Engaging academic prose ensnares us and leaves us wanting more.
And it’s never too late to learn how to transform tired prose into a captivating narrative—no matter the subject.
One way to draft a compelling knowledge product is to drill down to the sentence level!
This suggestion is informed by Helen Sword’s Stylish Academic Writing, a now-classic guide to good writing across the sciences, humanities, and social sciences.
In her research, Sword discovered that stylish academic writers rely on some common principles to craft their sentences. I introduce three of these principles below.
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Principle #1
Use concrete nouns (lesbians, lawmakers, citizens) instead of nominalizations (carelessness, performance, reduction). Sword refers to nominalizations, nouns created from adjectives or verbs, as zombie nouns.
Spotlight example (history): “In the late-eighteenth century, “[p]hysical anthropologists reduced the question of Egypt’s contributions to the arts and sciences to the question of whether Egyptians were white or black” (Londa Schiebinger, Nature’s Body, 187).
The author of this sentence makes the subject a concrete noun (physical anthropologists). It is immediately clear that the sentence is about the actions of these anthropologists. Were the sentence to lead, instead, with a nominalizatiion, the reader would likely need to read the sentence several times to understand it.
A less-effective sentence would look something like: “The reduction of the question of Egypt’s contributions to the arts and sciences came down to whether Egyptians were white or black.”
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Principle #2
Use active, vivid verbs (chew, disguise, immobilize) instead of forms of be (“The author is”) and tired academic verbs (“The study explores”).
Spotlight example (biology): “In researching this book, I had several scientists plead with me not to anthropomorphize the behavior of the nonhuman animals I describe here…. [A]lthough I sought not to dress every organism in this book in human accoutrements, some of that probably slipped in” (Emily Willingham, Phallacy, 10).
The author of these sentences energizes her writing with active verbs (plead, dress, slip), even as she also uses words (anthropomorphize, accoutrements) with which lay readers may not be as familiar. These vibrant verbs keep this scientific study light and accessible.
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Principle #3
Be judicious with your use of it, this, that, and there. These words can sometimes signify lack of clarity. In the case of this or these, use only when modified by a noun (“This encounter captures” rather than “This captures”).
Spotlight example (literature): “The open hearth was large enough to feature an inglenook, where on a cold night one or two people could sit cozily in a recessed space next to the warming fire. And that’s where Shakespeare’s chair was put on display. This picturesque scene, reproduced in countless engravings made in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was entirely fabricated…” (Richard Schoch, Shakespeare’s House, 19).
In the first two sentences, the author depicts a cozy, fireside space in one of Shakespeare’s family homes. In the final sentence, he references the description (“this picturesque scene”) to assert that no such room existed in the mid-sixteenth-century home. Had he omitted the noun (scene) from this sentence, it would have been unclear exactly what was fabricated.
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Consider implementing these principles in your own writing, from a playful—not prescriptive—place.
Perhaps start with the paragraph beginning a new section of your article or book manuscript. Since readers will pay more attention to the beginning of a section, this area is the perfect place to practice writing stylish academic prose. Showcase your concrete nouns and active verbs. Play around with sentence structure. And ensure this or these is always accompanied by a noun!
For more of Sword’s sentence-level recommendations, see Chapter 5 in Stylish Academic Writing (2012).
