Jordan Boyd-Graber has a useful list of tips for academic writing. Other useful discussion in this Twitter thread.

Here’s what I would add to that generally excellent advice:

The most common academic writing error is ambiguous antecedents. The most common form of ambiguous antecedent I see is sentences that begin “This is” (or “These are” - the demonstrative pronouns).

You should almost always rewrite these sentences to clarify the antecedent of “this”. Any sentence that begins “This <verb>” is suspect.

Instead of:

Wang et al. found X. This implies Y.

Be clear: (no pronoun)

Wang et al. found X. X implies Y.

Or alternately: (noun phrase)

Wang et al. found X. This finding implies Y.

Even where the reader can resolve the antecedent of “this” with a high degree of certainty, it still adds unneeded cognitive load for readers! And the ambiguity of “this” allows it to function as a weasel word that can hide lack of clarity or gaps in an argument.