Boy requires more conclusions in writing.

December 3, 2008 7:00 AM

As a result of my poor vocabulary, I use the term 'as a result', 'therefore,' and other like words far too often. Help me state my conclusions with eloquence!

Because of my many pages of papers in the last week, I've become tone deaf to my writing. I just re-read a paragraph in a paper I handed in where I used 'As a result' probably three times. Total shame.

Therefore, I require assistance in order to overcome this communication impasse. Increase in phrase count will help immensely. Must be in that professional, analytic, non-first-person way. ( no 'I think, I assume, Leads me to believe' )

(Well aware I could write around these statements - but whats the fun in that?)

posted by mrgreyisyelling to Writing & Language (26 answers total)

I don't think variety is what you want. You want simplification.

First, if at all possible, just delete these phrases altogether. I suspect that most of the time the paragraph will make just as much sense without them.

Second, what makes these phrases so empty is that you are using a phrase or long word to do the job of a simple short word. Replacing it with another phrase doesn't help. Cut it down to the fewest words possible

e.g. "as a result" or "therefore" could be "so" (or "because" if you switch the preceding and following phrase"). Other common examples are "in the case that" instead of "if" or "utilize" instead of "use"
posted by winston at 7:07 AM on December 3, 2008

I'm not sure what you mean by "write around," but if you mean omit them, that may often be best. The "fun in that" is that it would make your writing concise and more striking. Note the difference between "He was shot. He died." and "He was shot. As a result, he died."

Where these phrases are necessary to ensure the reader follows the connection between your ideas, I would go with "so", which is far less intrusive than the words and phrases you mention. You could also turn your sentences around putting cause first and then effect. You do this in your second paragraph "Because , result." You can also use "since."

But again, if you can cut them out altogether, do so.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:10 AM on December 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

Damn...I took the time to edit and make sure I wasn't wordy and as a result*, I was scooped.

* See? wouldn't it have been better to either leave that out or replace it with "so"?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:11 AM on December 3, 2008

It follows that...
In other words...
The effect of x on y is [adjective]...
Thus...
That said...

However, writing around empty formalities IS the fun of writing! Strive for elegance. If you could give an example, it would be easier to explain...
posted by prefpara at 7:12 AM on December 3, 2008

If you're trying to be professional and analytic, I wouldn't vary the phrases too much, but you should ask yourself "how can I structure this in such a way that I don't need three separate conclusions in one paragraph?"

Or perhaps the cause & effect relationship can be implicit without a special phrase:
It rained while I was outside. I got wet.
posted by kidbritish at 7:14 AM on December 3, 2008

Winston is right. Simplify. If a sentence still makes sense without a word, omit the word. I once broke a coworker of her habit of speaking Fancy (in particular, saying "utilize" instead of "use"); when she asked if we still had any more _____, I said, "No, they've been all utilized up."
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:14 AM on December 3, 2008 [2 favorites]

Omit them when you can and learn to deploy em-dashes, semicolons, and colons to create more complex sentences. I detest transition phrases (thinking of them, alternating them, reading them); I write longer sentences with logical breaks instead.
posted by dame at 7:14 AM on December 3, 2008

"ergo"
posted by amyms at 7:17 AM on December 3, 2008

All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. So, Socrates is mortal.
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Consequently, Socrates is mortal.
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Which means Socrates is mortal.
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Which proves Socrates is mortal.
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. For this reason, Socrates is mortal.
Socrates must be mortal, since he's a man and all men are mortal.
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Q.E.D: Socrates is mortal.
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Hence, Socrates is mortal.
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. So we can be sure that Socrates is mortal.
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. So we can trust that Socrates is mortal.
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. So we can conclude that Socrates is mortal.
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. So it's clear that Socrates is mortal.
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. So clearly Socrates is mortal.
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Clearly, Socrates is mortal.
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Of course, Socrates is mortal.
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. So naturally, Socrates is mortal.
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. So it follows that Socrates is mortal.
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. So we can take it as a given that Socrates is mortal.
Since Socrates is human and humans are mortal, Socrates must be mortal.
Socrates is mortal because all men are mortal and he's a man.
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Thus, Socrates is mortal.
If all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, he must be mortal.
posted by grumblebee at 7:17 AM on December 3, 2008 [20 favorites]

"henceforth" is a nice eloquent sounding conclusion word.
posted by Planet F at 7:20 AM on December 3, 2008

"henceforth" is a nice eloquent sounding conclusion word.

Henceforth means "from now on." Misusing words because you're trying to add variety or use big or fancy sounding words is exactly the sort of thing that makes professors look on your writing with disdain. IIAP.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:29 AM on December 3, 2008 [8 favorites]

That use of "so" seems really informal and unprofessional. Sounds like a sentence fragment.
posted by Hildegarde at 7:35 AM on December 3, 2008

All men are mortal; Socrates is a man: Socrates is mortal.
All men are mortal, and is not Socrates a man?
posted by dame at 7:37 AM on December 3, 2008

'this leads to'
'this causes'
'this results in'
'a/the result/outcome/effect is that'
'consequently'
'one consequence/outcome [of this] is that'
'accordingly' (slightly different meaning than the above, so use carefully)

You can play with word order for variety: 'Thus X became a pirate' can be 'X thus became a pirate', 'As a result X became a pirate. [...]' can be 'X became a pirate as a result; [...]'. Oh, 'then' works sometimes too: 'X then became a pirate; the world reacted with amusement')

I'd be careful about just substituting 'so'; whether or not it's appropriate depends on the general tone and style of what you're writing. Same goes for leaving out linking words in general.
posted by trig at 7:50 AM on December 3, 2008

These don't all mean the same and are not drop-in replacements for "therefore" always but they are good ways to state what you are trying to imply:

So
Ergo
Hence
Thereby
Thereupon
Henceforth
Accordingly
Consequently
It follows that

Also might want to use for conclusions:

In the end
Unsurprisingly
Naturally
In a nutshell
Finally
Clearly
Evidently
posted by chime at 8:09 AM on December 3, 2008

By the way, there's a simple tool you should use in these situations: a thesaurus. Look up "therefore" and you'll find many of the same words people are suggesting here. It's sad that we've reached a point where some people think it's easier to ask this kind of question here than to look up the answer in an easy-to-use reference book (or website or computer-based-tool, because even MS Word has a built-in thesaurus). I'm far from being a Luddite. But if a tool works, it works. It's much faster to look "therefore" up in a thesaurus than it is to post a question about it here.

I actually looked up "therefore" in a thesaurus when I answered the question. Why did I do that when you could have done it yourself?
posted by grumblebee at 8:23 AM on December 3, 2008 [3 favorites]

Before your final edit, read your work out loud. The clunky words and phrases will jump right out at you.
posted by Carol Anne at 8:42 AM on December 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

Two books that might help: A Writer's Coach by Jack Hart and On Writing by Stephen King.
posted by starman at 10:34 AM on December 3, 2008

You're going at this backwards. Don't aim for variety. Aim for clarity, and all the variety you need will follow.

(I know, I know, you're convinced that variety-for-variety's-sake is the way to go. Most of my students are for some reason. But trust me, as a TA I read a lot of student essays, and I have a lot of conversations with professors and other TAs about the grading process, and not once have I heard someone say "I gave him a B- for writing 'as a result' three times in a row." On the other hand, all the damn time I hear people say "I gave him a B- because he couldn't explain his ideas clearly." Clarity really is the most important thing about your writing style, grade-wise.)


Anyway, lemme give you an example. Here's a badly-written paragraph.

The bus rolled into a ditch. As a result, a drink spilled near the driver's seat. As a result, the driver was drinking. As a result, he should go to jail. As a result, we'd better go arrest him.

What's wrong with it? Well, two things. Yeah, it's repetitive and dull to read — but really, I promise you, us graders don't much care about that. The important thing is that it's unclear.

See, every sentence, the reader has to do a little work to figure out how it follows from the previous sentence. "How's the bus crash connected to the spilled drink? I guess it must have caused it. So how's the spilled drink connected to the drunk driving charge? Maybe it's evidence they're gonna use to prove he was driving drunk...." That extra work makes it frustrating to read — and if you force your reader to do the extra work, it makes you look sloppy and inconsiderate.


Now, if all we cared about was variety, we could fix it by throwing in some new connective phrases at random:

The bus rolled into a ditch. Therefore, a drink spilled near the driver's seat. For this reason, the driver was drinking. In other words, he should go to jail. All of which proves that we'd better arrest him.

Okay, now you've got variety. But it's still unclear. You still have to work at figuring out how it all fits together, and it's slow and frustrating as a result.

In fact, you have to work twice as hard, to compensate for the misleading cues the author gave you. "Was spilling his drink really the reason the driver was drinking? That makes no sense! Who says 'The reason I drink is because I like to spill things'? .... Oh, hang on, he means the spilled drink is evidence the driver was drinking. Now I get it. On to the next sentence."


So how do we fix it for real? We think about the logical connections between the sentences. Like so:

• The drink spilled as a physical result of the bus crash.
• The spilled drink is evidence suggesting that the driver was drinking.
• Going to jail is a legal consequence of drunk driving.
• Arresting the driver is the first step towards getting him in jail.

In each case, the logical connection tells us what to write. Check it out:

The bus rolled into a ditch. As a result, a drink spilled near the driver's seat. This suggests that the driver was drinking. Consequently, he should go to jail. So as the first step, we'd better arrest him.

This version of the paragraph holds the reader's hand and guides him through the argument. There's no guesswork and no frustration — every sentence tells you flat-out why it's there and how it's connected to the sentence before. And as a grader, when I read a clear paragraph like this, I know there was clarity of thought behind it. That's why this is an A+ paragraph and the other two — both the boring one and the variety-filled one — are B- paragraphs.
posted by nebulawindphone at 10:57 AM on December 3, 2008 [11 favorites]

I ascertain that there is a lot of good advice in this thread.
posted by jockc at 1:23 PM on December 3, 2008

NWP is spot on. I just came back to add another point about thesauruses, but I think I can tie it into this point on clarity. I think what's impeding clarity in NWPs first version of the paragraph is the lack of precision. The phrase "as a result" covers the intended meaning in each case, but it covers a lot more and doesn't get at exactly and precisely the idea. The right word will indicate clearly the meaning you intend and nothing else.

Because I think achieving precision is so important, I don't think you should use a thesaurus to find synonyms for the word you have. That's a terrible use of a thesaurus and it will be obvious and distracting to any reader. If you have a word that means exactly what you mean, use it. Use it as many times as you mean it. Use the thesaurus when you have a word that's pretty close to what you mean, but just a little bit off.

So let's take a song lyric "When I make mistakes, I use a lot of salt, cause salt makes mistakes taste great." Now I want to say that this lyric makes no sense. I could call it nonsensical, but that can be taken to mean things I don't really mean (e.g. that the sentence grammatically is undecipherable or that it's an irrational conclusion), and it doesn't quite capture some aspects of what I'd like to get across: because it makes no sense it's kind of funny, it's silly, it's so nonsensical that no one would attempt to take it seriously. Nonsensical isn't wrong, but it isn't conveying precisely what I want. So I look up nonsensical in the thesaurus and I find "absurd" A-HA! That's the word I want.

That's how you use a thesaurus: When you have the word fame and need infamy, or have scant and you need scarce, or have comfort and need soothe. If you want fame, scant or comfort, put the thesaurus away and use those words as often as you need to.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 1:24 PM on December 3, 2008 [2 favorites]

Yes, there are lots of synonyms for "therefore," and sometimes one or another of them will be just the word you want. And sometimes you might find you don't need a "concluding word" at all--the force of your logic will be strong enough to carry the reader through to the conclusion of your argument.

I agree with lots of the posts above. Focus on getting your ideas across. Don't worry about whether your phrases are varied enough or professorial-sounding enough. The essential thing about good writing is that it conveys ideas clearly, not that it sounds a certain way. Go through your papers and edit them for clarity, which often coincides with brevity! (i.e., don't use a long fancy sounding phrase when a simpler one can express your thought.) And nebulawindphone is right: if you focus on saying precisely what you mean, as clearly as possible, 90% of the variety you want will emerge on its own.

Plus, the clarity-first strategy has an added bonus: reading papers that are clearly and thoughtfully written, that just say what they mean to say, is much easier and more pleasant than reading papers full of artificial synonyms and long-winded, pedantic phrases. After reading a refreshingly straightforward paper, your readers will be feeling so positive about your paper that they won't care a whit if you use the same phrase 10 times!
posted by aka burlap at 6:58 PM on December 3, 2008

Just a note that what you're doing isn't horrible in writing drafts. However, it is pretty horrible to hand in those drafts as finished papers. Please do what Carol Anne suggests and read your papers aloud before you hand them in. The repetitiveness will be immediately obvious to you and you'll be able to grab a thesaurus and work in some variation.

Also, using transition phrases judiciously will lead to stronger, more fluid writing. You probably don't want to eliminate all of these, just a few, and simply vary them more.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:40 PM on December 3, 2008

Whatever you do, never ever ever use the phrase, "At the end of the day..." unless you mean it literally(!). Same goes for "It's all about..."

I don't think a day goes by where I don't hear either on a news or sports broadcast.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 10:04 PM on December 3, 2008

jockc: "I ascertain that there is a lot of good advice in this thread."

Me too.
posted by mindless progress at 7:35 AM on December 5, 2008

There's only one circumstance in which I use a thesaurus (or my brain) to find replacements for repetitive words: when I've used the same word twice (in close proximity) to mean two different things:

"My chair is uncomfortable, so I asked the department chair to buy me a new one."

I would probably re-write it as something like...

My chair is uncomfortable, so I asked my boss to buy me a new one.

Aside from that, repetition is rarely a problem and can often be an asset. Look through lists of rhetorical devices and you'll find that many of them use repetition.
posted by grumblebee at 10:48 AM on December 5, 2008