Research and writing in the disciplines: Home

General expectations of academic audiences

No matter what type of audience you decide to write for, there are always a few assumptions you should make about any audience in an academic setting.

• Academic audiences are normally well-educated and expect you to use appropriate language, grammar, punctuation and spelling.
• People who are educated are often well-read; they probably don't need a lot of explanation of terms unless you are writing about something very technical.
• Educated people understand writing conventions and expect to see you use them. They are looking for clues (such as thesis and topic statements) to get oriented in your writing.
• In academic writing, the audience expects you to provide specific and credible evidence for your reasoning.
• People are drawn to academics and studying because they are curious. Expect a curious and interested audience who wants to be engaged in your writing.

Image source: "Academia" graphic by OpenClipart-Vectors is licensed under CC0 (public domain)

Most instructors expect you to use at least some sources from their particular discipline's professional literature. Since most professional literature (academic/scholarly journal articles) is only available to you through the library's databases, you should probably begin your search there.

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