Authoring a PhD

Table 5.1
How different pressures on authors improve or
worsen the accessibility of their text
Factors generally
Factors which initially
Factors generally
increasing the 
improve your text, but
worsening the
accessibility
may impede accessibility
accessibility of 
of your text
if taken too far
your text
◆
Structural
◆
Push for parsimonious
◆
Professional
considerations
phrasing
authenticity
◆
Logical and
◆
‘Say it once and say it
◆
Reproducing the 
developmental
right’
feel of an
pressures
◆
Maximizing originality
original text
◆
Readability
◆
Cramming in 
◆
Managing readers’
substantive
expectations
content

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a philosopher may end up imitating the sage’s portentous
style. Or a commentator on a literary text may come to mimic
its mannerisms in her own approach, perhaps unconsciously.
Similarly a researcher analysing a particular bureaucracy or
organization can often unconsciously copy officials in
overusing organizational acronyms and employing the
bureaucracy’s ponderous and passive phrasings as her own.
◆
An effort to cram in substantive content
is the last of this set of
influences. Academic authors often try to convey a great
deal of detail about their argument methods and research
techniques, resulting in a text which looks close-packed
with material and dense to read. All these imitative
influences tend to make your text more esoteric, more
polysyllabic, more specialized. There are some widely used
measures of readability, like the ‘fog index’ which increases
with average sentence lengths and the number of multi-
syllable words per sentence. Many theses will top the outer
limit at the top of the fog index scores.
A third set of style pressures has a different type of impact. 
As the centre column of Figure 5.2 shows, emphasizing these fac-
tors will make for better style and a more readable and accessible
text up to a certain point. But carrying on beyond this point,
overemphasizing these factors beyond an optimum level, will
thereafter begin to make your text more and more difficult 
to read.
◆
A push for parsimonious phrasing
, a style eliminating all
redundant text, follows through on a ‘less is more’ policy.
This stance can be a force for good or ill depending on
circumstances. In a loosely knit text, full of ‘waffle’, making
cuts down to the bare bones of the argument will generate
important improvements in style and readability. It will
often cut out pointless, minimally reshaded extensions of a
core argument, and help sharpen up the profile of the
author’s thought for readers.
An unnecessary word does no work. It doesn’t 
further an argument, state an important 
qualification, or add a compelling detail. (See?)
Howard Becker
3
1 0 8
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A U T H O R I N G A P H D

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But with an already pared down and well-organized text
the same stance can have different effects. Cut out all
unnecessary words, leave only what is strictly essential 
(no asides, no ‘for examples’, no flavouring), and you may
end up with a piece of writing too dense or too formal for
many readers to make inroads. Journal editors and referees
often stress this kind of paring away of closely written text.
But it can produce excessively hard-boiled, remote,
underexplained and unnecessarily difficult pieces of text. 
As de Botton notes in the epigraph to this section, making
life hard for readers will trigger two reactions, neither of
them encouraging for the reception of your text. If readers
blame you as author for being obscure there is a direct threat
to your passing the final examination without having to
make revisions. If readers blame themselves for not being
able to measure up to your text, this may rebound in
unsympathetic views of your work. Triggering realizations
we would all prefer to avoid is not a way to get widely read.
◆
The ‘