Some PhD students bridle at this advice, arguing that it
would be wrong for them to adjust their writing pattern to
accommodate ‘lazy’ or non-serious readers of this kind. But it is
always an author’s job to maximize her readership and to con-
vey information accessibly. It is wise to bear in mind that read-
ers have very diverse needs, which they know best and which
authors cannot anticipate fully. Skim reading, for instance, is an
entirely rational strategy for all readers to adopt at some stage,
however serious-minded or committed to your topic they may
be. An author’s task is precisely to attract and retain skim read-
ers or ‘eyeballers’, and to convert them into intensive readers by
providing text which is as accessible and as interesting as pos-
sible. So as with chapters and with sections, the beginning
and end parts of paragraphs are crucial.
It is especially important that each topic sentence should
accurately characterize a paragraph and give readers a sense of
progression as they move on to that paragraph from its prede-
cessor. A very common problem occurs when authors instead
misplace the wrap sentence, so that it misleadingly appears
as the topic sentence of the next paragraph. Here the author
uses the first sentence of paragraph Y to sum up the previous
paragraph X or to link back to it, instead of to launch Y out on
a distinctive point of its own. The effect is very off-putting and
misleading for readers, because it suggests that paragraph Y
focuses on exactly the same theme as X, rather than moving
the argument on.
Another very common bad paragraph beginning is to put
some other author’s name as the very first word, leading off
thus: ‘Smith (1997, p. 56) argues ... ’. Sometimes even accom-
plished authors will construct a whole sequence of paragraphs
on ‘random author list’ lines, where every topic sentence starts
in this obvious and boring fashion. The implied message that
readers always get is not that you have read the literature but
that the paragraphs concerned are completely derivative, lack-
ing in all originality or value-added content, merely précising
someone else’s work. You should eliminate derivative-looking
paragraph starts wherever they occur in your text. Replace them
with topic sentences focusing on the substantive point of the
paragraph. Your text will also look more organized if instead of
reporting the views of individual authors you categorize them
WRITING CLEARLY◆ 113