Writing Clearly: Style and

Referencing Issues

Poorer writers have fewer readers.

Robert J. Sternberg^1

A

n author with a well-organized piece of text must still pass

two further hurdles before gaining credibility or approval

in academic professional circles. The first is a test of style. Does

the author communicate fluently, convincingly and appeal-

ingly in the professional manner appropriate for her discipline?

Quite where success or failure should be determined here is

difficult to specify in any general way. Evaluations of good or

bad writing style are notoriously subjective. Much ink has been

spilt on good style for novelists and creative writers (see Further

Readingon p. 287 for some style manuals). But this literature

offers little help to authors of doctoral theses or other large pro-

fessional bits of text, like academic books. However, it is still

possible to pull together some generally useful advice about

conflicting style pressures, and some sensible ways of proceed-

ing at a paragraph-by-paragraph, or sentence-by-sentence level,

as I try to do in the first part of this chapter.

The second hurdle is a test of scholarship, more important

perhaps in a PhD thesis than in any other piece of academic

writing. Does the author acknowledge sources for her argu-

ments or evidence? Does she chart her intellectual influences

comprehensively and in an appropriate format? Obtrusive

referencing is often one of the most obvious hallmarks of

academic text, something that sets it apart from everything

else. As a result PhD students often overdo referencing, and

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