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reader – they want the readers to assimilate the information in a relaxed way, they
don’t want to make their readers tired and stressed.

Richard Wydick, Professor of Law at the University of California, writes:

We lawyers do not write plain English. We use eight words to say what could be said in two.
We use arcane phrases to express commonplace ideas. Seeking to be precise, we become
redundant. Seeking to be cautious, we become verbose. Our sentences twist on, phrase
within clause within clause, glazing the eyes and numbing the minds of our readers. The
result is a writing style that has, according to one critic, four outstanding characteristics. It
is “(1) wordy, (2) unclear, (3) pompous, and (4) dull.”
You do not want referees and readers to consider your work wordy, unclear, pomp-
ous, or dull, so when you make the final check of you manuscript, ask yourself the

following questions:
• are my sentences reasonably short? (sentences longer than 30 words are gen-
erally hard to assimilate without having to be read twice)

• are my paragraphs reasonably short?

• have I only written what adds value, have I ensured there is no redundancy?
• have I clearly differentiated my work from the work of others so that the ref-
erees can understand what I did in relation to what others have done before
me?

• have I highlighted my contribution and the gap it fills so that the referees can

judge whether my paper is suitable for my chosen journal?

Readability is also affected by the following factors (these are all covered in Part 1
of this book):

• poor layout: large blocks of text are hard to read, whereas short paragraphs
with white space in between them are much easier

• ambiguity and lack of clarity: the reader is not sure how to interpret a phrase

• lack of structure: within a sentence, paragraph or section

• too much abstraction: the reader is not given concrete explanations or

examples

• lack of consistency