Page 189 - English for Writing Research Papers

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S5 would be better rewritten as one of the following:

S6. Our results would seem to indicate that dogs are more intelligent than the cats.
S7. A possible conclusion would be that dogs …
S8. Our results may be a demonstration that dogs …
S9. At least in terms of our sample, dogs appeared to be more intelligent …
The examples in this subsection highlight that hedging often simply involves:

• adding a few words before making your claim: e.g. we believe (S3), would

seem to (S4, S6)

• adding an adjective or adverb: e.g. possible (S7), generally (S4)
• replacing verbs that indicate 100% certainty, for example prove, demonstrate
is (and other forms of the verb to be ) with may be (S4, S8).

10.3 Highlighting and hedging

Chapter 8 dealt with how to highlight the importance of your fi ndings. Highlighting

and hedging are not contradictory skills, in fact they should be used hand in hand.
Highlighting means, for example:

• helping the reader to see your findings on the pages of your manuscript

(e.g. not hiding key findings in the middle of a long paragraph)

• using shorter sentences when giving important information

• using more dynamic language when drawing attention to key fi ndings than
when talking about standard issues
You can do all the above and still hedge where appropriate.

S1. This is a very important fi nding.
S2. These results suggest that this is a very important fi nding.