Transcription
Presented by Cal Tech
Hi, I'm Edward, and I'm Vivian, and today we're going to talk about writing with clarity. Whenever you write something, it's important to keep in mind that someone is eventually going to have to read your work. As a writer, your goal is to make things as easy as possible for the reader to understand.
When you're revising a paper for clarity, you can think about it on three different levels. First, consider the overall coherence of the paper. Ask yourself: Does it stay on topic? Are the paragraphs arranged in a way that makes sense?
Next, you will want to read for cohesion. Does every sentence make sense in context, or can some of them be rewritten to put more emphasis on your main point?
Finally, revising for concision will take another careful read-through to eliminate any extra words and to ensure that what you have written is enough to get your point across. Overall, you want to edit your draft from the reader's perspective. As the writer, you know exactly what you mean to say, but you want to say it in a way that makes it easy for the reader to understand.
Now we're going to talk about coherence in an argument-driven paper. If you have a paper you've written recently, please feel free to pause the video and grab it now so we can talk about how to check for coherence in your paper. Paper got your paper? Good.
One of the most important things to consider is the basic organization of your paper. Looking at it, do you have a central claim? The central claim may also be called a thesis statement, especially in humanities papers. Now ask yourself: Is it arguable? In other words, do you make a claim that someone could disagree with? Novice writers often just restate the prompt or describe a fact, but you should go beyond that. Second, is it specific? A common mistake students make is to make an overly general statement like, "Jane Austen writes about courtship." Besides being general, this is also impossible to argue against. Think about answering the questions "how" and "why," and you start to get a proper central claim. Finally, is it relevant? If you are writing for a prompt, does the central claim address the prompt? Also, does the rest of the essay support the central claim?
You should also look at the structure on a paragraph level. Do you have topic sentences, and are they arguable, specific, and relevant? Next, consider whether the paragraphs flow into each other. Does each paragraph close with a concluding sentence? Does the concluding sentence further develop the idea presented in the topic sentence? Also, do you have transitions that set reader expectations for the next topic or paragraph?
Now, stepping back to the paper level, it is important to have an introduction and conclusion. The introduction should present the context and, in some cases, a road map for the overall argument. Sometimes it's easier to write the introduction after drafting the body. The conclusion should sum up the argument and put it back into context. However, it should not just restate the same information that was in the introduction. Note that for papers shorter than five pages, you may not even need to restate the initial claim, and this might even annoy your professors. Rather, you should think about how the paper has further developed the claim and write the conclusion with those nuances in mind. Overall, the paper should have a beginning and an end.
Now that we have the basic pieces in place, we want to think about the logic of the argument. One technique we can use to check the logical flow of the paper is by reverse outlining. If you read the thesis statement and the topic sentences in order, does it give an accurate outline of your overall argument? Are any of the paragraphs off-topic or out of order? A common mistake is to repeat the same general point with several examples in different paragraphs without developing the argument further. Instead, every new paragraph should offer new insights and build on the previous one. One way you might consider doing this is by presenting different cases or contrasting different aspects of the same claim. Overall, every paragraph and the paper as a whole should go somewhere. The central claim should guide the discussion, but readers should feel like they learned something about your opinion that they would not have known just by looking at the thesis statement.
Now we're going to talk about cohesion, which is flow between sentences on the paragraph level. Here are three basic techniques which can help your paper become more cohesive: moving from old to new information, avoiding interrupting the subject and the verb, and using effective transitions. We're going to illustrate these three techniques with an example. This example was taken from a student's undergraduate research proposal.
"A laser tracker measurement system is the only strategy that can reduce the surface error on a structure the size of the CCAT telescope. Thousands of retroreflectors can be placed on the surface of the telescope to make the measurements. This is costly and reduces the telescope's image quality. A single retroreflector capable of taking a measurement at each position can also be repositioned to many different locations on the surface."
The first technique we're going to use on this excerpt is moving from old to new information. So what this is talking about is we always want to make sure that the information that we're introducing in our sentences flows into the next sentence. So in this example, we'll see that the laser tracker measurement system is introduced at the beginning of the first sentence, but the fact that the measurements are placed along the telescope isn't brought up again until the end of the second sentence. So you see that there's a large distance between these two ideas, which could be confusing to the reader. Here's a revised version of the same two sentences:
"To reduce the surface error on a structure the size of the CCAT telescope, a laser tracker measurement system is needed. The measurements can be made by placing thousands of retroreflectors on the surface of the telescope. This is costly and reduces the telescope's image quality."
Here we see that the measurement system and the measurements themselves are introduced at the same point between the two sentences, which improves the overall cohesion between the two ideas.
Now let's look at the last sentence. In the last sentence, the single retroreflector is the subject, and its verb, which is "can," appears with a space in the middle. This extra description here. So one issue with structuring the sentence like this is it makes it a little bit unclear to the reader which verb is going with which subject. So in general, it's often better to put the subjects and the verbs together. Here's an example of how to do that:
"A single retroreflector can also be repositioned to many different locations on the surface, allowing a measurement to be taken at each one."
Here the subject and the verb appear right next to each other.
Finally, we're going to talk about using effective transitions. We see that the two clauses appearing on either side of the semicolon here are introducing different ideas. The idea that the system is costly and reduces the telescope's image quality is a contrast to the proposition that was introduced in the first clause. We see that by including the word "however," it makes that point a lot clearer. Additionally, the different idea, which is repositioning a single retroreflector to many different positions, is an alternative to the other scheme that was introduced above. So including a transition word—in this case, "alternatively"—helps make that point a lot more clearly. Here's the overall revised text:
"To reduce the surface error on a structure the size of the CCAT telescope, a laser tracker measurement system is needed. The measurements can be made by placing thousands of retroreflectors on the surface of the telescope; however, this is costly and reduces the telescope's image quality. Alternatively, a single retroreflector can also be repositioned to many different locations on the surface, allowing a measurement to be taken at each one."
In this way, the sentences are much more cohesive, and the overall clarity of the paragraph is greatly improved.
Now we'll talk about concision. Some people think this is just about cutting down on words, but it's just as important to choose the right words so that the reader can understand exactly what you mean. Here is an example from the introduction of a student's final report for a summer research paper:
"Cardiovascular disease (CVD), more simply referred to as heart disease, is a serious problem in the world. The term CVD is used to refer to diseases that affect the heart and blood vessels, of which coronary heart disease (CHD) is a predominant manifestation, contributing to 43% of all CVD deaths in the world. Since CVDs often result in the premature disability and death of working-age people, they impose a heavy burden on society, especially for lower-income countries."
So this example stayed on topic, and the sentences flow well, but it can still be improved. One way is to use precise words. So in this example, it helps to cite the facts. Instead of saying that heart disease is a serious problem, you can state that it is the leading cause of illness and death in the world. Similarly, instead of calling it a burden for lower-income countries, you should specify that the burden is economic and cite the statistics to support the assertion. Now that you have stated all the important information, you can start simplifying the sentences by eliminating redundant words. For instance, "cities cause problems for working-aged people who normally would be able-bodied, employed, and alive." You do not need to say that their disability and death is premature. Besides redundancies, there are other ways to cut down on words. If a piece of information is unnecessary to convey the point, it can be cut out. For instance, the audience of a research paper like this should already know that cardiovascular disease is often called heart disease, so we can cut that out. There are also grammatical structures that are just more wordy. Instead of "The term CVD is used to refer to diseases that affect the heart and blood vessels," it's much more straightforward to say, "CVDs are diseases that affect the heart and blood vessels." After we incorporate all of the changes, we have this improved version:
"Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of illness and death worldwide. CVDs are diseases that affect the heart and blood vessels, of which coronary heart disease (CHD) is by far the predominant manifestation, contributing to 43% of all CVD deaths in the world. Since CVDs often result in the disability and death of working-age people, they impose a heavy economic burden on society, reducing the GDP of lower-income countries by up to 6.77%."
By using more precise words, eliminating redundancies, and deleting unnecessary words, we have reduced the bulk of the text by two words or 10 character spaces. This is not very much, but I point this out to emphasize that in revising for concision, we want to focus on reducing the amount of effort the reader needs to understand rather than just the number of words we use. So the more simple and straightforward, the better.
Once you finish your draft, it's a very good idea to read it over to check specifically for clarity. A useful practice is to read it three times over, checking for a different issue each time. First, you can check for coherence, or overall structure and organization of the paper. Then again for cohesion, or the flow between sentences on the paragraph level. And finally, you can edit for concision, which is using the best words possible. Nobody writes a first draft that is automatically clear on all of these levels, so it's important to take the time to revise for clarity. It can also help to have someone else read your paper to see if it's clear to them. If you ever need a second opinion from a reader's point of view or want to learn more about how to apply these principles to your writing, we encourage you to come talk to a peer tutor at the Hixon Writing Center. We're here to help.