Page 72 - English for Writing Research Papers

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Sam Katzoff was a top scientist. His document was intended for fellow scientists,
who were, like him, native English speakers. These fellow scientists were also
amongst the most brilliant scientists in the world. They could potentially understand
even the most complex text. Yet Dr Katzoff decided to write his document in the
simplest and clearest way possible, and he encouraged his fellows to do the same.
According to a fellow colleague:

He was the kind of person who could look at a paper and tell whether it was a lot of bull. If
you were writing a paper and were publishing, he would review it and that would help a lot
of people in the field to come up with a better way of saying what they were trying to get

across.
By bull the colleague was politely saying bullshit , i.e. words, phrases and para-
graphs that clearly made no sense, but were just included for effect.

Now let’s analyze the structure of Katzoff’s paragraph.

(S1) Different writers have different methods of organizing their reports, and some seem to
have no discernible method at all. (S2) Most of the better writers, however, appear to be in
remarkably close agreement as to the general approach to organization. (S3) This approach
consists of stating the problem, describing the method of attack, developing the results,
discussing the results, and summarizing the conclusions. (S4) You may feel that this type of
organization is obvious, logical, and natural. (S5) Nevertheless, it is not universally
accepted. (S6) For example, many writers present results and conclusions near the begin-
ning, and describe the derivation of these results in subsequent sections.

S1 introduces the general topic and summarizes current practice with regard to

report writing. S2 qualifies what was said in S1. The reader is warned of this quali-
fication by the link word however .

Katzoff repeats the word writer from S1 to link it into S2, but precedes it with a dif-
ferent adjective ( different, better ) to show that he is moving from something general

(all authors) to something more specific (better authors). The repetition of approach
in S3 serves a similar linking purpose. It gives readers the feeling that they are being
guided step by step along the path on which Katzoff develops his topic.

In S4 he addresses the reader directly, which is probably something that you would
not do in a paper. Instead you would probably phrase such a concept in the passive:
it may be argued that . Katzoff’s idea is to anticipate possible objections to what he
is about to say. S5 is only six words long. Such a short sentence is rare in academic
work. Yet it is very effective in capturing reader attention. The link word, neverthe-
less , placed prominently at the beginning of the sentence, also catches the reader’s
eye and helps to underline the importance of what is being said.