritative. You are writing to convince others that some particular claim is valid, and while most of the work of convincing will be carried by your evidence and reasoning, you can't overlook more subjective, psychological effects. 'Artistic' prose will tend to put academics off, making them think you are not serious about the work; poor grammar (if it's not obviously connected to English-as-a-Second-Language issues) will make them skeptical of your intelligence, and frame your research in a light you do not want it framed in.

I mean, consider what your own attitude would be if I had started this answer with either of the following:

• "Academic prose captivates its audience with a luxuriance of clarity and authority"
• "Academic write to be clear authority"

To my ear, the first sounds flowery and the second dull and plodding, and either way I would be bracing to slog through a mess written by an amateur. Prose like that set the research up for failure. It's hard enough to convince people on analytical grounds, so there's no sense creating skepticism about your personal attributes.

Answer 4

I don't think the question really makes sense. Grammar is defined among other things "as the study of the way the sentences of a language are constructed" and as "an account of these features; a set of rules accounting for these constructions".

In that sense it's a description of the rules that naturally exist in a language, rather than a prescriptive set of rules for people to follow. No description will be 100% accurate.

Since academic papers are usually carefully edited, often by multiple highly educated and prestigious authors and editors, we'd expect them to have relatively few mistakes. Any constructions that they do systematically contain are therefore pretty much grammatical by definition - as is any usage in other language forms when it's systematic enough to be clearly not accidental. Any grammarian writing a general grammar of a language would need to include the way the language is used in academic papers.

Questions about whether specific grammar rules are apply in academic writing would be answerable for specific academic communities, but there is no theoretical 'perfect form of English' against which we can compare academic writing to see if it follows all the same rules.

Answer 5

While this belongs on academica.SE, I'd like to say this: most thesis writers are not linguistics, and don't have dedicated editors to revise their texts. You can't expect a computer engineer, or a chemist to speak perfect English.

As mentioned above, as long as they communicate their message, with the appropriate structure and coherent arguments, they have done their job.

Some additional notes

And while you are strictly asking about grammar, I would also like to mention jokes and unprofessionalism is also welcome, to a certain degree. You are allowed to make your readers enjoy your thesis, too. Some people might not like this, though, and you might get critique for it.

I can't find the source, but I remember reading that thesis papers strictly did not include images/graphs/illustrations back in the day, but this changed some decades ago, and was very well welcomed. Innovation won!

Who makes the rules, anyway? It's your thesis, and as long as you get people to read it, and your university to publish it, you've won!

Answer 6

This topic may overlap with academia and writing.

The idea of scientific publication is to comunicate your results so the other researchers may:

a) use your work as inspiration for their work, b) use your work not to do same mistakes and dead routes as you did.

The reality is that researchers are paid according to their article cadence...

Grammar is actually standard of printed/spoken comunication. It is something like IEEE to electronics. Some languages have simple grammar and subtle nuances are distinguished by different words etc. Some languages have rather complicated grammar and the nuances are sometimes hidden in word orders, word mutations etc.

Even though English is The Language of Science, very few researchers are native English speakers. All the others had to learn English as their second, third, whateverth language. Reviewers, Editors and publishers also doesn't need to be native speakers as well.

There is no hard rule that Grammar must be obeyed inscribed in heavy stone. On the other hand proper and simple grammar is mandatory to minimize risks of miscomunication caused by different understandings. For many people, whrong grammar is challenging for their attention because they slip to focusing on the grammar scratching their heads mumbling "What the heck they were trying to say?"

Recently I was helping my brother with translation of user guide for a pump from american english to czech. One sentence took one hour discussion what they tried to mean, because we had to decompose all the adjectives, many could be used as verbs as well, to realize, that the word following the sequence doesnt match, so we had to decompose it again differently...

Please, if you are to write thesis, paper or anything academical or technical, do check the grammar and ask few non-natives to check it as well. The language does not need to be smooth or nice, it shall be exact. The paper does not need to be written in Shakesperean English, Goethe's German, Voltaire's French...

Obviously, this does not apply for popularisation works like Hawking's Brief History of Time. Here, nice language is beneficial and it is, unlike scientific articles, piece of art. When properly referenced, any misunderstanding caused by nice but complicated words, is dissolved by the article with exact and simple language.

Answer 7

Just a note. The person reading the paper might well be an experienced professional in the area, who reads the pertinent style and jargon very fast. Such a reader might well be annoyed by having to mentally change track in order to “understand” something in a different writing style.

[Reaction to comment. I sometimes grind my teeth and make a grammatical error for the sake of clarity. A professional style manual will tell you to violate the rules on commas (for instance) as necessary. Question 0 is, “Who is the audience?”; always write for the target audience. Grammar is not an end in itself.]

Answer 8

The works you reference all take poetic license with the grammar.

As JonStonecash mentioned, the purpose of an academic paper is to communicate information. Bad grammar and spelling will hinder the quality of a paper.

For example, "It R gramr bad and nogud spel make ppr hrd read"

Answer 9

For an academic paper, the real criteria is, What does the instructor require?

This is closely related to, What sort of "academic paper"?

If you're writing a term paper for chemistry class, I think flights of poetic oratory would be frowned on, no matter how beautifully they are worded.

If you're writing a poem for a creative writing class, I would be surprised if the instructor insisted on strict grammatical correctness.

In real life, we expect poetry to often deviate from strict grammar. Poetry often puts rhyme and rhythm and "style" (for want of a better word) above strict grammar.

But for a scientific paper, the purpose is to clearly convey facts. If I was grading a paper for a programming class, I don't want to read flights of oratory about how you were overcome by the pristine beauty of the C programming language. I want to see that you understand how to manipulate a hash table or whatever the assignment was.