As with any piece of writing, determine who the audience is for your literature review, and then determine its purpose – this will decide the form and tone of your text. For example, is your literature review a chapter in your dissertation? Then it would use a formal academic tone to present a survey of the literature that informed your research. Or is it for submission to an academic journal? Review the journal’s submission requirements and read previously published literature reviews to get a sense for what is appropriate. Is the purpose of your literature review to provide you with the groundwork for your research? Determining the purpose and the audience for your literature review will also determine its structure and tone. In brief:
Resources:
The University of Toronto Scarborough’s Assignment Calculator [https://ctl.utsc.utoronto.ca/assignmentcal/ ] – is a useful resource for writing literature reviews – simply input your assignment type and due date, and this calculator will reverse-engineer a timeline of tasks to help you meet your deadlines.