This blog seeks to gather in
one place elements of, or “things to think about” when: writing, evaluating
writing, and trying to improve it. It consists of a table and a text. The table
is an attempt to make a reasonable, manageable number of these elements present
in a handy format for evaluation work. Many of these elements are typically found in writing manuals,
others have been suggested by experience. The choice of exact items on the list
is somewhat arbitrary as depending upon your preferences in teminology or
emphasis its contents could look quite different, be longer or shorter. It does
seek to reflect diversity in the levels at play in the writing experience, from
the technical (grammar, etc.) to the more abstract (characterization, logic, etc.).
Writing samples are evaluated with reference
to the list with comments noted in the table. Thus it can serve as a guide—only
partial, of course, as the list makes no claim to grasp all the complexities of
thought in writing—for revision of existing texts, and also help to detect changes
in writing over time. Students are encouraged to add aspects of writing of
their own choosing that they wish to see improvement in.
As
with the table, the topics in the discussion below have been developed with the
help of existing instruction materials as well as ten years of practical
experience in seeking to improve writing skills. They point to some of the
major issues typically seen in graduate level writing, hoping to serve as a longer
checklist and more in depth discussion for bringing writing closer to what readers
of academic writing expect. This goal is noted in the excerpt below on a class
on this topic offered at the Univerisity of Chicago:
You've gathered
your materials, schmoozed at conferences, and endured conflicting advice from
everyone who takes an interest in your progress, from your advisors to your
family to your cat. Now you're ready to write your opus at last. You begin to
imagine receiving your degree. You begin to imagine a life after grad school.
But when your
draft comes back from your readers—bad news. They can't pick out the key points
of your argument. They latch on to some remark that you believe is tangential
to your main point—an afterthought you threw in at 3:00 AM, the product of a
little carelessness and a lot of caffeine. And they can't understand how the
concepts that have haunted you for months can function as contributions to your
field.
What happened?
Are your readers stupid? Are they so obsessed with their own work that they
can't summon enough intellectual effort to try to understand yours? Anything is
possible, but neither supposition is a safe (or diplomatic) one to make about
academic or professional readers. What you can safely assume, however, is that
good ideas can be obscured by writing that doesn't conform to readers'
expectations of what academic and professional prose should be. Rather than
grumble about your readers, then (though of course you can do that too), you
can respond to this kind of miscommunication more productively: you can learn
effective ways to communicate within the academic or professional community you
are seeking to join. (http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/courses/grad.htm,
accessed 16.09.13)
So
that’s what this effort is about: getting to know what professionals say about
academic writing and how to make it better and becoming familiar with the kinds
of problems students often encounter in their struggle for good communication
with the community they are trying to reach. Since this text is not academic
writing itself but about academic
writing, in the interests of easier reading I tend to prefer a lighter tone.
I start with some thoughts on the thesis preparation process in general,
then the topics procede from the more abstract issues moving toward more practical
or technical ones. I have made much use of the website of a professor of
cognitive science at the University of Edinburgh
(http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/jbednar/writingtips.html, accessed 20.06.13)[1]. His
original text at this website is also recommended. I have have taken a lot of
liberties to give quite different direction to some of his material. Other
universities with pages on writing that I appreciated include U Toronto, Purdue
(for its online writing program), and Bowdoin.
I
welcome all feedback for revision on the discusssion below, and thank all who
have contributed comments so far.
Tracy
Lord Şen
tracylordsen@gmail.com
Narrowing down the topic, the thesis
question/concept, main phases of thesis preparation
The
thesis concept or question is a magical kind product of the mind that will work
hard in many ways for you once it comes into being. It gives direction and the added
value of original contribution to your material; it also helps to set limits
around what can be covered in the space provided by the format in question—in
this case, a thesis. Some topic areas are just inherently more likely to
produce that question by themselves; perhaps existing debates on the topic
areas have left a major question in need of attention. So there is a certain
element of chance here, as some perfectly valid topic areas can be difficult to
pull thesis questions out of while others give an early start in suggesting how
to organize the relevant material. Yet without such a question or concept in
mind, not only writing, but even research (at whatever phase) can suffer from
lack of clear purpose.
Thus
the perception that we need the thesis question in order to begin… is it true? Well,
we need enough of a thesis question,
that’s slightly different. That is, we need a
thesis question, even if somewhat hypothetical or not exactly what we find the
most fascinating, to open the door for us onto the material. Yet from the
perspective of that particular
question or “door,” the order the material will ultimately arrange itself into
is not written in stone. In fact, that thing we call “the thesis” will evolve,
a little or a lot, throughout the research and writing process. No surprise,
you need to write the whole thesis to be able to state “its thesis” in its most
accurate form.
So
one question is how changes in the thesis concept/question are encorporated in
the writing-up process. Changes in how you view the material are part of the
process and one main reason for extra time spent revising. Revising for changes
in “the thesis” means making adjustments here and there to bring the existing
text into logical conformity with the new concept. This is entirely doable, it
just can take some time.
Let’s
look at the main steps in thesis preparation: first you determine the general topic
area you are interested in with perhaps a general hypothesis or question, this
phase in consultation with your advisor. Then you research it and, again in
discussion with your advisor, formulate a more informed, specific question
about it. Then you begin to write it up your material, and lastly revise with
various goals in mind (style, thoroughness, organization, consistency, format….).
While occuring in more or less this order, these stages will inevitably overlap
one another. For example, research does not have to be completely finished in
order to start writing drafts of some sections. Or one may start writing and
discover, or your advisor may suggest, a new source or body of sources that it
would be well to include to complete the picture. While it is not a good idea
to commit too much to formal writing very early in the research phase, on the
other hand, draft sections may be written up as blocks or sections of the
thesis begin to emerge—for example, some begin with the theoretical or
historical background, or analytical description of field work or primary
texts.
At
some point, though, a certain phenomenon is likely to occur for the researcher
to be able to get past sketchy short section drafts and engage in thesis
writing in earnest. The above list—determining the topic area, researching it,
formulating a question about it, beginning to write it up, and revising—is
missing that piece, and that is when the thesis as a whole begins to take shape
in the mind. Of course, from the moment the student begins to decide which
general topic area he wants to work in, dreams of the finished thesis begin to
float in and out of consciousness. But proof that these are not the real thesis
yet lies in the grey areas that persist in these visions, proof that the
research and its organizing principle (the thesis question) are still too
immature to answer what lies in those grey areas. Thesis outlines—drafted and
discarded until one feels complete and is approved by the thesis advisor—is one
tangible way of judging how much the thesis has taken full shape. More or less
uninterrupted writing tends to begin when the whole thesis becomes visible in
the mind, and this “whole thesis” has been approved by the advisor.
When
the researcher is first contemplating devoting a year (or two or three) of his/her
life to a research area, her first descriptions of this area will be general
since she simply doesn’t know that much about it yet. What follows as research
proceeds is a sometimes anguishing and often time-taking intellectual migration
from the more general area of interest
to a more specific, feasible, logical, integrated topic that can answer the
questions posed in around a hundred pages. Why can this process be painful?
because one is generally directed to ones chosen area by a special feeling,
sometimes called a passion; which is how it should be, as without that
intensity of emotional investment, turning any topic into a thesis can be much
more grueling (and certainly more boring) than it is under even normal
circumstances.
Personal
fascination for one’s topic is not just a romantic touch, it ensures that the
researcher can draw on a reserve of energy and inspiration all through the
process. Here’s the sad part—anyone with that passion tends to unconsciously
take responsibility for that broader picture of the first approach (a kind of
love at first sight) and can have difficulty giving up any part of it.
Because
we tend to identify with the broader interest area before refining it into the narrower
thesis topic, the anguish I spoke of above would seem to be an almost inevitable
part of the process. Letting go of large bunches of your interest area in order
to arrive at a feasible topic may feel like abandoning loved ones—but remember
that this is not forever; you can always get back to them later.
So
what is the process people go through to get to that point of producing (the)
“thesis question(s)” that can be answered in a hundred pages? As far as I can
see, it is often nothing fancier than the research process itself, when seen as
what they started to call in the 90s “engagement” with the material—that is,
energetic and systematic familiarization with a broad panorama of texts, cases,
names, places, developments, etc. relevant to the topic area—which allows one
to start making synthetic assessments of the whole. That happy, full feeling of
mastering an area is a major source
of positive inspiration for finding the thesis question. So don’t necessarily expect
a miraculous flash of insight to produce your this question before you have
gotten to this point!
Unfortunately,
the first holistic views of your material don’t always translate into the
perfect thesis question that is both manageable and of intellectual and/or
historiographical interest. Disappointed, one may be tempted to read even more,
look into yet more texts for ideas. This can sometimes be useful. In many
cases, though, what is needed is just more time, contemplation, discussion with
advisors and others—that sometimes lengthy process of digesting the material.
But
if after more or less mastering a particular body of information the question
or approach continues to refuse to emerge, it may have to to with that
particular body itself. This is when the thesis advisor is often the one with
suggestions for pertinent development of the scope of what is to be covered. Sometimes
adding a new, relevant body of information to the mix can create a new balance
or chemistry that points to new whole, a new perspective.
Bowdoin
has some of the best material I have seen on forming the thesis
question/statement. While aimed at paper writers, many of its ideas are
generally applicable and is (moreover) designed with history students in mind http://www.bowdoin.edu/writing-guides/ (accessed 19.10.13). Here are some examples of “bad”
thesis statements, all interesting for their not-quite thesis/assertion
qualities:
The evolution trial of 1925 was made a farce and a comedy by the
circumstances surrounding the trial. Behind this facade lay issues that were
deeply disturbing to the Americans of the 1920s. By an examination of the
Scopes Trial, some of these issues can begin to be perceived and analyzed and
perhaps they can reveal a better understanding of the decade. (There is no
thesis here. The last sentence seems to be a thesis, but actually speaks to the
way the paper will proceed rather than to its conclusion. It does not
explain why or how something happened.)
Henry David Thoreau, the author of Walden, and Theodore Parker,
the unitarian minister and abolitionist, were two of the greatest minds of the
antebellum period. The purpose of this paper is to examine means of resistance
through a comparison of the philosophies of Thoreau and Parker. (This is a
statement of purpose and method, but does not begin to offer a thesis. What is
the question or problem? Comparison is a method of inquiry that leads to a
thesis, not a thesis itself.)
As slaves, African Americans were given
little or no rights as families. Husbands and wives were parted, and children
were separated from their mothers by masters who had no qualms about selling
them. Even those families kept intact were by no means protected from the
hardships of slavery. Through emancipation came new opportunities and problems
for African American families. (This is a little closer, but still problematic.
It does assert something [emancipation brought "new opportunities and
problems"] about its subject [African American families]. Yet this
assertion is vague; it lacks focus and direction. More questions need to be
asked: What kind of opportunities and problems did emancipation present?
Which [opportunities or problems] were more important to the shaping of
post-emancipation life? In short, the assertion made here is neither
sufficiently adventurous nor specific to qualify as a good thesis.)
http://www.bowdoin.edu/writing-guides/thesis.htm
(accessed 02.04.12)
What’s at issue with clarity and what can be done
about it, part one
Quite apart from the value of your content,
being clear in getting things across increases your chances of influencing
other minds and other texts. You may have read and usefully (for you) digested
lots of thought and information, but if these are presented in a confused way,
they will be more difficult to make use of—that is, to remember, repeat,
transmit/cite.
This is our main goal: making valuable
intellectual and research work to the greatest degree possible available
(understandable) to others.
Dr. James A. Bednar writes, “Formal writing
needs to be clear, unambiguous, literal, and well structured.” A great
list, I couldn’t have put it better myself. “Clear and unambiguous” are
obvious, and we’ll look at the issue of “structure” or organization further on;
but let’s think about what he might mean by “literal.” In oral communication,
the body (facial expression, intonation) can provide additional meaning/shape
to the words as we speak them—to the extent of negating the very words we speak
with an ironic wink, for example. This is obviously not possible in written
language, where even irony, where (occasionally) appropriate in academic
writing, must be crystal clear in the words on the paper.
The key issue is that as an academic, you are
a public person adressing other public persons, and thus are not in a position
to select your reader with whom you might share special meanings. Mr Bednar
speaks of academic writing as “formal writing” and I think this captures this
important quality. Formality implies a kind of universality, a universally
understood frame of reference, in which content is or should be what it
appears, and vice versa. There should be no code language, no asides to
insiders, no special realm of understanding within a particular imagined
community of readers. If in writing formally one aims to contribute to general
knowledge and understanding, then all readers wishing to access the realm of
the researcher within a general academic community should ideally be
facilitated in doing so. I may not expect a huge audience if writing on 17th
century Mogul ruling culture in Central India, but I don’t need to write as if
the only people capable of understanding me will be my advisor and a handful of
Mogulists. On one end of the scale, esotericism; on the other, popularism. If academic
writing seeks in essence formal sharing, then it needs to strike
a balance between these two.
What’s at issue with clarity and what can be done
about it, part two
When a reader has a problem in understanding
and asks for clarification from a text, she is greeted with silence... the
writer doesn’t have this problem, since the argument and all its details are
clear in her head, and the words on the page are often sufficient to call up all
the components of the argument. So it can be very difficult for her to know
exactly where a reader might experience a blank spot. Obviously, the goal is to
minimize these blank moments in the reader’s mind to the extent possible, since
they can make the discussion look thin or lose definition.
One of the best resources to put to work in
this struggle of detecting these moments is smart, constructive readers who
express themeselves openly. Have others read your work, and have them mark
where they experience gaps in the flow of logic or meaning.
Characterization
We
know that we are more responsible now, than was the case in earlier times, for
creating, giving shape and meaning to history as historians in addition to
simply “scribing” or narrating it; for a few decades now we accept that the
historian not only filters, selects and prioritizes her information, but also interprets
and positions it according to individual agendas, intellectual or otherwise.
The
question is, technically, how do we produce the argument, the point of view,
other than stating bald opinions? This can be a challenge. There’s the
information on one hand, presented with illustrations, examples, and some
explanatory or clarifying discussion. Making sense and rendering that sense
understandable to a reader beyond the “information dump” aspect is the
question; one solution which is practical and not too difficult to perform is
to build many small bridges to the larger meaning by characterizing things when
the opportunity presents itself.
This
act of naming, of finding the descriptive terminology to describe
(characterize) something, is one of the most creative aspects of writing. The
terminology you choose to designate a phenomenon is a fundamental building
block of your personality as a researcher and writer. Your own way of naming,
as distinct from how other researchers in the same field describe the same
phenomena, gives identity to your material, creates a difference that belongs
to you.
As
discussed below, keeping the same vocabulary for the same phenomenon in
different contexts can result in redundancy and conceptual dullness. We must
allow the context to suggest its own contribution to understanding by varying
our vocabulary to reflect the context’s specificity. If we can do this, then at
the end of a long text we will have accumulated a number of different
formulations for our major themes. This variety is the substance of complex and
productive discussion, particularly useful in closing discussion.
So
to characterize is to find good names for things. Not an idle business! In the
creation story, along with the other laborious things God gave Adam and Eve to
do after chasing them from heaven, they were told to name the things of the earth. You, too, look for every unnamed or
inadequately named phenomenon as opportunities for finding our own name for
them. This takes thought, but when you
do find them, you offer a new vocabulary that others can adopt.
Leading statements, supporting
statements
The
saying, “Lead, follow, or get out of the way” was originally meant for people
but is useful in organizing and understanding our statements as well. Statements
are, first of all, unclear (“get out of the way”) or clear. And among clear
ones the first useful breakdown is between leaders and supporters. Leading
statements show the way ahead and give the whole a direction. They may start as
an insight, a realization, then devlop to become a claim or assertion that more
or less directs a discussion, becoming the main output or consequence. A
leading statement has two faces: it both creates it own agenda or work program
(requires sufficient support and discussion), and can assist in the task of
organizing many separate, even disparate, points or blocks of information
within its range of relevance. Supporting statements are this wealth of detail
organized or mobilized to substantiate the leaders.
The
leading statement’s form may be interpretive (contributing a point of view on a
phenomenon) or denominative (attributing a certain identity to a phenomenon). Both
types of statements are declaring something to be something (“A is B”). Interpretivity
and denominativity are not absolutes in themselves but two “shades” of a
certain function. And that is to give direction, “intelligible life”
(significance beyond pure factuality) to the information. As the “guiding
thought,” this kind of statement may theoretically serve any length of text—a
paragraph, a section, a chapter, or a book.
A
more minor type of leading statement can function to organize by summarizing,
rather than interpreting: “The war drew to a close with the signing of the
‘Eternal Peace’ Agreement”—when the discussion to follow includes details on
both how the war ended and on the Agreement. Frequently using this
organizational type of statement is another way to help your reader to follow
your thought as she steers through your text.
A digression: a leading statement
can originate with the writer/researcher or it can be partly or largely
borrowed from elsewhere. Whatever the case, the reader should never be in doubt
as to its source. This is easy when the statement comes from somewhere else
(“As Z has famously put it ...”). When you are its author, though, “identifying
the source” can be tricky. Academic writing is known for its formal or
impersonal delivery: “first person is not allowed.” Thus to indicate oneself as
the source of a point of view it is often necessary to resort to a kind of code
for “pointing” to the self as source. Examples include the ever popular, “Thus
it seems clear that...”, or “The evidence thus (unavoidably) suggests that...”.
The third person is
tolerated if used rarely and only when unavoidable. Sometimes this “we”
metaphorically includes the readers (“Here we see that/can only conclude
that..”); sometimes it is the so-called “royal ‘we’” (“Given these
developments, we come to the conclusion that...”) that stands in for the first
person when one can’t come up with anything else or are trying to distribute
the few-in-number methods for indicating the self as source. Many writing
guides prefer the occasional, discrete use of first person to the old-fashioned
sounding “royal ‘we.’”
Think
of the leading statement as a flagship which needs its “fleet” of relative
material physically close to it in order to confer its position in the text.
Without this, it is just another ship. “But I make that argument in the 3rd
chapter” doesn’t solve the reader’s question, “what’s this doing here?” at that
particular point in the text. This does not mean the statement cannot be used
later in other contexts, to the contrary (as we see below). But then the
reader’s memory should be assisted with pointer phrases (“…as seen in the last
section,” “…which we saw was also true in the case of X, above”).
Text organization
While
the first draft of a section or chapter can be a somewhat random inventory of
content, when in print, one begins to see patterns, turning points, new
dynamics, different viewpoints, etc.—all candidates for the category “results.”
Now it becomes possible to consider different possible orderings to see which
might be most effective in leading the reader to the ultimate conclusion(s) the
writer wishes him/her to draw from it all. This is the question of organization of the text.
Organization of a thesis is a unique and
challenging activity that sometimes gets lost behind the more dominating questions
of “What content?” and “How do I say this?” Organization has two aims: one,
putting the blocks of content (information + discussion) into a logical
flow that assists mental digestion and also suggests a natural sequential flow
in the components of the material. The second is to create a progression of thought that supports
your major thesis—that, by structure alone, leads the reader to the conclusion
to which you wish the reader to arrive. As the writing unit at U Toronto puts
it:
There are many ways in which an argument may be well presented, but (a
thesis’s) organization—how
it begins, develops, and ends—is best designed to lead the reader along in the
direction of your argument as organically as possible: the more naturally the
reader arrives at your conclusion as a result of the ordering of material, the
more persuasive it will be. (Unfortunately, the order in which you discovered the component parts of
your argument is rarely the best order for presenting it to a reader.) http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/essay.html (accessed Sept 18 2006)
Have you ever wondered in the middle of
reading something “This is interesting but where is it all going?” This kind of
question can often be traced to a problem in organization. Depending on the
potential residing in the material at hand, even if “where we want to go” at
one particular point in the text may not present the most ambitious or
impressive outcome, still to have a sense of what you want the reader to get
from the material and to organize it concsiously to encourage the reader to
think in this way contributes to reader confidence in you. Thus one of the main
goals with organization is to appear as a writer in control of the material,
always able to it the shape and direction she
wants it to have.
Organization schemes find their justification
in taking the material where you want it to go, so they often seem to “emerge
from the material itself.” But sometimes this just doesn’t happen in a powerful
way, so you may add to the mix some principle of organization such one of those
listed below. Some are more content-organizers (not particularly interesting),
while others are more results-oriented.
Playing with organization is an activity which
stretches synapse paths in different ways: every new ordering suggests
different results. So you may have to maneuver things a little before getting
the result that feels the strongest. These are obviously time-taking
engagements with your text. So in thesis writing, start early and schedule plenty
of time for revision!
less
“pointing somewhere”:
--chronological
--topical without any particular
justification (alphabetical, age group, other formal categories)
more
“pointing somewhere”:
--order of “importance”
--simpler to more complex
--general to specific or vice versa
--order of familiarity
--antithesis-thesis
--information-set type—micro to macro,
background to foreground type
--secondary, supportive examples to more
determining examples
Whatever you do, organizational schemes may
need to be reworked as you arrive at new insights while writing up the
material. Not to worry, if the insight is truly constructive in deriving from
the material, its logic will be in some sense inherent the larger picture, so
finding ways to encoporate it should be possible. If it is a counter thesis,
this can be handled in introductory sections, then referred to where relevant
as the counter thesis that it is.
Reiterating the thesis
Dr. Bednar writes, “The reader should
never be in any doubt about what your thesis is; whenever you think it might
not be absolutely obvious, remind the reader again.”
I’ll leave it at that.
The classic academic writing recipe
I know we’ve seen this stuff before, but some
principles are potentially helpful at each phase of gaining expertise. Yes, we’re
once again back onto the “TDC” or topic-discussion-conclusion model. Dr. Bednar
writes, “When in doubt, use the recipe: introduce, expand/justify,
conclude.” This recipe, he says, as so many have before him, is valid at all
levels of the text: the paragraph, the section, chapter, and thesis as a whole.
...Each one, we could add, expanding or contracting like a telescope according
to its location/level. “First make the topic clear, then expand upon it, and
finally sum up, tying everything back to the topic. At each level, you need to
tell the reader what you will be trying to say (in this paragraph, section,
etc.), then you need to cover all the relevant material, clearly relating it to
your stated point, and finally you need to tie the subtopics together so that
they do indeed add up to establish the point that you promised.”
Interestingly, this principle is generally
difficult to identify in practice, in real writing. This is because while we
learn the rule in high school and use it copiously in the first years of our
formal writing apprenticeship, we soon discover that following it too literally
makes our writing look, well, amateurish. So good writers learn to imbed the
principle so that while its tangible presence fades into the background, just
enough of its effects will remain in the text for contributing to organization
and comprehensibility.
Staying on topic
Dr. Bednar reminds
us to “Stay on topic.” It sounds obvious but we still need to guard against the
lure, the intrique of digression. On the other hand, “there is no need to bring
up items simply because they relate to your main topic, if you do not have
anything to say about them. If you do bring something up, say something about
it.”
Are we on topic? One way to explore this to
ask a good reader to make a list of identifiable topics he finds in a given
text of yours (without telling them “what it’s about”). What is part of a
larger argument to a writer can be seen as an independent topic to a reader. Or
a major issue for a write may seem like a minor detail to the reader. Once the
writer is clear on what the topics are, stress management, a satisfactory level
of TDC, and transitions can go a long
way to make clearer what they are.
Dr. Bednar writes, “Staying on topic does not
mean being one sided.” By one-sided, he means when it looks as if the writer is
right too much of the time. Acknowledging at appropriate moments what’s wrong
or missing in your presentation or argument can ultimately make them stronger. When
you have proven you are capable of evaluating them from different points of
view, finding what’s insufficient or weak, then the true impact of what you have
discovered stands out more clearly. Of course, one should be judicious in doing
this, saving self-criticism for selected, significant points so that the reader
is encouraged to receive the remainder with enhanced trust in your overall
correct reading.
Transitions
tie it all together
Dr Bednar: “Transitions are difficult but
very important (...) Each sentence in your document should follow smoothly from
the preceding sentence, and each paragraph should follow smoothly from the
preceding paragraph. The world is arguably an unstructured jumble of ideas, but
anything that you expect the reader to read from start to finish needs to be a
linear progression along one single path.”
While “linear progression along one single
path” may be a somewhat strong way of putting it, there is an aspect we might
call narrativity that captures two reader demands. One of these demands is the
somewhat intangible—and on a purely academic level perhaps somewhat
unjustifiable—esthetic experience of following a story with its inner logic of
progression toward an ultimate realization, an outcome, a conclusion or two. The
other is a more rational need for a sense of logic, of dwelling in a world of
thought in which the chaos has been tamed so that things make sense.
Dr. Bednar: “In practice, making smooth
transitions is very difficult. Learning to do it takes a lot of practice at
first, and actually making the transitions smooth takes a lot of effort every
time you write or revise something. One rule of thumb is that whenever you
switch topics, you should try to provide a verbal clue that you are doing so.”
Unexpected topic changes is one of the more frequent
problems in first drafts. It can sometimes take a lot of work to think what the
logical connection is between two components, and making this connection clear
in the transition. Sometimes the new component just feels relevant, but
it is not quite clear in what way. At such moments, discovering the plausible
connection may need to draw on your imagination more than anything else. In
this sense, coming up with transitions may be one of the more creative parts of
academic work.
So much for the micro level of the transition
concept, which starts with identifying the logical connections between neighboring
elements and then clarifying these with help from that list of terms like
however, moreover, etc. that we taped to our desk in high school.
There is also a macro level to connecting
things that are not necessarily close to one another, and that is the task of
finding connections between larger components, seeing patterns within and among
the larger blocks of content, and describing them. This area of content
development overlaps with organization and identifying “results,” so I will
leave it at that.
Paragraph—organiser and facilitator
The
paragraph often emerges in a relatively organic way that mimics the pause in
our mind as it rests momentarily between two different topics. It is natural for
the mind to want to feel the satisfaction of closure at the end of a mental effort
concentrated on one topic/issue. So as a writer the closer you can come to
bundling the material into logically unified, digestible-as-one-piece bunches
of material, the more easily the reader will follow the discussion and
experience the pleasure of its regularly closing one bunch before embarking on
the effort of understanding the next one.
As
noted above, this is typically achieved by having the
Topic-Discussion-Conclusion model in mind: easing the reader into the new
paragraph with an opening sentence or two that refer back to what has been said
prior to this (immediately or more generally) and tying this to a hint of the
new material at hand while also supplying the logic of this choice of ordering
(why this new material, why now). This is followed by further specification of
the relevant issues, then by support-illustration-discussion. Then the
paragraph is brought to a close with some sort of reiterative statements that
recuperate the lessons to be drawn and give a hint of what’s to come. This
model is a frequent guest of writing manuals in the hope that it be
internalized for future implementations/performances that make the reader sense the essence of the model without
being forced to actually see it, as
noted above.
Another way of looking at it: in most (but
not all) cases, readers expect a feeling of an “opening,” then a “development,”
and then some sort of conclusion drawn from it all. These elements can be
presented in various orders and with varying emphasis, but too many paragraphs
in which these elements are weak or absent begin to make for a disorderly text
and a disordered reading experience. (As noted above, this general principle is
also valid for sections, chapters, and the thesis as a whole.)
Good
writing includes creative implementations of the idea-organizing potential in
the paragraph structure itself, in awareness of the almost physical response we
have to the blocking of material into visibly distinct pieces. Mixing shorter
and longer paragraphs according to the sweep of thought and moments of emphasis
helps keep your reader alert and engaged.
Finally,
the paragraph structure should help the writer
to organize material by encouraging him/her to make decisions based on relevance
within identifiable blocks of text.
Repeating things: (useful) reiteration vs. (pointless) redundancy
Repetition
can be good or bad. The good kind is that of main points, sometimes key
information, and the thesis or general framework, which we should see
reiterated in many different forms throughout the text. Enough said.
Redundancy
(the bad kind) has two main forms: 1) identical repeated elements, and 2) more
words than needed used to express a thought. The number one type repetion may
occur on many levels—from repeated words/phrases to repeated points, ideas or
information that are not crucial enough to deserve being seen again. We’ll only
mention the first, as the second is both obvious and difficult to illustrate.
It
is not unusual to see repetitions similar to the following:
X province went through many changes in its ethnic structure with
the First World War. Before the First World War, X province’s ethnic structure consisted of A, B, C, and D ethnic
groups.
One could make one sentence of these two, removing the repeated words
and phrases by rewording main elements and using pronouns (this, that, these,
those), which, etc:
X province’s ethnic structure,
which consisted of A, B, C, and D ethnic groups before the First World War, went through many changes during the war period.
Using more words than necessary to
convey a particular idea of bunch of information is another form of redundancy.
Its opposite is that elegant thing, conciseness. Writing manuals have whole
chapters on how to be concise, and there is a fairly long list of surprisingly
specific tricks that may be kept in mind to achieve it. I won’t bore you with
the details here, but keep to general principles. We can go into detail with
writers for whom this is a special problem. Just
a reminder though; because they’re in a hurry to get as much meaning in as little time as
possible, readers respond negatively to anything they sense as “padding”—a
page-long paragraph that could fit into a few sentences, or rambling on without
coming to those critical points of closure so as to move on to the next topic.
What is inessential?
1) using more words than necessary to
communicate something (wordiness)
2) stating anything that the reader could infer or could have understood already
(belaboring the obvious)
3) wandering around a point rather than
stating it directly (cryptic text in-filling)
4) too much detail (chattering)
And
now, on to the area of useful or strategic reiteration. Repeating certain
critical content may and should occur when it is relevant in more than one
context. It can be unavoidable as one assembles case after case pertinent to an
area of documentation or a larger argument that is being made, but this can sometimes
push even the most creative writer toward repeating herself ungracefully. The
trick here is to make sure wording is not so similar that it gives the
impression of copy-pasting.
This
can be a challenge since the subject or argument is—has to be—the same; one
cannot be “changing the subject” when in fact working on, developing, that same
subject. Yet using the exact same words to describe it in more than one place
is both unnecessary and also falls short of what my masters level theory
professor used to call intellectual rigor.
Because
that “same subject” when situated in the varied environments or cases it is
useful for or relevant to is not, in fact, exactly the same subject. It takes
on different meanings, different identities and understandings that emerge in those
environments. It becomes different versions of itself and thus can be called by
different names.
There
is really no short cut in the struggle to find ways to vary expression in order
to specify the (inevitably) many faces of a complex topic. The thesaurus can be
an invaluable friend here, not only because synonyms are largely the cure for repeated
vocabulary and their use keeps the reader’s curiosity awake in anticipation of
the next “face” of the topic. For a writer, the thesaurus also jogs the memory,
alerts the mind to unconsidered, forgotten, or novel ways of describing what is
at hand. It stimulates awareness of the richness of the topic by offering lists
of ways in which it might be expressed.
All of the above warnings against not useful repetition should not be
construed to violate the principle stated above, to make your thesis obvious
throughout—which means restating it at strategic moments, with contextually
relevant supporting arguments.
These are the broad lines of the redundancy
vs. thesis clarity dialectic. The two elements may be restated as the
difference between leading and supporting statements (see above). Reiterate the
leaders, keep the supporting ones concise.
“Stress management”—pointing to some
things more than to others
Whether
a statement is a leader or a supporter is often not understood at first, but can
be discovered at some later point. So in its original (first-draft) formulation,
a major element can appear in the text with little more emphasis than the other
elements around it even while prioritized in the writer’s mind—who may assume
that the emphasis resides in the content itself and needs no formal signaling. Then
the reader, accustomed to being prompted rhetorically to notice some things
more than others, may remain unsure to the end what the writer actually thought
about her/his material. Yet the reader actually wants wants the facts, of
course, but also a way to understand them. S/he looks to the one most deeply
involved with a particular body of information for understanding that puts so
many isolated bits of knowledge into perspective. One way to do this is with rhetorical
signaling that points the spotlight on that content we particularly want the
reader to remember. There are many ways to do this—short emphasizing phrases,
rhetorical questions, a more colorful than normal descriptor (adjective or
adverb), playing with paragraph or sentence structure or length. The point is
to do a little pointing when the content needs to come forward in the mind.
Making the authors/sources present
How
and to what extent one makes the person who is the source of key information or
thought part of the discussion in an explicit way, like the use of the first
person, is open to discussion. It’s possible to treat cited authors as sources
of data, simply footnoting to identify the source in question, it’s just not very
interesting.
It’s
a somewhat philosophical question. With post-structuralism’s “textualization of
the universe,” it became no longer entirely possible to posit a source
(producer) of textuality as outside the product of language. Language went from
being a docile vehicle of thought to more or less interdependent units of
meaning that we create thought-assemblages with; we no longer imagine we can
think outside or beyond it. This leads to the understanding that textuality in
a sense creates as much as it is created. Authors no longer write texts as much
as texts are assembled and ordered from a set of pre-existing units of meaning
available to and selected by them, according to agendas that are also to some
extent pre-assembled units.
Once
language’s dominance in forming the horizon of what it was possible to think
became a philosophical assumption, we became used to hearing calls for the
academic to desist from hiding his/her point of view behind a screen of modesty
or neutrality but to draw on it as functional part of the intellectual and
scholarly exercise (one example may be Herrnstein Smith’s 1988 Contingencies of Value—or so we thought
in grad school).
All
texts are polyphonic as we, as academic writers, cite and paraphrase from a
collection of sources we mostly selected, in each case removing utterances from
the context of their own mission (reason for being) to recapture them within
the ideational settings that support our projects and arguments. This being the
case, it becomes difficult to see the authors that contribute to our texts and
our thinking as mere sources of data or information; rather, they are part of a
collective intellectual labor whom we allow, or rather invite in, to partake in
giving direction and meaning to our texts. As such, while contributing our own
voices we are also part of the staging of a larger conversation. If this is
partly what is happening, what might be our position vis à vis the authors we
have “invited in” to our texts and to our thinking?
It
seems reasonable to tell the reader a little about them, to if briefly honor
their contribution within our area of interest or the debate at hand, just as
our personae are so much a part of what becomes our written record. This can be
done by summarizing in a few words the author’s importance for our area of
interest, particularly at points where we feel their presence strongly in our
thought.
This
is also a service to the reader, who gets not just the information and a more
memorable way of tying names to information and concepts, but also a more of an
idea of the individuals behind those names. This function of “congering the
person” (in academic style, of course) is a kind of mnemonic (memory-related)
technique that makes your intellectual conversation with others more textured
and memorable.
Be as specific as possible
in stating objectives
Dr Bednar: “In the introduction, conclusion,
and abstract (if any), do not merely describe what you are going to say or have
said; actually say it! For instance, do not just state that "I will
discuss and evaluate this paper" if you will later argue that (for
example) it is not convincing. Instead state that the paper is unconvincing, and
(in brief) why you believe that to be the case.”
Elsewhere, Dr Bednar warns against announcing
that you are “planning to ‘study topic X’. In the context of research, studying
is a vague and unbounded task, with no criterion for success and no way to tell
if you are getting anywhere. (...) In research, you need to spell out the
specific questions you are going to try to answer, the specific phenomena that
need explanations.”
This is such an often-used sentence in
academic production (“In this article/thesis/paper, I am planning to look
at/examine X”) that I have tried to find terminology for it as well. I call it
the difference between naming a topic
area, and specifying what I am
doing/have done with it. To simply name the subject area you are working in
looks less professional (remember our junior high school reports from world
geography? “My report is on the Himalyas.
The Himalyas are in northern India...”), when in graduate level work you must have
already selected a specific area within that larger one, and developped or
begun to develop a framework and an approach to it. Bring out your real work
plan as clearly and specifically as you can, from the beginning.
Key details
As
much as the reader becomes impatient with needless excess in expression (redundancy),
she also dislikes encountering those blank moments in the text at which her
mind has, if only for a moment, insufficient material to form a complete
thought.
Since
a researcher immersed in his material can sometimes make do with a generality, leaving
his memory to supply the specifics, the reader has no such luck and will fail
to retrieve those same specifics, resulting in a feeling of intellectual
inadequacy (failing to have understood)—or feelings less charitable to the
writer. Yet even in revision when specifically looking for such moments they
can remain elusive, for the same reason as mentioned above (immersion in the
material). Thus having interested and outspoken friends read your text for
“what I don’t understand” is the best idea.
A tip for developing ideas
Here’s
a list you can keep in mind when you notice that you have made a much needed
generalization but are out of ideas on how to develop it:
—comparison/contrast with other cases
—examples/illustrations
—cause-&-effect analyses
—stories/cases using narrative
—facts and statistics
—counter arguments & their refutations
Some technical hints
Dr Bednar: “Avoid
footnotes. Only when something genuinely cannot be made to fit into the main flow
of the text, yet is somehow still so important that it must be mentioned, does
it go into a footnote.”
This can be tricky. What can be so relevant
that it must be mentioned, yet cannot be made a part of the flow of the text?
Perhaps just keeping this question in mind may help you decide whether to add
that footnote or not. The goal is to not go to excess in one direction or the
other. On the one hand, readers are naturally interested in whatever you may
have discovered in your research which may be pertinent to the subject area; on
the other hand, they may tire from the constant distraction caused by an
excessive use of footnotes when they are trying to concentrate on your main
discussion.
Dr Bednar: “Avoid direct quotes
(...) direct quotes should be used only when the precise wording of the
original sentences is important...”
Writing manuals tend to concur on two general
cases justifying direct citation: one, that the citation is in some way a
summation of a significant contribution recognized and known to belong to a
particular author, such that praphrasing would be almost impolite. Two, that
the citation is worded in such an inimitable and distinctive way that you could
not paraphrase it with justice if you tried. In this case, there must be
something in the way it is expressed that you can argue is worth preserving, aside from the content alone. Writing
manuals often say something like, if you can turn away from the page and
explain the meaning of the citation to yourself or someone else without using
the exact wording, it should be paraphrased.
Dr Bednar put it best: “(Paraphrasing) lets
you formulate the idea in the terms suitable for your particular paper, focusing
on the underlying issue rather than the way one author expressed it” (emphasis
mine, TLŞ).
Avoid
absolute statements
Saying that something is true as an absolute
statement is not favored, since every generalization is assumed to include
exceptions. For example, “Throughout the 1960s, the Republicans did not vote
for a single social program” may be effective in a speech for rhetorical
purposes, but since social programs has not been defined and may include some
things a few Republicans did actually vote for, it is standard to use a phrase
such as, “Throughout the 1960s, the Republicans showed a strong tendencey to
vote against social programs.” Use words/phrases such as “Generally,” “For the
most part,” “Most often,” etc. If even a slight exception to your statement if
possible, use one of these formulas.
Beware
of “and”
“And” can be overused as a way to add new
elements within a sentence. Look for more sophisticated connectors which also
allow you to play with emphasis.
Not so good: The entomologist
discovered a rare beetle in the Amazon and
it had 18 legs.
Better: The entomologist discovered a rare beetle in
the Amazon with 18 legs (slight emphasis on the number of legs).
Make
the sentence active
There are two ways of making academic writing
needlessly abstract by concealing the authors of actions. One of these is
passive verb constructions, which are generally known as something to be avoided;
another one is nominalizations (noun forms) in place of the subject + verb
construction. Prose can seem to sound more serious with nominalizations, but we
have to admit that they are a little reader-unfriendly. If “somebody did
something,” well by golly, why not word it that way. Writing manuals dwell on
this a lot, probably to dissuade young academics from getting into this habit.
While the principle is not always true, it is true often enough to keep in
mind.
Not so good: The board’s indifference
to administrative nuances promoted the continuation of
inappropriate
employee hirings.
Better: Indifferent to
administrative nuances, the board continued to hire inappropriate
employees.
Plagiarism
Diligent note taking is key here. Many are
the wonderful notes writers have taken that they are unable to use in their
text after searching through an author’s several works and never finding the
page number of the citations they want to use. The following statements were
culled from Harvard’s wesite:
All homework assignments,
projects, lab reports, papers, and examinations submitted to a course are
expected to be the student’s own work. Students should always take great care
to distinguish their own ideas and knowledge from information derived from
sources. The term “sources” includes not only primary and secondary material
published in print or online, but also information and opinions gained directly
from other people.
The responsibility for learning
the proper forms of citation lies with the individual student. Quotations must
be placed properly within quotation marks and must be cited fully. ( . . . )
Students who, for whatever
reason, submit work either not their own or without clear attribution to its
sources will be subject to disciplinary action, and ordinarily required to
withdraw from the College.
http://webdocs.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/ugrad_handbook/2009_2010/chapter2/plagiarism.html (accessed 19.10.13)
I was tempted to copy more passages from
university websites describing plagiarism in all its forms and details, but the
more examples I looked at the more the descriptions seemed to boil down to the
following issues:
1. whether the idea is yours or someone else’s
2. whether the citation information is sufficient to allow the reader to access the
exact passage of an idea or information, whether that idea/information is
directly cited or paraphrased
3. whether the paraphrase is a sufficiently new and different wording of
the original text
Sorry about all the italics.
Strongly recommended: ask any technical or
ethical questions you might have about proper citation as soon as these questions
occur to you. I wasted a lot of time in graduate school being too
embarrassed to ask about citation procedure.
One last thing... when must you show a page
number, and when is the reference as a whole, without page number, sufficient?
The rule of thumb is: show full source information (including page number) for more
than four words in a row taken from another source.
However, for very general ideas or concepts which
are the thesis or a kind of summary statement for entire works, such as “the
long century” (Hobsbawm 1962, 1975, 1987) or “imagined communities” (Anderson
1983) or that we will not enter into post-modernity until the current phase of “high”
(radical) modernity has been exhausted (Giddens 1990), naming the work without
any page number is sufficient.
Common
errors in English
How to use certain words and terms—many of
the mistakes listed are specific to americans, but the list can still can be
useful:
http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.txt
Grammar
resources
This is a portal listing various websites that
try to help with grammar problems: http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/resources/grammar.htm
Citations:
arrangement of and deleting elements from them
If the citation is longer than 4 lines,
create an indented paragraph, called a set-off
or block quotation. These may be
introduced by a comma, a colon, or a period. In general, of course, embed the
citation within your own meaning flow is preferred when you can create the
proper syntactical environment.
Delete as many of words from a cited sentence
as you wish to fit the meaning you are after, and the grammatical environment
you place it in (how it fits grammatically with your sentence). Within reason,
you can use/not use any amount of words or phrases from the original text as
long as the remainder are intact as
taken from the source.
Show deletion or ellipsis with three dots in
parentheses.
1. I want to find a relevant citation about how debtor nations were treated coming out
of the war.
2. I found my citation: “Following the war,
nations with debts to some winner states were given the option of substantial
market restructuring under the winner states’ supervision, or transferring half
their underground known reserves to global exchanges.
3. Result: At armistice, debtor nation were
presented with the options of “substantial market restructuring (...) or
transferring half their underground known reserves to global exchanges.”
Here, the two sentences were worked together
to become grammatically correct single sentence with only the elements that seemed
essential to me.
Sometimes, in order to create syntactical
harmony, you may need to make a small change in the cited sentence. Use
brackets, not parentheses, to make your own changes in the cited text—but only for
small changes and when unavoidable.
[1] This document is in the public domain. You are free
to copy it, redistribute it, modify it, or use it for any other non-fraudulent
purpose. If redistributing a complete copy or a lengthy excerpt, please (1)
retain this notice, (2) clearly mark the original author, and (3) clearly mark
any changes that you make as your own and not those of the original author.
