Two styles of writing that are commonly used in school are transactional writing and academic writing. While both styles share certain similarities, they also have several differences in a lot of aspects. In general, transactional writing is a writing style that is informative or persuasive in nature and content. In addition, this style of writing always involves two parties or two groups. In other words, transactional writing always involves a writer who is attempting to convey his or her message or argue his or her point through his or her written work and a target or a particular audience. On the other hand, academic writing is a style of writing that is usually informative but also argumentative in nature and content. However, it does not always involve persuading a target audience that is not yet aware of the topic being discussed. Most of the time, this style of writing is serious in tone and is commonly intended for an audience that is already well informed of the subject being tackled.
The main difference between transactional writing and academic writing is that the former usually encompasses a broader field of topics while the latter is normally limited to the academic world or in schools and research facilities, among others. The main purpose of transactional writing is to inform of an audience of a certain topic and attempt to present and solve the problems of that topic for the audience Academic writing, on the other hand, is usually done to produce detailed and well-organized information so that other people in the academic world can study them and attempt to recreate the processes and results involved.
In transactional writing, certain samples sentences include: (In business letter form) “Looking at the various problems encountered by my coworkers, I believe it is important for the company to upgrade its computers, Mr. President” or (in memo form) “After analyzing the internal discord among the personnel here in this office, I believe that it is in our best interest to have an open forum session in order to hear the grievances from all sides.” On the other hand, certain examples of sentences used in academic writing include: (in a research paper) “The exact cause of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is not yet known. However, various researches suggest that it is linked to the changes in the biochemical substances of the brain (Paige, 2008).” Another example is: “The heart is an organ of the body that is mostly made up of muscle (Smith, 2007).”
