When I gave a draft of my master’s thesis to Terry Au, my second reader, she returned it covered in red marks and with the oral comment “I marked these errors once; I don’t expect to find any of these mistakes again.” There is risk in having someone who studies child language development on your committee. I guarantee I made those mistakes again. But the marks that may have influenced my writing the most were the big red circles around my dangling “this”s.

Technically, it is not grammatically incorrect to use “this” without a noun after it. “This” can be used either as a demonstrative determiner, and therefore modify a noun as an adjective would, or a demonstrative pronoun, and stand alone (yes, I am citing Wikipedia here; don’t try it at home). “This” as a pronoun works fine when you and someone else are standing in front of something, as in, “this is mine!” while pointing at a cupcake your partner is about to grab. But the majority of the time, if you use it as a pronoun in your writing, it will be vague and you will leave the reader with uncertainty about what you mean.

I see this most frequently (see what I did there? Not so clear, is it? I’ll start over).

I see this misuse most frequently at the start of sentences, referring to something in the prior sentence, such as “This demonstrates” or “This provides evidence that” or “This involves” or “This indicates.” Often, a simple addition of a noun will make the sentence much clearer, such as “This finding,” “This study,” or “This association.”

Here’s an example:

“Furthermore, by college graduation, about 90% of students report having penetrative vaginal intercourse (Patrick & Lee, 2010; Fryar, Hirsch, Porter, Kottiri, Brody, & Louis, 2007). This indicates that the college years are pivotal for the development of sexual behaviors.” 

As a reader, I can kind of figure out that the author is referring to basically the full point in the prior sentence with the word “this.” But much clearer to state, “This percentage indicates” or “This high rate of sexual behavior indicates,” so the reader doesn’t have to sort it out himself.

Another common use I see is “Because of this.” An example:

In the current study, we used adolescent self-reports during school based data collection to examine associations between attachment to parents and externalizing behaviors. Because of this, our findings may be biased.”

Because of what? The fact that it was self-reports? School-based? The constructs assessed? Be specific.

Here’s another example:

“Students frequently described alcohol use as leading to arousal, often described in terms of an increase in horniness or a decrease in inhibition as a result of drinking alcohol. This is supported by the literature, which describes alcohol as a social lubricant that increases disinhibition (MacDonald et al., 2000).”

What is supported by the literature? If I change it to “this link between alcohol use and arousal” it becomes a bit clearer. 

Again, it’s about being intentional in your writing. If you tell the reader exactly what you mean, the reader will know exactly what you mean, and won’t have to guess.


I really could go on and on, because this [issue] is one of the most frequent ones I encounter, particularly in grading. But this [post] needs to end at some point. 

When I’m providing my students feedback in track changes, I sometimes catch myself using “this” as a pronoun, as in “this is unclear” or “this is awkward.” This [instance] is not actually vague, because I’ve highlighted a portion of text, the track changes equivalent of pointing. Still, I try my best to model and sometimes change it to “this sentence/phrase” or “this point.”

You know that everything I just wrote replies to “these” too, right? And while you’re at it, check your vague use of “it” as well.

“The post Intentional writing part 4: Dis the this first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on November 14, 2013."

In October, I gave a talk at Brandeis University, my alma mater. The audience included 3 professors I had taken courses from as an undergraduate student in the 80’s. A week later over lunch, I learned from one of them that the prior week’s speaker was a psychology professor who covered “How to give a bad research talk.” They didn’t tell me about it beforehand, because they thought it might make me anxious. And thank goodness – I could just imagine that with that knowledge, every time one student leaned over to another to whisper something, or shot someone a look, I’d be thinking, “what bad talk thing did I just do?”

Blogging about writing this past week, I’ve become more self-conscious of my own writing. As apparently have my current grad students, one of whom wrote this week and said: “Each of us in the lab thinks that we alone must have inspired your comments.” So yes, each of my current students have broken some of the guidelines I’ve discussed, but so have all of my former students, my colleagues, and every student whose paper I have ever graded.

And so have I. Despite my increased self-consciousness, I emailed a manuscript draft to a current student just as I was publishing blog posts about writing. The student, a co-author on the manuscript, sent it back with many comments, including many inconsistencies in my construct terminology. I had definitely checked my own work, though clearly not enough times. Although we all want to send our very best work out every time we hit “send,” better for a co-author to find problems than a reviewer. So, please read these posts while keeping a little song in the back of your head – one I always sing to my kids in times of frustration over lack of perfection. 

Working on my own work while writing about intentional writing also has made me aware of exceptions to some of my guidelines. So do recognize that I’m not saying you have to follow each of these guidelines in every single sentence – sometimes there are stylistic, argument-relevant, parsimony, or wording reasons to deviate from these rules. But do so intentionally.

Today I want to discuss vague writing. I caught a couple of instances in my own writing this week, for instance, something like:

“College students who drink alcohol more tend to engage in more sexual behavior.”

Huh? “Drink alcohol more” isn’t ideal, because it’s not totally clear what I mean. More frequently, or more servings of alcohol? However, I could argue that if I meant more servings, I would write “drink more alcohol” so maybe I can let it slide. However, “engage in more sexual behavior” is quite vague. What kind of sexual behavior? Vaginal? Oral? Kissing? What does “more” mean? More frequently? More partners? More frequently with the same partner or more frequently with different partners? No way to know.

When you write with intention, you should be certain that your sentences convey exactly what you mean. If you write something vague, the reader may interpret it differently from your intention, leading to confusion.

Here are some examples of the types of vague statements I frequently encounter, and how to improve them:

• Researchers have studied parent-adolescent communication in a number of different ways.
•         What ways?
•         Better: Researchers have studied parent-adolescent communication using adolescent self-report, parent self-report, and, less frequently, naturalistic or lab-based observations of parents and adolescents.

• Time spent with deviant peers is associated with a number of different outcomes.
•         Even if you’re about to describe those outcomes, try to be more specific in your intro sentence – negative outcomes (still pretty vague)? Psychological or behavioral outcomes? Both? More description in the sentence that leads the paragraph will frame the rest of the paragraph, making it easier to read, because the reader knows what to expect.
•         Better: Time spent with deviant peers is associated with negative psychological, behavioral, and social outcomes during adolescence.

• Research suggests that romantic relationships have important implications for adolescents.
•         What aspects of romantic relationships? What implications?
•         Better: Research suggests that romantic relationship quality during adolescence has implications for mental health, attachment orientation, and romantic relationship quality in adulthood.

• Our sample included only college students from one university. Future research should address this issue.
•         Okay. But why? How?
•         Better: Future studies should consider asking similar questions among students at universities in different geographic regions, 2-year colleges, private universities, online universities, non-residential students, as well as among individuals who are not attending college.  For instance, perceived alcohol-sex links may be less positive and more negative among students at campuses with more conservative attitudes toward alcohol use and/or sex, such as religiously sponsored universities.

• This work will make an important contribution to the literature.
•         Everyone thinks their work will make an important contribution to the literature. Tell us why.
•         Better: This paper makes an important contribution to the literature, by examining HIV testing in a high risk but understudied population, and by including longitudinal data to predict HIV testing from attitudes and behaviors in earlier adolescence.

By using more specific language, readers will know exactly what you plan to do, how, and why. Once again, making it easier to follow your paper, and ending with an overall sense of what you did, how, and why.

“The post Intentional writing part 3: Vanquish the vague first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on November 12, 2013.”

I’ll start with a confession. As the mother of twins, I worry about fairness and favoritism. This concern comes out in peculiar ways – for instance, on our family blog, I try to alternate across posts which kid’s name appears first. And, in the 100+ holiday cards I write every year, I aim to sign about half with my son’s name first, and about half with my daughter’s name first.

Much of the time in social scientific writing, we have a list of 2 or more things that repeatedly appears (and you won’t vary those terms, because you read my last post). Elementary and middle school students. Mothers and fathers. Alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use. Reading, writing, and mathematics. You do not have to worry about favoritism for mothers vs. fathers. Pick an order, and use it every single time. This strategy will make your writing easier to follow. Use it consistently throughout the paper:

1.      Every time you write the items as a list (alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana), use the same order.

2.      In the introduction, when you have sections or paragraphs about each item in the list (e.g., a paragraph about alcohol, one about tobacco, and one about marijuana), use the same order as appears in your list.

3.      In the methods section when you describe each measure, use the same order.

4.      In the results section when you describe your findings, use the same order.

5.      In your tables, when you enter them as predictors, use the same order.

Readers will get used to that order, and so reading the items consistently in the same order will require less work/processing than if the order continually changes. Now your reader can concentrate on your methods and important findings, rather than trying to parse your writing. Sometimes in the discussion it does make sense to switch things up – here you are trying to make new connections and draw new conclusions, and so a twisting of order, especially if you’ve been consistent so far, could actually make the reader more attentive to a new idea.  For instance, if findings for alcohol and marijuana were similar, but findings for tobacco were different, you may want to write about alcohol and marijuana in one paragraph, and tobacco in the next.

A related and equally, or perhaps even more important, issue.

Often we write about associations between two variables; much of the time, the whole point of the paper is how group of constructs X is associated with group of constructs Y. Much of the time, we have a theoretical or conceptual idea about the causal direction or temporal ordering of this association – though we can rarely prove it. To make your writing clear, always present one set of constructs first in writing about these associations. For instance, let’s say you’re interested in how self-esteem might lead to better academic engagement and achievement (again, you conceptualize the temporal ordering that way, even if you cannot definitively test it). Here are two examples of how to summarize some past (fictional, and thus uncited) work.

HARD TO FOLLOW:

Adolescents’ SAT scores are associated with their self-esteem assessed in the same grade. In addition, adolescents’ self-esteem during high school is associated with their subsequent math grades during their first year of college.

EASIER TO FOLLOW:

Adolescents’ self-esteem in junior year is associated with their SAT scores taken the same year. In addition, self-esteem during high school is associated with adolescents’ subsequent math grades during their first year of college.

Notice the difference? In the first sentence you have to do some mental gymnastics to recognize that the meaningful distinction between the two sentences is SAT scores vs. math grades. In the second sentence, the writer, by using parallel structure, has done the work for you, and the distinction is clearer. 

Consistent ordering is another writing improvement that is relatively easy to fix in your own work. Pick an order and try to use it consistently. Also, when your draft is complete, read it through one time specifically looking for deviations from this ordering. Your readers will thank you.  And understand you.

"The post Intentional writing part 2: Consistent wording avoids confusion first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz's Blog on November 8, 2013"

  In high school English class you learn that repetition is evil. You shouldn’t write “the girl” every time. You should vary between “the girl” and “the young woman” and “Juliet” and “Lord Capulet’s daughter.” To avoid writing “beautiful” repeatedly, you will pull out your thesaurus (dating myself – I mean open google) and use words like attractive, alluring, and pretty.

That works if you’re writing an essay about the theme of lightness and dark in Romeo and Juliet. But it does not work for (social) scientific writing.

Okay, there are exceptions. Even in scientific writing, you should not start every sentence with “however” or use “the authors examined” in every other sentence. But, you should not vary between the terms “girl” and “young woman” and “female child” if you are writing about the same person or category of persons.  

Think about writing in the biological or medical sciences. Let’s say you’re writing a paper about the properties of human papillomavirus (HPV). You would not want to vary the terms you use in place of HPV, or else you would get a paragraph like this:

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the United States (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2012). The virus that causes cervical cancer is highest among women aged 20 to 24 years (Dunne et al., 2007), an age range when many young Americans attend college. The most common sexually transmitted disease is spread through genital skin-to-skin contact during sexual activity (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2012).

Instead, you would want to use “HPV” each and every time you were referring to HPV, to avoid confusion:

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the United States (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2012). HPV infection is highest among women aged 20 to 24 years (Dunne et al., 2007), an age range when many young Americans attend college. HPV is spread through genital skin-to-skin contact during sexual activity (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2012).

Is the second one amazingly eloquent? No. Is it clear? Yes.

Similarly, when you vary the term you use for a group of people or for a construct, you confuse the reader. If you write about “girls” in one sentence and “young women” in the next, the reader might wonder if you’re describing two different age groups. If you write about peer relationships in one sentence and peer interactions in the next, readers might think you are trying to distinguish these constructs.

Whenever I edit my own work, I read through thinking about what terminology I’m using to describe groups and constructs. I make sure to pick a specific term for each group/construct, and then I do a search for all uses of the terms I didn’t pick. That doesn’t mean that I can never use the other terms, but I want to make sure I’m using my terminology with intention. It’s obviously better to make these choices before writing, and I do try to do that, but sometimes other terms slip in, or there’s a reason to change the terms I use.

Here are a few examples of groupings of terms that I have recently seen used interchangeably, in my own writing or in others’, which has led to confusion or lack of clarity:

·         Well being/mental health/psychological well being

·         Sexual behavior/sexual behaviors/sexual experiences/penetrative sex/vaginal sex/sexual activity/sexual encounters

·         Young adults/emerging adults/ late adolescents/young people/youth

·         Motives/motivations

·         Wave 2/2nd Wave/Time 2

It’s confusing because as a reader, it’s not clear if the writer conceptualizes young adulthood as a separate phase from emerging adulthood. It’s not clear if the author considers mental health and well being to be interchangeable or distinct constructs. By the way, writing this sentence, I first wrote “distinct” twice, thought it was too repetitive, and changed one to separate. There, repetition is unnecessary.

A good way to improve your ability to be consistent in terminology is to edit other people’s work. We tend to notice inconsistency in others’ work more than in our own, because in our own writing, our intentions are clear to ourselves. When we read someone else’s work, difficulty with following terminology becomes more apparent.

“The post Intentional writing part 1: Use consistent terms  first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s Blog on November 6, 2013.”

Some early advice from my adviser, Marian Sigman, has stuck with me perhaps more than any other advice. I’ll try to share it here in as close to her words as possible:

When you submit a grant proposal (or a manuscript, or a dissertation) and you imagine a reviewer reading it, you picture her sitting at an uncluttered desk with no distractions, full attention to your masterpiece.

In reality, she is more likely to be sitting on her bed, pages of her manuscript strewn about, with children jumping on the bed and a dog trying to eat the pages. Real life is messy.  As a result, you need to do everything in your power to make your writing clear, easily digestible, and as error free as possible. You can’t control the environment it will be read in, but you can control how easy it is to read it.  

---

Perhaps these words have stayed with me more than any other because I read manuscripts, grant proposals, and theses whenever and wherever I can. Yes, in bed with children climbing me, but also on trains, in the car during the kids’ ceramics class (actually, a very low distraction environment), in coffee shops, in doctors’ offices waiting to be seen, on park benches at playgrounds… whenever and wherever I can fit in a few minutes.  I rarely read a full document of more than a few pages in one sitting, and if I do, it’s after midnight. Clarity is incredibly important when you’re trying to convey your message to someone who is distracted or exhausted.

So for my next few posts, I’m going to discuss some ways to make your writing clearer.  I call it intentional writing because it involves carefully considering your word choice, and thinking not only about the content of your work, but the words you use to convey it. As with posters and presentations, good content only works if backed up by clear presentation. Once you start writing with intention, it will become more natural to correct your own writing, as well as to edit others’.

Other entries in this series:
Use consistent terms
Consistent ordering avoids confusion
Vanquish the vague
Dis the this
Start strong
Leave them with something to remember
Write about what you are doing, not what others are not
Integrate, don't list past research
Great introductory sentences
Findings-focused literature summaries


“The post Intentional writing  first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s Blog on November 4, 2013.”