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How to teach yourself to become a decent academic writer

Academic writing is a central part of life in Academia, especially when you’re a PhD student. It’s basically the single most important thing that your success is going to depend on. However, at least in the German-speaking context where I did my degree, there was hardly any formal teaching on how to write.

In the humanities, it was assumed that students already knew how to write, unlike in the sciences where courses on writing are more common. Science writing is highly formalized, but humanities writing is often less structured. So you depend on your elders to teach you how it works. However, if they don’t, you are fucked (just saying it the way it is).

In this blog post, I want to share a few tips on how you can learn academic writing (if you’re on your own)—even though it’s often a very hit-or-miss process. Sometimes it really is a case of sink or swim. That’s certainly how it felt for me. I learned mostly through trial and error, and even now, while I feel I have a good foundation in academic writing, I still see plenty of room for improvement.

My story of learning academic writing (or rather: how to do it good enough to get published)

For me, learning how to write was a very choatic process. Initially, I got by because I came from a Classics/Humanities background and knew how to write well enough to communicate effectively in German. But I honestly didn’t have an idea about how academic writing really worked. And in the classes that I attended, yes, I learned to find a bit of a research question, and I found literature on it. But it was always a very chaotic process and we received hardly any feedback. The results weren’t anything you could actually get published anywhere, even when you got a top grade. (This is different in Ivy League institutions! They actually learn how to write papers that are revisable into a journal article.)

Looking back, I realize that at the start of my PhD, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I was probably overconfident, assuming I knew how to write academically, when in reality, I had no real idea. I also didn’t receive much formal instruction on how to do it properly—and I know now that this is a common experience.

In a professional development workshop on advising I attended last year, a Danish expert explained how advising is treated much more seriously in Denmark compared to Austria. In Austria, it’s often a neglected task. If I had received the kind of structured guidance she described, I’m convinced it would have helped enormously with my writing development.

In that workshop, the topic of academic writing came up too. I was given the now-famous recommendation to read Joshua Schimel’s Writing Science. That book inspired me to start a whole series here on the blog. Over the Easter holidays last year, I also read several more academic writing books, many of which I’m still in the process of gradually reviewing and posting here.

So yes, you’ll find a series, many posts, and hopefully lots of useful material on academic writing here.

But where to start?

Starting Points for Learning Academic Writing

1. Books and Blog Posts

There are many good resources out there. Writing Science by Joshua Schimel is highly recommended—even if it’s science-focused, most chapters are broadly applicable. I also have an overview post listing more academic writing books, covering various common issues you might encounter.

2. Self-Awareness

It’s normal not to realize what you don’t know at the beginning. Overconfidence is common. Recognizing gaps in your knowledge early can really help you be more intentional about learning.

3. Advising Best Practices

Good advising makes a massive difference—like what’s apparently common in Denmark—can speed up your learning curve dramatically. If you don’t have good advising, try to seek out mentors who take the time to guide you. Maybe look for PostDocs to improve your chances of securing a mentor/future collaborator to learn some writing skills from (pick someone with good writing habits, see How to write a lot [Book Review]).

4. Learning from Reviews

Submitting papers, getting rejected, and receiving detailed peer reviews were among the most important ways I learned. Reviews, if detailed and constructive, teach you a lot about how to write better. Thank God I wrote a blogpost about my key learnings from a few years of reviewing 😉 How to write a (Digital Humanities) abstract? Lessons Learned from Reviewing (also, if you read German, this is similar in content but a more concise: Abstracts schreiben für die DHd: Tipps und Tricks)

5. Didactic Resources

Books like 12 Weeks to Writing a Journal Article offer a structured approach to learning academic writing. Though expensive, it’s probably worth it, as it offers coaching if no one else is available to guide you.

6. Academic Writing Seminars or Co-Authoring with an experimenced author

While they can be helpful, many seminars don’t go deep enough in my opinion (there are so many differnt issues one can have with one’s academic writing). It may be more effective to collaborate with someone in your field who can guide you through their research process.

7. Pick a suitable topic

Choosing the right topic is critical. Early on, it might be a safer choice to accept a topic suggested by your professor rather than picking your own. I see it in my students: those who choose their own topics too early often struggle, whereas those who work with suggested topics usually produce much better results.

If you don’t know how to formulate a research question yet, that’s normal. I’ve written a post on how to formulate a Digital Humanities research question, and I might create more content on general topic selection at some point. Until then, read the Belcher book: it’s really good. Also, it’s not actually about the topic but rather, how to craft your argument. But that’s a story for another day.

Learning academic writing is very often a process of trial and error. Dedicated books, blog posts, workshops, and proper advising can help. Choosing good topics and building self-awareness about your strengths and gaps will also help a lot.

I hope these tips will be helpful in your academic writing.

Best,

S


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Sarah Lang (June 21, 2025). How to teach yourself to become a decent academic writer. Epigrammetry. Retrieved March 15, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/146dq


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