26 3 Mechanics of Writing
There is an important point here that many students seem to miss. Writing well
is not just about adhering to an arbitrary set of rules just for the sake of it; it is about
the messages you send to your readers. Writing that is full of mistakes says that the
author is lazy or incompetent; lazy, incompetent people don’t do solid research.
Writing that is impenetrably complex or knotted up says that the author is incapable
of clear thinking. It is these kinds of messages that you are trying to avoid. And
remember too that good researchers are busy: if you want other people to read and
appreciate your work, you have to make it easy for them to do so.
Liz was a native English speaker; in contrast, Marsha, who came from central
Europe to undertake graduate study in Australia, wrote badly but felt otherwise. She
would react to criticism by searching for material in my papers, or in other papers
written in my research group, that she felt had the problems her work had been
criticized for. Feeling stressed by the pressure to complete her PhD, she would seek
reasons to resist undertaking additional work, some of which were not rational. For
example, she felt that students she disliked must be less competent than her, and
would have difficulty accepting criticism if it wasn’t also made about the students
she believed herself to be in competition with. The moral is that one should listen to
critics, and assume that others aren’t trying to undermine you but genuinely want to
help you to do your work better.
Thesiese
A particular style fault, namely thesiese, seems to afflict some students. Such stu-
dents have become psychologically oppressed by the problem of impressing the
mythical examiners whom, they feel, will respond best to a particular form of lan-
guage. It is easier to recognize the presence of thesiese than to define it. Here are
two examples I’ve encountered:
The assessment will require an analysis and application to the study area of available
knowledge about human practices and landscape and weather scenarios influencing fire
behaviour and occurrence.I think this means something like: ‘To assess [to assess what?] we will need to know
how landscape characteristics, weather conditions and human practices in the study
area contribute to the outbreak of fires and influence their behaviour once they have
started’. Consider this second example:
Implementation targets must be firmly established and the market and political institutional
impediments identified and rigorously addressed if meaningful progress is to be made.I don’t know what this one means. The more I try to rephrase it, the less sense it
makes.
Writers of thesiese often use the passive voice (‘targets must be firmly estab-
lished ... and impediments identified’; if the active voice had been used instead,
it would be clear who had to establish the targets and identify the impediments);
their verbs are activated by other verbs (‘will require an analysis and application’,