Page 197 - English for Writing Research Papers

181

10.11 Don’t overhedge

Be careful not to follow a strong positive assertion with a weak statement that
undermines it (S1), and avoid having several levels of hedging (S2).

S1. *It is clear that yellow may be preferable to red for alerting danger.
S2. *It may thus, given these particular circumstances, be assumed that there is a certain pos-
sibility that yellow may be preferable to red for alerting danger.

In S1 may weakens the force of clear . In S2 four hedging words have been used,
which gives the idea that the authors are not at all sure of what they are talking
about. S1 and S2 could be revised as S3 and S4, respectively:

S3. It is clear that yellow is preferable to red.
S4. In these particular circumstances yellow may be preferable to red.

10.12 Hedging: An extended example from a Discussion

section
The following is an example from the Discussion section of a paper entitled The
Archeology of Water in Gortyn , by archeologist Elisabetta Giorgi. Her research has
revealed what she believes to be a new perspective on Roman aqueducts. She takes the
specific case of Gortyn, the most important Roman town on Crete. Until now it was

believed that the basic function of the aqueducts in the Roman period of history was
to transport water into towns for use by individual citizens in their homes. However,
Elisabetta hypothesizes that the main function may have been to provide water for
fountains and thermal baths. There are no Romans around today who can confi rm her
hypothesis, so she cannot be 100% sure of the validity of her fi ndings. Consequently,
she ‘hedges’ her claims, as you can see in the parts highlighted in italics.

3
We calculated that the minimum amount of water supplied was around 7,000 m per day.
On the basis of demographic estimates for that century, people (1) may have consumed
from 25 to 50 l per day. (2) Yet our calculations show that, if thermal baths and fountains are
not taken into account, approximately 280 l per head (3) could have been pumped into the
town. This figure is 30 l per day higher than the daily average consumption of a post-

industrial European country such as Italy.
The quantity of water that flowed along the aqueduct (4) thus (5) appears to have been

much greater than was needed by the population living in Gortyn, which has been estimated
as being around 25,000 [ref.]. Therefore the aqueduct was (6) probably built not exclusively
to provide drinking water for the citizens. Other authors [ref.] contend that Roman citizens

may have had running water in their houses and they cite findings at Pompeii as evidence
of this. (7) However , our previous archeological research [ref.]. into aqueducts in other
Roman towns (8) would seem to indicate that the aqueducts were not (9) necessarily built
for the benefit of common citizens. (10) In fact , there were many cases where citizens built

their own private wells and cisterns even after the construction of the aqueduct [ref.].