They Say, I Say

Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein have published a book, They Say I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. It has received positive reviews and a not-so-positive review.

My review is positive.  Novice writers must start somewhere, and They Say, I Say lays a good foundation.  Scholars expect certain “moves” that signal the accepted parts of an argument.  To execute those “moves,” academic writers can start by structuring arguments around certain phrases and clauses. Below are some clauses that I use. 

Move 1:   Announce consensus—a kind of “they say.”

It is widely believed that

Today, most people believe that…

Normally, one would expect that…

Experts in [a discipline, such as social work or French literature] have shown that…

Snow & Crow (2011) have demonstrated that    [Cite the appropriate research]

Theory X predicts that…

Move 2, usually right after Move 1:   Announce the contrast that points toward your paper’s thesis or "point."

However, there is some evidence that

But two very recent studies suggest that

Yet no research has yet tested whether

On the other hand, many practitioners find that

However, in the case of X,

Yet this current research fails to examine/answer

However, no studies have investigated the case of

On the one hand, every X wants to…   On the other hand, no X wants to…

Currently, theorists [or researchers] are divided; some believe X, while others hold that [not X]. 

Move 3  Announce your point.

Thus the purpose of this [paper, research, study…] is to

Therefore the present study will test whether

Move 4   Review the literature to provide a fuller context for your own research question.

            Here the trick is not so much clauses as verbs.  I can send you a list of verbs that bring lit reviews to life—verbs such as posit, maintain, suggest, contend, theorize, refute, etc.

Move 5, usually later in the paper:  Acknowledge arguments that rival your own.

This result seems to contrast with the findings of Snow & Crow (2011), perhaps because

Swallow & Spring (2011) disagree, asserting that …  This apparent contradiction could arise because

Our novel result could be explained if

Move 6   Later in the paper: Acknowledge limitations; thus you preempt attacks.

The present study is limited by

This research has several methodological limitations:

We acknowledge certain limitations of this research design:

Move 7   Conclude with a “Big Picture” ending.

This study has several implications.

If this study can be replicated, it would imply that

A next research question might be, “…..?”
How can we generalize this result?
Based on these results what larger problem can we solve?

This study may point to the notion that

Future researchers might well ask

Ultimately these results, if substantiated, may mean that X should

Publish or Perish? Writers Accountability Groups

If you need to write for your job, you probably have trouble starting or finishing a writing project.  Academic writers face especially tough hurdles: urgent priorities compete for their time.  Many such writers find that a support group speeds their projects.   

Experience shows you must want such a group, choose motivated members, and stay accountable when you feel like hibernating instead.  If you are an academic writer, don’t choose a group of journalists or fiction writers.  For joining or starting your own Writers Accountability Group, here are some tips: 

Spiritedwriter is a site with a religious tone.  It supplies practical steps to setting up a Writers Accountability Group.

Don’t be fooled by the post’s title, “Shut Up and Write.”   This longish article by Kerry Rockquemore argues that you deserve and can find (start?) a writer’s accountability group.

A writer named Bridget Cowlishaw has started a Writers’ Accountability Group on Facebook. You don’t have to join this one. You could start your own, using the group options in Facebook.

At women-on-writing, this newsletter, The Muffin, posts inspiration and writing tips.  Most of these people are freelance authors and journalists, but this post includes links to other writers’ groups.

I Love This Guy

Britisher Michael Quinion writes a blog called World Wide Words, about English in our global age.  I recommend you check out his blog at this link. 

Michael has an international network of informants.  From World Wide Words, here are some gems.

• Sally Springett told us of a letter to a columnist in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle of New Jersey, dated 28 May: “Dear Edith: I found a multi-unit house with four tenants for sale.”

• A juxtaposition of links on the BBC news website on 28 May struck Robin Dawes as unfortunate: Bin Laden Killed | William and Kate.

• A paragraph in a church newsletter from Orland Park, IL, reminded Richard Olson of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal: “The first Saturday of every month we will be cooking and serving 60 homeless in Roseland.” It reminded me of a James Thurber quip about using verbs; a hostess remarked, “In this house, we can sleep 18 but we can only eat 10.”

• Harvey Wachtel contributes an advertisement in the New York Metro issue for 11 May. It was for Water’s Edge condos on the Rockaway peninsula of Long Island: “Each residence has a private sodden backyard.”

• “Mohammed Ali of the Libyan Salvation Front and a Tripoli resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals ...”

Here's Michael's copyright information: 

World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion 2011. All rights reserved. You may reproduce this e-magazine in whole or part in free newsletters, newsgroups or mailing lists online provided that you include the copyright notice above. You need the prior permission of the author to reproduce any part of it on Web sites or in printed publications. You don’t need permission to link to it.

Bad Folklore

Writer’s block can freeze your productivity.  One study (Rose, 1984, p. 72)  suggests that writer’s block thrives when writers labor under false rules.  I call these rules bad folklore. 

Over the years, students have reported rules they claimed their writing teachers enforced.  Below are the top ten.  All are wrong … bad folklore that hobbles good writers.

1. Never begin a sentence with And or But.
2. Never begin a sentence with Because or However.
3. Never begin a sentence with a preposition (Sheesh.  How does the Book of Genesis begin?)
4. Never begin a sentence with “The.” (Yes, someone actually believed that!).
5. No two sentences should begin alike.  (Laboring to obey this rule will cripple any writer.)
6. Vary your sentence length and structure to keep readers’ interest. (Nonsense.  Good writing bases sentence length and structure on the old-new rule and its corollaries—never on arbitrary variation.)
7. Never end a sentence with a preposition. (Even the Brits scorn this old chestnut.)
8. Write the introduction first.  (No, it is usually faster to draft the document first.  Ideas for good first paragraphs often pop up late in the draft, as you summarize.)
9. Edit sentences as you draft.  (Derails your train of thought and saps your confidence.)
10. Write your thesis before you draft the paper. (While an initial thesis may help you focus, good writers learn as they write. I often “post-write” a better thesis than the one I had prewritten.)

Writing a Résumé—or a Performance Evaluation

Writing your own résumé is hell.  And nearly everyone overwrites and overexplains.  These facts I know from experience with dozens of job seekers.

Writing a performance evaluation isn't any fun, either. 

Here are some resources that might help:

Purdue's famous Online Writing Lab (OWL) helps immigrants and job seekers with its Community Writing and Education Station (CWEST). CWEST offers advice and sample documents for writing resumes (or do you write résumés?) and cover letters.

Résumé writing requires verbs, which abound in the two books below.  They are written not for you but for the manager who must review performance. 

• Sandler, C. and Keefe, J.  Performance Appraisal Phrase Book: The Best Words, Phrases, and Techniques for Performance Reviews. 273 pages. 4.15" x 7". Adams Media; Avon, MA. 

• Neal, J.  Effective Phrases for Performance Appraisals: A Guide to Successful Evaluations.  Many editions. 169 pages. 4.25" x 8.5"  Neal Publications; Perrysburg, OH. 

There's even a book about how to write a negative review:

Sandler, C., and Keefe, J.   Fails to Meet Expectations: Performance Review Strategies for Underperforming Employees.  281 pages. Adams Media; Avon, MA.

Shop for a Dictionary

I have long preferred the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. For educators I've recommended the picture-full American Heritage College Dictionary.  But I wonder whether I'm right.  And what about comparing online dictionaries?

In 2009, author Yi-Ling Chen-Josephson reviewed dictionaries for Slate magazine; see her review here.  I was happy to see that she agrees with me, rating the Merriam-Webster's just slightly higher than the American Heritage.  Of course, I must use the Merriam-Webster's when I teach APA style because APA cites it as the authority.  


Chen-Josephson compared printed dictionaries. What about online ones? I use the Merriam-Webster's online at http://m-w.com because of course I can click on [pronunciation] and hear the word. The American Heritage does not have its own site, but it seems to be available, possibly abridged, at thefreedictionary.com.


Speaking of online, I prefer dictionary.com over yourdictionary.com.  I like macmillandictionary.com if I want to toggle between British and US English. It also has a much cleaner site.

But for you Yanks, dictionary.com lists information from these dictionaries: first Random House Dictionary (2011), then World English Dictionary aka the Collins English Dictionary, 10th edition (2009).  For etymologies (word origins), it cites information from something called the Online Etymology Dictionary (2010) by Douglas Harper.  There are no links directly to online versions of these dictionaries, so no way to check the sources.  


Related to dictionary.com is thesaurus.com, which I use because it contains many more words than the Merriam-Webster's thesaurus.  It draws from many thesauruses (or do you say thesauri?)


A competitor is yourdictionary.com. It failed my test.  Initially it looks great because the page is uncluttered.  And it purports to offer many related resources, such as an ESL page and examples of the word used in sentences.  But the ESL list of links led to many dead ends or under-construction sites.  And the algorithm used to generate "sentence examples" is horrible. For the word "laboratory," its first seven sentence examples are:

• Laboratory testing in ukas accredited laboratory testing in ukas accredited laboratory [ based in kilsyth office ] .
• The company operates a state-of-the-art water testing laboratory in huntingdon.
• Laboratory experiments.
• He runs a food microbiology service and the hca microbiology laboratory.
• Laboratoryhas many well-equipped laboratories for the teaching of forensic science.
• Laboratorymical and biological science graduates currently find work in analytical laboratories.
• Laboratoryl submitted his et barthelemy with july villari e. l v the live further awayif in physics laboratories he did this.

Does your page reflect your age?

Which of those pages looks readable?  I don’t mean, “Do you understand what they say?” I mean, “Which page layout can you follow?”

Your answer may reflect your generation.  For more examples, look here.

Fifteen years ago, I watched my godson (age 9) read a Nintendo Power magazine.  To me, the words and the pictures seemed to be thrown onto the page.  Just looking at the salad-like layout, I squirmed and looked away. 

I knew Bill didn’t love reading.  I asked him how he could read Nintendo Power pages. He said, “Don’t you know how to read comic strips?  This page works the same way.” 

Today’s Nintendo Power (above) has text that is laid out a bit more like The New Yorker.  But how does the text relate to the pictures?  In what order should I look at the pix? In them, I see a "3" and a "2," but what do the numbers mean?  And have you looked at a book-format Japanese anime?

Today, language pundits speculate whether “texting” will ruin written English.  But no one is asking whether "screening" changes our eyes.  Computers (games, websites, and blogs) instill their layout expectations into human brains.  Does the next generation read a different-looking page than we older folks do? 

When it comes to reading pages, I’m a top-down, left-to-right person.  I want each picture “tied to” its caption.  

I bring format expectations to what I read. 

But so does my godson.  And he’s out of college now.  Will his generation reinvent the page?

I present a theory …?

The First Person

I could write impersonally: A theory is presented …

Or I could write personally: I/we present a theory …   

Which style informs you better?

Suzette Haden Elgin suggests that the safest mode of speech is “computer mode” —speaking without I, you, or opinions.  Thus, Elgin reports, computer mode is preferred in science writing.  And indeed, the American Medical Association Manual of Style, 10th edition, page 320, prefers not “we did X” but “the author(s) did X.”

But some journals, such as Health Care for Women International, explicitly require first person pronouns (I or we) and active voice verbs.  Further, the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th edition, even encourages the use of I and we (page 77).

For scientific writing, which “voice” below would you choose?

Active voice with personal pronoun: I studied or We studied.

Active voice with third-person: The author studied.

Or passive voice (no personal pronouns): X was studied. 

Or action in a noun (no pronouns):  A study was undertaken.

On the question of personal pronouns in science or business, here are the views of several sources:

Harwood N.  (2005). ‘We do not seem to have a theory … the theory I present here attempts to fill this gap’: Inclusive and exclusive pronouns in academic writing.  Applied Linguistics 26, 343-375. 

         In business, physics, economics, and computer science, Harwood finds I, we, and us used, but with very different effects. There is a spectrum from the risky I as originator to the consensus-building we/us that actually effaces the writer.  (Incidentally, Harwood uses “I” liberally.)  He concludes that acceptance of these first persons varies with the “corpus” or discipline.

Kuo, C-H. (1999). The use of personal pronouns: Role relationships in scientific journal articles. English for Specific Purposes 18, 121-138.  In science, Kuo found we is far more common than I, and, used either inclusively or exclusively, we strategically positions a writer’s statement.

Netzel, R., Perez-Iratxeta, C., Bork, P., & Andrade, M.A. (2003). The way we write: Country-specific variations of the English language in the biomedical literature. European Molecular Biology Organization [EMBO] 4, 446-451.   In biomedical literature, compared to English written elsewhere, US English has a high proportion of I/we personal pronouns and low proportion of passive verbs.  In the same corpus, US English is high in both sentence length and proportion of verbs per sentence.

September 16, 2011: Writing Workshop

Term papers need not torment you.  If you write papers in APA 6th edition style, register for Rosemary's one-day workshop.  There are still spaces open on Friday, September 16, 2011, at University of Illinois at Chicago.  Class meets 8:30 to about 5:00 pm and cost is $175.  

Contact Rosemary at cseminar@uic.edu.

Rosemary will also present the workshop  Saturday, September 10, at Lewis University in Romeoville, IL 

and 

Saturday, September 24, at St. Anthony College in Rockford, IL.

Quotation Marks with Other Punctuation

Dr Paul Carvey, distinguished professor of pharmacology in Chicago, writes: 

I have been editing a lot of manuscripts, theses, dissertations, and term papers of late and have come across a common error made by our students involving the use of quotes and punctuation.  

Commas and periods almost invariably go inside the quotes, yet half the material I have read places the commas and periods outside of the quotes.  

I searched the Internet and looked at several writing guides, and all place the periods and commas inside the quotes.  Exclamation and question marks generally go inside the quotes as well, but it can depend on context in some cases.  Colons and semicolons generally go outside of quotes.  

The only time a period goes after a quote is when a citation follows the sentence (e.g., ….these results were found” (24).

 
Paul M. Carvey, PhD
Dean, Graduate College
Associate Dean of the Basic Sciences, Rush Medical College
The Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Presidential Professor of Pharmacology and Neuroscience

Thank you, Dr. Carvey!

Writers can learn more at the Purdue OWL (see item #5 especially).  Note, too, that the rule above applies to U.S. English.  British English, especially from the previous century, follows different rules for quotation. Currently the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th edition, puts the comma before the end-quote, but it uses a single quote (') where U.S. English uses a double quotation mark.

Writer's Block

1.  Pro writers share this golden advice: “Write a crummy draft.”  If you aim for a crummy draft, you will short-circuit the inner critic.  And the inner critic is probably the most common source of writer’s block.  Here’s a secret: every finished document started as a crummy draft.  The alternative is no draft at all.

2. Write a little bit (almost) every day.  Yes, for many of us writers a span of at least two hours is ideal. But research suggests that writing even a few sentences a day yields a far greater output than waiting until you “have time.”

3. Watch out for what I call “Clean house, blank page” syndrome. Your inner procrastinator will have you sitting down to write and then scrubbing the barbecue or cleaning out your desk!  

4. Start with the part of the paper that’s easiest to write (for example, in a research paper, it’s often the Methods section).  And don’t pressure yourself to write the intro first.  You’ll write a better intro if you do so after you’ve drafted the body.

5. Forget your critical professor.  Write to someone who has asked your help.  Imagine yourself responding to a patient’s question or mentoring a colleague.  Helping mobilizes deep resources and evades crippling anxieties.

Visual-spatial learners

At 380+ pages, this book, called Upside-Down Brilliance, is probably too long to read.  But take its initial quiz (preface page v).  Find out if you, or someone you love, is a visual-spatial (V-S) learner.  If the answer is yes, skim the book. Read the stories. Explore Silverman's own site.

For V-S learners, U.S. schools are beginning to offer special teaching.  One such teaching method is the Orton Gillingham system. Although it has not been supported by rigorous research, it is part of many reading-instruction programs.

Another approach is Lindamood Bell.

If you are curious about your learning style, try a free online questionnaire.

A Way to Fight Bafflegab

Above is a photo of beads that represent the words in the two sentences below.

Sentence #1
Recommendations to the X Council regarding research preparation standards and to doctoral programs for strengthening course work that prepares counselor educators as researchers would be the critical outcome for these studies.  31 words

Sentence #2

From these studies, we could recommend how the X Council should standardize ways schools of counseling prepare students to understand the research process, and we could recommend how doctoral programs could strengthen course work that prepares as researchers those who educate counselors.   42 words     

Of the sentences above, which one informs readers more quickly and completely? 
Do the verbs help?

Are shorter sentences always better than longer ones? 

Bafflegab

 

Back in 1983, when I started teaching writing, Americans frequently wrote sentences that baffled readers: a style called bafflegab.  Too many of us still do.

For example, today I was enticed by the title of an article about how I could teach better online.  But the article was so hard to grasp that I gave up.  

Here is a typical sentence of bafflegab:

Initially, ongoing survey data from 248 pre- and 47 post-program student surveys and additional summaries of course evaluations given to students within the MVCR program were analyzed for student beliefs about necessary qualities for their instructors. 

Why did that writer fail to put actions into verbs, so I could understand as quickly as I could read?  The writer preferred bafflegab, probably because it sounded impressive.  But bafflegab limits his discoveries to the elite few who have time and skill to decode them.

Why?  Is the purpose of research to “get published” and elude criticism through obscurity?  Is it true that “bafflegab pays,” as J. Scott Armstrong showed back in 1980? 

In the same source, I found other types of bafflegab:

 

Finally, design is an ongoing process.  Technologies, incoming faculty, student needs, curriculum, etc. are always changing.  The document will therefore continually need revision.  Document revision can be on a structured or unstructured time scale.  It can also be performed by any number of committee formulations.  Then the process of acceptance of any new formulation of the document must reiterate itself.

(If a camel is a horse designed by committee, imagine a horse designed by a “committee formulation”!)

Decoded, the paragraph says, "Update documents." Scarcely a discovery.

To heal those rapid-fire sentences, writing teachers tell us to “vary sentence structures.”  But arbitrary variation solves little.  The sentences above need to be combined, not arbitrarily, but so that the each one has a word or two, early on, that repeats from the previous sentence.  And on that foundation, each sentence’s end should add its new information. 

If sentences linked ideas, and if actions appeared not in nouns but in active verbs, writers would clarify what they meant.  And the results might truly impress people. But that style requires writers who know what they mean, and writers who prefer communicating over impressing.

Most people really do want to communicate.  They will give up bafflegab if they know how.

That’s why I teach.

Honest Statistical Writing

We’ve all heard that people can lie with statistics.  But if you write statistics, you do not wish to lie.  And we all dislike being lied to.

For those who write or evaluate statistical evidence, there is a handbook. It is called How to Report Statistics in Medicine, second edition, 2006, by Thomas Lang and Michelle Secic.  (It is published by the American College of Physicians).  The book is simply and clearly written, with examples.  It advises us generally about types of measurement and then covers kinds of evidence, such as

·      Various measures of risk

·      Hypothesis tests with their p values

·      Association and correlation

·      Regression and ANOVA

·      Surveys, case studies, cross-sectional analyses

Readers who don’t know statistics very well (as I do not) can use this book to judge statistical presentations.  This book would be ideal if you review articles for a science journal.

I learned a few things:

On page 3 -  Do not give people more than two significant figures.  That’s all they can grasp.  Do not write that in April 2011, unemployment was 9.4481% of the available U.S. workforce.  It’s clearer to say that, in April 2011, unemployment was 9.4% of …  

On page 22 - 

When I inform people about the risk (of what’s bad) or the probability (of what’s good), I need to tell them at least four things:

1. The numerator and denominator with their units of measurement (for example, 25 out of every 100 …).
2. The time span.  Am I reporting the probability that X will occur over one year?  Over 10 years?  Over the life cycle of a fruit fly?
3. The unit of population.  Every 1,000 live births?  Every 1,000,000 European residents?  Every 100 fruit flies in my sample?
4. The confidence interval (CI or p value).

When I read an odds ratio (page 27), I should remember that “4.2 times as likely as” does not really mean “4.2 times more likely than.” 

This book by Lang and Secic is helping me read better and listen better.

As you know, statistics often appear in tables or graphs.  If you need to create them, here is a basic tutorial: Including Tables and Figures in Academic Writing .  Its examples are not necessarily all in APA 6th edition style. You will want to check APA6 pages 116 and following.  But the facts are good.

The tutorial comes from our British friends at the Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies, Avenue Campus, Highfield, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK SO17 1BF

Latin Words and Phrases

Searching the Web for help, I found this sentence, “It’s not a problem of your system, per say.”

Ouch.

Per se is Latin for “in/by itself or themselves; as such.”  Many Latin terms are part of English.  Once English italicized all foreign terms, but in the U.S., we write the common ones in regular type, as a good dictionary will confirm.

Of course, medical and legal dictionaries are full of Latin. 

Below are a few Latin terms in everyday English:

ad hoc - for this (current) purpose. The crisis was assessed by an ad hoc committee.

de minimis - slight(ly) or negligib(ly)  We found other errors but judged them de minimis.

deus ex machina - supernatural intervention to “save the day”

e.g. exempli gratia - examples drawn from among others; an incomplete list 

ergo - therefore 

i.e.  id est - that is; a complete list

ipso facto - by that fact alone.  All care by physicians is not ipso facto the best care.

mutatis mutandis - all things being equal; after the appropriate changes are made

pro bono -  for the good of others; work done without charge

pro rata - proportionately shared.  We combined the shipment, but billed each party pro rata.

quid pro quo - what is given in exchange.  He offered a favor, but there was a quid pro quo.

quod erat demonstrandum Q.E.D. - [This is] what we set out to prove.

sic - yes; so.  "That is how the writer wrote it."  Used to recognize an error.

Here is a link to many, many more Latin terms. 

And here is a shorter list that includes abbreviations. 

Intelligences

Mirror picture

More and more I am convinced every child has intelligences that we need to free up.

Edward was assigned to take five photos with a digital camera. One had to be a portrait, and he chose a self portrait.  I lent him my camera, and I set up a mirror that he could photograph.  The resulting photo, as it popped up on the back of the digital camera, was just a glare.

I was stymied; but Edward wasn’t, not even for five seconds. He reversed the camera so it pointed toward him.  He used the mirror to see the camera’s viewing window, and snapped the shutter.  He took a photo with minimal glare (above).

I would never have solved the problem, let alone solve it as quickly as he did. 

Edward is 16, and attends a good private high school.  His grades are not great.  He struggles with finding the right word, and he fails to understand idioms. (He thought “on pain of death” meant that you were painfully dying.)  His teachers criticize his written work.

But Edward’s peers seek him out when they need someone who listens thoughtfully and counsels carefully.  And as the photo story shows, he’s a problem solver. 

Someday our school system will value people like Edward.  If he could teach others what’s natural to him, we might have world peace.