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the thesis, please
You buried the thesis under two paragraphs of qualifying clauses and one beautiful footnote.
The reader is lost. So are your reviewers. Academic prose has a particular failure mode: the writer knows what they're arguing, but the argument never reaches the reader because it's been preemptively defended on every side before it's been stated. We talk about the Maven academic clarity pass: surface your claim, cut the throat-clearing, and let the citations earn their keep instead of doing the work the prose should be doing. Your argument is there. Let it out.
Throat-clearing · clarity
| Throat-clearing | Clarity |
|---|---|
| 'It has been argued by some that…' | 'Smith argues X. I argue Y.' |
| 'There exists a not-insignificant body of work…' | 'A growing field…' |
| 'One might suggest…' | 'I suggest…' |
| Five qualifying clauses | One claim, then qualifications |
The academic clarity pass
- Find your thesis. Underline it.
- Move it to the second sentence of the abstract and the second paragraph of the intro.
- Cut every 'arguably' and 'perhaps.' Restore only the ones earning their keep.
- Put your strongest example in the first body paragraph.
- Move footnotes that contain the actual argument up into the body.
Academic prose isn't bad on purpose. It's defensive. The fix is to make the claim, then defend it — not the other way around.
— L.A. Walton, The Book Maven
From the Maven Catalog
- Master Course — Academic Clarity
- eBook — Surface the Thesis
- Toolkit — Academic Editing Toolkit
- Planner — Journal Submission Planner
Find the thesis. Surface it. Cut the throat-clearing. Let the footnotes do footnote work, not argument work. Your reviewers will thank you. So will your students.