{"id":38178,"date":"2017-03-13T13:22:59","date_gmt":"2017-03-13T20:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=38178"},"modified":"2017-03-13T13:22:59","modified_gmt":"2017-03-13T20:22:59","slug":"academic-sentences-wakeupreader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/academic-sentences-wakeupreader\/","title":{"rendered":"Academic sentences -#wakeupreader"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HG-Sentences-icon\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Academic sentences are often lengthy. They make a point\u00a0and then\u00a0add multiple caveats and embellishments.<\/p>\n

Some people think there is an ideal sentence length. I have read for instance that the ideal newspaper sentence is somewhere around twenty words. Perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less. But around the twenty word mark.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also read that many academic sentences surpass this target by rather a lot. The academic sentence can go up to sixty, even\u00a0seventy words without flinching.\u00a0Believe it. Just try this one on for size.<\/p>\n

While ghosts appear to wield considerable power \u2013 including in Derrida\u2019s (1994) account, which ascribes to them the intimidating visor effect (the ability to see without being seen) as well as the ability to put time out of joint and hand down injunctions \u2013 their dependency on being acknowledged by the living ensures that they are never all powerful.<\/em><\/p>\n

That\u2019s 56 words excluding date.<\/p>\n

But when you read this sentence it\u2019s not impossible to understand. It\u2019s a bit clumsy, yes, but you can probably see\u00a0what it\u2019s getting at. Its length doesn\u2019t even seem particularly excessive. Our lack of surprise at the sentence length is probably a sign that we academics\u00a0are VERY used to reading long.<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t imagine that it\u2019s just the social sciences that use lots of words per sentence.<\/p>\n

Psychotherapy researchers who realise that the effect of the therapy to which they are allied is less beneficial than another therapy cannot easily switch their research programme to another therapy (since they have often been trained in that therapy for many years), in contrast with a researcher addressing pharmacotherapy who can more easily change his or her research agenda to another drug if a drug proves to be less effective than previously thought. <\/em><\/p>\n

There are 73 medical words here. And it too is comprehensible- although only just IMHO.<\/p>\n

Very long sentences can be quite tricky for readers \u2013 even long-sentence-innoculated academic readers\u00a0\u2013 to navigate. Too many additional thoughts all at once and the reader loses the will to go on. They get confused and can\u2019t remember the main point they are meant to be following.<\/p>\n

This is not<\/i> a reason\u00a0to write nothing but short sentences.\u00a0Academic writers can reasonably expect colleagues,\u00a0other academic readers, to stay upright at the occasional encounter with a lengthy bit of syntax. They\/we won\u2019t rub their\/our eyes and nod off at their desks, even\u00a0though they\/we might sigh a bit if the sentence is really, well, too long.<\/p>\n

The reader-asleep problem really arises when the text is nothing but<\/i> long sentences, Seventy words followed by another seventy words, followed by\u2026 \u00a0Long sentences, one after another, like a never-ending series of canal step locks. Hello Caen Hill. Half way through and it\u2019s time for a cup of tea.<\/p>\n

\"5565639586_dfefb89160_b.jpg\"<\/p>\n

But actually, long sentences are not the only source of reader enervation. Too many short sentences have exactly the same zzzz-inducing effect. Miles\u00a0of short sentences feel as if you\u2019re reading a particularly shoddy newspaper or a primary school essay, not a serious scholarly work. Equally tiring and tiresome.<\/p>\n

So if length per se is not the problem, what is?\u00a0Well dear reader, it\u2019s repetition, the lack of variation.<\/p>\n

To keep readers awake you need to not only vary your sentence structure<\/a>, but also your sentence length. Some long sentences, some medium, some short \u2013 the Goldilocks principle. It\u2019s not so hard to do. Here\u2019s an example<\/a> of sentence variation where the long and short are used to good effect.<\/p>\n

Communication between doctors and patients is a core component of patient experience.<\/em> Patients\u2019 evaluations of doctors\u2019 interpersonal skills are widely used in assessments of the quality of care, with an increasing focus on the public reporting of patient feedback.\u00a0In the USA and the UK, certain minority ethnic groups report lower patient experience scores compared to the majority population.\u00a0For example, analysis of the English General Practice Patient Survey found that South Asian groups report particularly low scores compared to the White British majority, with Bangladeshi and Pakistani groups providing the lowest scores. Around half of the difference in these scores is explained by the concentration of South Asian patients in low-scoring primary care practices.\u00a0The remaining difference currently remains unexplained. <\/em><\/p>\n

The first sentence is 12 words \u2013 it\u2019s quite short and\u00a0its job is to state what is coming up in the \u00a0paragraph. The second is 27 words and establishes two connected points about the topic of the paragraph \u2013 patient evaluation and public reporting. A key factual focussing point then takes only 21 words. The fourth sentence is 34 words long and adds important evidential detail to the paragraph topic. The fifth and penultimate sentence is 22 words long and adds one more key additional point. The final sentence, which is actually the warrant for the particular study being reported, is a mere snippet at\u00a0six assertive words.<\/p>\n

You can see in this paragraph the varation in sentence length, as well as the reasons for the syntactical length choices made.\u00a0Long sentences can provide evidence, qualifying\u00a0information and nuance. Short sentences offer the opportunity to emphasise a particular point \u00a0\u2013 the crunch. They provide a concise summary of what is to come. They can also \u2013 although not apparent in the example above \u00a0\u2013 pile up point after point before the writer\u00a0moves onto a summary.<\/p>\n

As readers, we are often\u00a0not aware of differences in\u00a0sentence length. But we certainly feel\u00a0the lack of variety. If\u00a0all that the writer\u00a0offers is\u00a0a steady diet of similarly worded sentences, we experience\u00a0the reading as being \u2018hard going\u2019. As a result,\u00a0we may just give up, at least for a bit.<\/p>\n

Sentences\u00a0that don\u2019t do\u00a0their job as well as they might\u00a0\u00a0are sentences that communicate their\u00a0information poorly. The result is that the overall sense,\u00a0the writer\u2019s argument, doesn\u2019t work as well as it might. Poorly structured and repetitive sentences can leave\u00a0\u00a0a reader\u00a0incredulous and unconvinced as well as unable to\u00a0keep track. \u00a0Form and function are one when it comes to academic writing (well, in any writing to be fair).<\/p>\n

We usually describe the ways in which sentence length is handled as rhythm. The term rhythm draws attention to the soporific nature of monotony, the counting sheep effect of similar length sentences one after another. But this is not all that is involved in repetitive writing. It\u00a0is important not to lose sight of the ways in which the points we are making \u2013 the function of each and every\u00a0sentence \u2013 are linked\u00a0to their length. We don\u2019t just vary sentences any-old-how. We choose different sentence lengths to do different kinds of work. Our sentence word budget fits the job it has to do.<\/p>\n

Keeping readers awake means that we have to pay attention to the structure, meaning and<\/i> rhythm of the writing. To keep readers awake we need to vary\u00a0the number of words we\u00a0use, and how we use them,\u00a0in keeping with the work being done in the sentence and in the overall sequence.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Academic sentences are often lengthy. They make a point\u00a0and then\u00a0add multiple caveats and embellishments. Some people think there is an ideal sentence length. I have read for instance that the ideal newspaper sentence is somewhere around twenty words. Perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less. But around the twenty word mark. I\u2019ve also read […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":38179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[65896],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-38178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-academic-sentences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAcademic sentences -#wakeupreader - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/academic-sentences-wakeupreader\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Academic sentences -#wakeupreader - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Academic sentences are often lengthy. 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