Before You Hit Submit, Fix These 7 Academic Writing Mistakes

These small changes instantly make your arguments sharper, your structure cleaner, and your work more citable.

Getting a paper accepted into a top venue is a massive struggle for junior writers.

Three years into my PhD, I had collected so many rejections, I could have started a bonfire big enough to see from outer space. Not the cute, motivational kind of rejection that makes for inspiring LinkedIn posts either. The soul-crushing, career-questioning kind that makes you wonder if you should have listened to your dad and become an B2B sales person or accountant instead.

My research was solid. My methodology was bulletproof. My findings were genuinely nothing to scoff at. Yet somehow, Reviewer 2 always found a way to tear my work apart with comments like “unclear argumentation” and “difficult to follow the logic.” W. T. F.

I was that researcher. You know, the one with killer research trapped inside academic prose so convoluted that even I couldn’t understand what I’d written six months later. What was I doing wrong?

Then I met one of my future mentors at a conference coffee break. She had just published yet another paper in CHI (the top publication venue of my field), and I cornered her like a desperate fan at a comic convention. “What’s your secret?” I practically begged.