The need for formal style

Academic writing requires a formal style of expression. One crucial aspect of this is that you should not use anything which might reasonably be considered to be slang. Thus, for example, you might say

The defendant was clearly somewhat inexperienced in the ways of the world.

But, even though it may mean much the same thing, you would never say:

The defendant was clearly a bit of a wally.

Similarly, as we saw at p. 173, it is best to avoid contractions such as don’t, I’m and isn’t. Avoiding these forms will not only add to the formality of your style, but will also avoid the errors which flow from the common inability to distinguish between its and it’s. (If you never use the latter form, the distinction will never trouble you.)

On the other hand, you should never use any form of words merely because you think it ‘sounds good’. A very common error of this sort is to say prior to when you mean before.

Finally, you would be unwise if you allow the requirement of formality to act as a straitjacket. Even in formal writing, good style requires variation in sentence structure, so that, for example, you use a mixture of simple, compound and complex sentences (see pp. 157–163).