The Writing Process Part 2

Dr Desmond Thomas,

University of Essex

What does being a successful writer involve?

• Planning: what, when, how, where

• Monitoring & achieving distance

• Awareness of the writing process of drafting, re-drafting, editing, revising

• Self-motivation

• Self-discipline

Some concepts to unpack …

• Clarity: what is ‘clear writing’? Does it mean ‘coherence’ at sentence level?

• Coherence: is it something built in to a text or in the mind of the reader?

• Structure: how is this different from coherence?

• Conciseness: the same as ‘clarity’?• Style: do the demands of academic style

clash with clarity & coherence?

Step 1: Clarity at sentence level

• Decisions in regard to the administration of medication despite the inability of irrational patients voluntarily appearing in Trauma Centres to provide legal consent rest with a physician alone.

• Our lack of knowledge about local conditions precluded determination of committee action effectiveness in fund allocation to those areas in greatest need of assistance.

• (See Williams, J. 1995, Style, U.of Chicago)

Sentence 1: problems of clarity/coherence

1. We have to sort out and mentally reassemble actions expressed as abstract nouns

2. Distortion of their underlying sequence

3. Ambiguity of who does what

4. Distance between subject and verb

5. Ambiguity of ‘despite’

6. Grammatical subject not the real subject

Sentence 2: problems of clarity/coherence

1. Not clear who the main characters are. The subject is an abstraction: “our lack of knowledge”

2. Not clear what the main action is – “precluded”?

3. Are ‘we’ part of the committee or not?

The sentences re-written

• When a patient voluntarily appears at a Trauma Centre but behaves so irrationally that he cannot legally consent to treatment, only a physician can decide whether to administer medication.

• Because we knew nothing about local conditions, we could not determine how effectively the committee had allocated funds to areas that most needed assistance.

Williams’ principles of clear writing at sentence level

• When prose seems turgid, abstract, too complex – locate the cast of characters and the actions that those characters perform (or are the objects of). If the characters are not subjects and their actions not verbs, then revise.

Problem areas?

1. English has no convenient indefinite pronoun for when the agent is unclear. One? We? Nominalizations and use of the passive can avoid this.

2. The Institutional Passive: some academics and teachers in some disciplines want to avoid …. I will show ….. We may cite ….We may begin by

Step 2: Coherence principles at paragraph level

1. Put at the beginning of a sentence those ideas that you have already mentioned, referred to, or implied, or concepts that you can reasonably assume your reader is already familiar with, and will readily recognize.

2. Put at the end of your sentence the newest, the most surprising, the most significant information: information that you want to stress – perhaps the information that you will expand on in your next sentence. (Williams 1995: 48)

And most important of all …

“A reader will feel that a paragraph is coherent if (s)he can read a sentence that specifically articulates its point.”

(Williams 1995)

Structure without coherence?

• Soil is a serious problem in many countries. Besides, around 7 million hectares of fertile land are lost in the world each year. On the contrary, about 10 million hectares of forest are being lost. Therefore, the consequences are indeed serious ….

Coherence without structure?

The net bulged with the force of the shot. The referee blew his whistle and signalled. Offside. The goalkeeper sighed with relief. The crowd started to jeer. Soon the slow handclapping started again …

Coherence at core chapter level

• Need for the main points & writer’s position to be articulated at the beginning

• Headings and subheadings should act as a test of coherence

• Need for one idea per paragraph rule• Need for topic sentences (usually the first

sentence(s) of each paragraph)• Need for interim summaries at the end of a

section to reinforce arguments

Consequences of breaking the rules of coherence: don’t let them happen!

1. Reader confused: doesn’t know what to expect

2. Reader misled: expects something different3. Reader impatient: forced to re-read sections4. Reader loses the plot: totally

misunderstanding the main arguments5. Reader loses faith – and gives up

Obeying the demands of style

• The first attribute of the art object is that it creates a discontinuity between itself and the unsynthesised manifold.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/dec/04/1

A prize-winning text!

• Dialectical critical realism may be seen under the aspect of Foucauldian strategic reversal--of the unholy trinity of Parmenidean/Platonic/Aristotelean provenance; of the Cartesian-Lockean-Humean-Kantian paradigm, of foundationalisms (in practice, fideistic foundationalisms) and irrationalisms (in practice, capricious exercises of the will-to-power or some other ideologically and/or psycho-somatically buried source) new and old alike; of the primordial failing of western philosophy, ontological monovalence, and its close ally, the epistemic fallacy with its ontic dual; of the analytic problematic laid down by Plato, which Hegel served only to replicate in his actualist monovalent analytic reinstatement in transfigurative reconciling dialectical connection, while in his hubristic claims for absolute idealism he inaugurated the Comtean, Kierkegaardian and Nietzschean eclipses of reason, replicating the fundaments of positivism through its transmutation route to the superidealism of a Baudrillard.

Bhaskar, R. 1994 Plato etc:The Problems of Philosophy and Their Resolution (Verso)

We do need to consider what makes a text look academic

• Conventions: such as the use of quotations & referencing, use of statistical and other evidence to support arguments, use of ‘hedging’.

• Style: preferring abstract nouns to verbs, preferring passive voice to active voice

But we have to get the balance right

Academic style Clarity & coherence

Editing issues

• Check for content• Check for structure• Check for coherence & style• Proof-read: referencing, spelling,

punctuation, grammatical accuracy, sentence and paragraph lengths, labelling of charts and diagrams, bibliography details