Articles written by experts in the disciplines for an audience of experts are a standard form of scholarly communication. These differ from magazine articles in several ways. The language is more technical, the evidence presented is more detailed, and often the process used to arrive at conclusions is described. Usually a scholarly article is several pages long, is illustrated only with graphs, charts, or photographs that supplement the information presented rather than illustrate the topic with catchy graphics, and include references to other sources of information. Another clue is that many magazine articles do not give the author's credentials; usually, a scholarly article identifies where the author works.

Exercise: Give students in pairs two articles on the same topic, one scholarly and one a news magazine article on the same topic. Ask them to fill out a chart to analyze the differences.
 

	SCHOLARLY ARTICLE	POPULAR PRESS ARTICLE
1. What is the intended audience of the article?
2. Note specific differences in format.
3. Give examples of differences in style.
4. In what ways do the articles differ in how they interpret the significance of the research?

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8/12/00