What style of writing is expected?

It is a purposeful kind of writing which is to be

well argued;
well supported by evidence;
well documented.

A straightforward style - neither informal and chatty, nor stuffy and pompous - is what to aim for. Use clear and unadorned English appropriate for your audience. Therefore, use the jargon of your discipline when it serves your purpose. Don't, however, build a smokescreen of impressive sounding phrases to mask what it is you are saying.

You know from your own experience that very complex ideas in your own field can be and are expressed very clearly by good scholars in your discipline. While you are reading for your research, take note of particularly well written articles. But also be aware of the kind of writing which frustrates you as a reader and obscures the point.

You need to be aware of who it is you are writing for. You are not writing for your supervisor, who knows precisely what you are doing, but for someone who may need to be reminded of some background and who, at the very least, needs you to signpost the importance of the various parts.

You also need to think about what it is you are actually doing; are you describing something, analysing something, explaining something, arguing the point, giving examples, evaluating or assessing the value of other arguments or the sufficiency of evidence? What you are doing affects the language you use. In particular, the verbs you use need attention because they convey your attitude. In our experience, very often students don't exploit verbs fully, relying on just one or two favourites (for example 'mentions', 'states', 'suggests', 'discusses') or overworking the weaker verbs ('have', 'be'). However, verbs such as 'judges', 'postulates', 'excludes', 'convinces', 'confuses', 'questions', 'advances (the argument)', 'verifies', provide a stronger interpretation of your reading, understanding, and opinion of the research.

Apart from questions of who your reader is and what it is you are doing, matters of style need to be considered. We have taken the three we find most commonly asked about:

Use of the personal pronoun.

For some disciplines, the demands of objectivity mean that the use of 'I' is frowned upon. Of course not using 'I' does not ensure the objectivity of the work; nor does its use shatter objectivity. Acceptance of the use of the personal pronoun has become more common in some disciplines. Even if 'I' is acceptable, however, its use has to be controlled as you yourself are not the subject of the thesis. Therefore, regardless of the practice, there will necessarily be large parts of the thesis in which the problem never arises. We would advise to check with your department or supervisor and take your cue from publications and theses in your academic area. If you do decide to avoid the use of 'I' at all, don't substitute 'we' and don't move into pompous circumlocutions such as 'the author'. Whatever your decision about this issue, be consistent in your usage.

Active vs passive voice.

Both active and passive voice should be used - where appropriate. (Or…You should use, where appropriate, both active and passive voice!) As a general rule, use active voice unless there is good reason not to. For example, if "The results support the theory" is the active, and the passive is "The theory is supported by the results", then we would select one or the other version depending on whether we were stressing the results or the theory, or if we wanted to manipulate the sentence for it to finish with one or the other in order to link it to what followed. Otherwise, choose the active as more direct. This is a very simple example, of course, and the distancing effect of the passive here is not great. However, in more complex examples, and also where a series of passives piles up the reader fights unnecessary obstacles.

The use of tenses.

Many students have come to us clinging to an absolute dictum about what tense to use. Their beliefs seem to divide equally between total dedication to the use of the present and total dedication to the use of the past. In truth, it is the rules which cause the problem. The tense that suits your purpose is the tense you use. Clearly, an event, be it a survey, an experiment, a study of some kind, done by other researchers or by you, has to be in the past and it is usual to use the past tense to describe it. However, the interpretations, evaluations, assessments, discussions, or ideas arising from this mostly still hold and it is usual to talk about them in the present. Even though someone has written an article a decade ago, the article still exists, is currently part of the living knowledge of your discipline, and your reaction to it is happening now. There is even the possibility that you could be predicting something for the future, so the manipulation of time changes again to fit the situation. For example,

Smith (1965) reports a study conducted on bees which used White's (1953) radical artificial insemination technique. These data are still the most convincing to support Brown's (1996) hypothesis that bees would respond well to intensive bee husbandry.

In other words, the goal is to achieve a clear, logical style. Clear writing, however, is usually the result of lots of rewriting and careful attention to what it is you really want to say. Clear writing is not the result of obedience to prescriptive rules. Seldom does clear writing come about in the first or even the second draft. It takes work to remove clutter and to fill missing links but the results make the work worthwhile.

	Revising and editing.
	Revision.
	Editing.
	Sometimes when I'm writing I feel as though I'm saying the same thing over and over. How can I avoid repetition.
	I have difficulty showing whether it's my idea or someone else's. Do you have ways to help with this?
	Some writing tips.