Abstraction

Academic texts are often unclear because academics and experts try to express abstract ideas using abstract concepts, excessive nominalization, prepositions, and pronouns. This page focuses on how to improve the clarity of your text which is typically what you should focus on during your second draft. Take a look at the following sentence:

The participatory role of stakeholders in the process of decision making surrounding negative environmental impacts of industrial activities is paramount to the creation of heightened assessments of the environmental consequences, which is an absolute necessity due to its role in livelihoods for affected non-industrial partners, prior to moving forward with the planned development of natural resources for either private-profit or state-led economic enhancement.

Problems

Excessive nominalization
Unclear Subject-Verb (Who does what?)
Excessive prepositions
Long sentence
Interruptions
Abstract concepts
Abstract pronouns

There are many issues which makes this long sentence unclear, other than just its length. It contains excessive nominalization causing unclear subject verbs and excessive prepositions. Furthermore, the sentence includes several interruptions and abstract concepts and pronouns. Let us go through and explain some of these problems in more detail.

Nominalization

Nominalization often contributes to making a text unclear by turning verbs into nouns.

Example

They performed an investigation of it. - They investigated it.

A sample selection of bird calls was conducted. - They sampled a selection of bird calls.

A review was done of related literature. - I reviewed the literature.

The second sentence in each example shows how to avoid nominalization by turning the nouns back into verbs and adding clear character action be describing who is doing what. It makes the sentences clearer, shorter, and removes unnecessary prepositions. You can easily identify nominalization in your own writing with words ending with -ion, -ize/-ise, -ive, -ity. Nominalization can also occur when you turn adjectives into nouns, such as liberal into liberalism.

Nominalizations can in some cases be useful. Sometimes the focus should not be on the subject, but rather on an object and a result of the process. In such cases, you might need to use a nominalization such as "a selection was conducted" to avoid describing who exactly did something. However, nominalizations also tend to make your sentences longer, more unclear, and add unnecessary prepositions.

Prepositions

Abstract concepts

The example sentence above contains many abstract concepts such as stakeholders, negative environmental impacts, livelihoods, state-led economic enhancement, and many others. These are common concepts to use in academic writing, but their meaning may not always be completely clear as they often mean different things to different people.

When using such abstract concepts or jargon, see if you can replace them with something more specific.

Example:

Negative environmental impacts
Ask yourself: Which impacts? Can I replace this with something more concrete?

Pollution
Deforestation
Increased toxicity in drinking water

When you need to use jargon or an abstract, see if you can also provide an example to specify how you are using the concept.

Example:

Data points were aggregated together in the model. Gathering all points provided the opportunity to identify clusters and determine relationship patterns.

Compound Nouns

Abstract concepts are often created by compound nouns. These are two or more nouns put together, and many scholars use them excessively.

Example

Environmental impact assessment criteria

What does this actually mean? It can be interpreted in several ways:

Environmental criteria of impact assessment?
Assessment criteria of environmental impact?

This can easily become abstract and unclear for a reader who is unfamiliar with the concept. If you include many compound nouns through your text you will make your text sound more scholarly, but at the same time, you are very likely to lose your reader along the way. If you use compound nouns, make sure that you properly define what they mean.

Pronouns

It is common to use pronouns to refer back to something you discussed in a previous sentence. Common pronouns are: It, this, that, those, those, them, their, one(s). They can be extremely useful, but you have to make sure that it is clear who or what these pronouns are referring to.

For example, if you are writing about nuclear waste, you do not want to mention nuclear waste in every single sentence. Sometimes you will refer to nuclear waste as "it" to avoid mentioning it again. This can be very useful to avoid unnecessary repetition in your sentences. However, you have to be sure that it is clear who or what you are actually referring back to.

Example:

It was because of those results that the research decided it would use them instead of the ones that this research originally began with.

Who is doing what in this sentence? What does "it", and "the ones" actually refer to? For the author, this sentence might seem clear. But for the reader, it becomes unnecessary complicated because of all the unclear pronouns.

Let us rewrite this sentence:

Current results proved the original data was incorrect. Therefore, the research team decided to use this new data instead of the original dataset.

Now we have replaced all the vague pronouns with more specific subjects. The one pronoun that is still there "this" is useful, because it refers back to something mentioned in the previous sentence and not one paragraph ago.

Take a critical look every time you use pronouns in your sentences, is it clear for your reader what you are referring to?