REVISING STYLEFrom The Craft of Research by Booth, Colomb, and Williams

TOO COMPLEX OR TOO SIMPLE? Too precise a specification of information-

processing requirements incurs a risk of a decision-maker’s over- or under-estimation, resulting in the inefficient use of costly resources. Too little precision in specifying needed processing capacity gives no indication with respect to the procurement of needed resources.

A person making decisions sometimes specifies what he need to process information. He may do so too precisely. He may over- or under-estimate the resources that he needs. When he does that, he may use costly resources inefficiently. He may also fail to be precise enough. He may not indicate which resources others should procure.

BETTER? When a decision-maker specifies too

precisely the resources he needs to process information, he may over- or under-estimate them and thereby use costly resources inefficiently. But if he is not precise enough, he may not indicate which resources to procure.

Aim for clear communication by avoiding overly complex or overly simple sentences.

SUBJECTS Which sentences are clearer?

Locke frequently repeated himself because he did not trust the power of words to name things accurately.

The reason for Locke’s frequent repetition lies in his distrust of the accuracy of the naming power of words.

If rainforests are stripped to serve short-term economic interests, the earth’s biosphere may be damaged.

The stripping of rain forests in the service of short-term economic interests could result in damage to the earth’s biosphere.

Make the main characters in your story the subjects of your sentences. Then your subjects will be short, specific, and concrete.

Try to avoid abstract subjects.

USE NOMINALIZATIONS CAREFULLYVerb Nominalization Adjective NominalizationDecide Decision Precise PrecisionFail Failure Frequent FrequencyResist Resistance Intelligent Intelligence

Nominalizations are usually more difficult to understand

Thus:

Use “flesh-and-blood” subjects if possible. Subjects should be the main characters of your writing.

Express important actions as verbs.

CHARACTERS The clearest characters are “flesh-and-blood”

people Yet your writing may deal with abstract

characters: thought disorders, demographic changes, social mobility, isotherms, gene pools

Choose the characters that are important to your paper, even if they are abstract nominalizations.

Examples: The hospitalization of patients without appropriate

treatment results in unreliable measurement of outcomes.

We cannot measure outcomes reliably when patients are hospitalized but not treated appropriately.

MAIN CHARACTERS Decide who or what is the main character of

each sentence or of your paper as a whole: Examples:

If rainforests are stripped to serve short-term economic interests, the earth’s biosphere may be damaged.

If developers strip rain forests to serve short-term economic interests, they may damage the earth’s biosphere.

If loggers strip rain forests to serve short-term economic interests, they may damage the earth’s biosphere.

If farmers strip rain forests to serve short-term economic interests, they may damage the earth’s biosphere.

If Brazil strips its rain forests to serve short-term economic interests, it may damage the earth’s biosphere.

OLD BEFORE NEWA. Because the naming power of words was distrusted

by Locke, he repeated himself often. Seventeenth-century theories of language, especially Wilkins’s scheme for a universal language involving the creation of countless symbols for countless meanings, had centered on this naming power. A new era in the study of language that focused on the ambiguous relationship between sense and reference begins with Locke’s distrust.

B. Locke often repeated himself because he distrusted the naming power of words. This naming power had been central to seventeenth-century theories of language, especially Wilkins’s scheme for a universal language involving the creation of countless symbols for countless meanings. Locke’s distrust begins a new era in the study of language, one that focused on the ambiguous relationship between sense and reference.

OLD BEFORE NEW If sentences begin with familiar ideas,

readers understand them more easily. Diagnose:

Identify the main ideas in the first seven words of each sentence

Are these familiar to the reader? Do readers know them from context? Do readers know them from previous sentences?

Revise: Put familiar information near the beginning of

sentences Put new, unpredictable, or complex information

later in the sentences

ACTIVE AND PASSIVE General rule: avoid passive verbs Yet Booth et al. say: Begin with familiar subjects,

even if it means using a passive verb. Examples:

The quality of our air and even the climate of the world depend on healthy rain forests in Asia, Africa, and South America. But the increased demand for more land for agricultural use and for wood products for construction worldwide now threatens these forests with destruction.

The quality of our air and even the climate of the world depend on healthy rain forests in Asia, Africa, and South America. But these rain forests are now threatened with destruction by the increasing demand for more land for agricultural use and for wood products used in construction worldwide.

ACTIVE AND PASSIVE English classes: “Use active because it is

more informative” Sciences: “Use passive because it is more

objective” Booth et al:

Use old before new because it is clearer. Use active sentences and first-person subjects

for original actions—We/I claim, suggest, argue, show, conclude, design, solve, prove

Use passive verbs to describe a process that anyone can repeat—scientific or experimental procedures

COMPLEXITY LAST Begin sentences with familiar information End sentences with complex, new

information. When:

When you introduce a new technical term When you present a unit of information that is

long and complex When you introduce a concept that you intend to

develop in the text that follows

INTRODUCING TECHNICAL TERMS An understanding of the role of calcium blockers in

the control of cardiac irregularity depends on understanding of the calcium activation of muscle groups. The regulatory proteins actin, myosin, tropomyosin, and troponin affect the action of muscle fibers in the sarcomere, the basic unit of muscle contraction.

Muscles contract when their cells are activated by calcium. When heart muscles contract irregularly, we can control them with drugs called calcium blockers. Calcium blockers limit the action of muscle fibers in the basic unit of muscle contraction, known as the sarcomere. It consists of four proteins that regulate contraction: they are actin, myosin, tropomyosin, and troponin.

INTRODUCING WHAT FOLLOWS A. The political situation changed, because disputes

over succession to the throne plagued seven of the eight reigns of the Romanov Line after Peter the Great.

B. The political situation changed, because after Peter the Great seven of the eight reigns of the Romanov line were plagued by turmoil over disputed succession to the throne.

C. The problems began in 1722, when Peter the Great passed a law of succession that terminated the principle of heredity and required the sovereign to appoint a successor. But because many tsars, including Peter, died before they named successors, those who aspired to rule had no authority by appointment, and so their succession was often disputed by lower-level aristocrats. There was turmoil even when successors were appointed.

OTHER REVIEW Also check the following:

Sentence length Grammatical correctness Remove unnecessary words; simplify and clarify Coherence of paragraphs Spelling Punctuation Proper capitalization, citation, quotes, spelling

numbers, formatting foreign words. See http://owl.english.purdue.edu/ for more

formatting information.

REVIEW1. Express crucial actions in verbs2. Make your central characters the subjects of

those verbs; keep those subjects short, concrete, and specific

3. Begin sentences with familiar information4. Use active sentences for things the writer

does (claim, conclude, propose) and passive sentences to describe experimental procedures

5. Put complex information, new technical terms, or introductions of following material last

BIBLIOGRAPHY Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, and

Joseph M. Williams. The Craft of Research. 3rd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008.