Pointers for Academic Writing (Part 2)

Continuing from the previous post, here are some more pointers for using phrases effectively.

5. Phrases to Show Emphasis

Some phrases are used to draw the readers’ attention to what the writer sees as important. However, speculative phrases are overall discouraged in scientific reports.

  • It must be stressed that the Landau gauge is essential for the new rules.
  • It should be emphasized that this conclusion is only valid if the various assumptions about the boundary are justified.

6. Phrases to Conclude the Paper

Many research journals require writers to provide a summary of their article’s purpose, often in separate section called “Conclusions” or “Summary.”

  • This paper reviewed the nature of children’s physical activity patterns and how the unique nature of children can impact the assessment of physical activity.
  • In this paper, we discussed some issues related to entanglement in the system of indistinguishable particles.
  • In this report, a novel purification method that incorporates the hydrothermal treatment has been presented.

7. Phrases to Signal Caution

Some phrases allow writers to distance themselves from the claims of other writers and to signal caution when presenting their own claims. However, this is more common in fields that rely on theory and statistics to argue for claims, e.g., medicine, biology, physics. In fields such as engineering, however, such phrases are the exception rather than the rule.

  • To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first reported case of a neoplasm induced by radiosurgery for an AVM.
  • Only the most prolific interactors tend to evolve slowly.

“Weaker” verbs are usually used to introduce possibility:

  • suggest vs. demonstrate
  • contribute to vs. cause

8. Phrases to Strengthen the Degree of Argument

In contrast to phrases in point 7, which signal caution, some phrases strengthen the writer’s degree of commitment to a particular viewpoint. For example,

  • It is clear that the acceptance rate is affected by the choices of ranges for the molecular translations.
  • These results clearly show that even in the presence of an overwhelming viral infection of the immune system, CD8+ CTL can remain active for long periods.

9. Phrases to Express the Writers’ Attitude

The writer can also express their attitude to their own data and claims, as well as those of others, through the use of various adverbs. For example:

  • Part of the reason is that, perhaps not surprisingly, the modeling of financial innovation and deregulation proved to be a quite difficult task.
  • Unfortunately, we are unable to provide accessible alternative text for this.

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