Adam J. McKee
This essay is based on a few assumptions. The first central assumption is that the reader is interested in what works well and gets good grades. Many of the “best practices” recommended in composition and rhetoric courses are not viewed as such by academics in the scientific disciplines. When professors give advice and guidance that conflicts with your writing classes or this paper, remember that your professor is always right. It assumes that the reader is embarking on a literature review project or a larger research project containing as an element a literature review. It is further assumed that the reader is writing a social science discipline such as criminal justice.
The chosen style guide for this text is the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (Seventh Edition). Prescribed style guides vary by discipline, professor, or journal. Writers in styles other than that of the APA should not be at a significant disadvantage. Analyzing the literature, documenting it, and writing a synthetic paper are identical, regardless of discipline. The specifics of the various styles usually differ in trivial matters that are easily edited.
When writing literature reviews in the social and behavioral sciences, always keep one thing in mind:
You are a Scientist!
Writing in a Formal Style
Writing is a form of communication, and the best way to communicate depends on your audience–who you are talking to–and your purpose. Writing is no different: You use different rules when writing for different audiences and purposes. You talk differently with your friends than you do with your elderly grandmother. You talk differently with your siblings than you do with your boss. In academic writing, the general audience is most often the professionals in your discipline. When considering who those people are, think globally. You don’t want to write a paper that will merely be appreciated by the professors in your discipline at your university but by a global audience of all such professionals. When writing in the social sciences, it is best always to consider your writing formal. The best advice for students is don’t write as you talk, and don’t write like you text.
Formality is a matter of degrees. Students of creative writing will want to avoid nearly everything said herein. Students in disciplines outside of the social and natural sciences should likely forget it as well. Formal writing is, in many ways, the antithesis of creative writing. It is anachronistic, and the writer’s voice is curiously absent. Creative writing gives the author a voice, as does argumentative writing.
Poets, novelists, and writers of ubiquitous Composition II essays find it hard to come to grips with the harsh truth of objective, scientific writing: The good writer should have no voice. Most of the nonfiction writing done in Western educational institutions tells writers they need to form solid opinions and use clever arguments and facts to bring the reader around to their way of thinking. Budding scientists must break these habits of composition if they are to be successful.
What constitutes “good writing” largely depends on what authors are writing and for whom they are writing it. In other words, subject matter and audience are critical factors. Poets and novelists want writing to evoke specific emotions. When writing in the sciences and the law, the objective should be to remove all emotional (and most conjectural) connotations. Whatever is being written, authors need to be trustworthy to be successful.
For the novelist, trustworthiness can be defined as a dedication to providing the reader with a good story and keeping a sense of poetic justice. The reader may laugh at and enjoy an unreliable fiction narrator but must still trust the writer. In formal writing in the sciences (social or otherwise), the reader expects the author to be somewhat like a virtuous and learned judge. The writer should be fair, impartial, neutral, and detached. All of those sentiments can be described by the term “objective.”
The essence of science is explaining the truth about how the world works. In other words, science is about facts. Any time an opinion or emotion enters the text, the reader is disappointed. The author “has an ax to grind” and is not to be trusted. Just as a good judge cannot take sides in a case, so too can the scientific writer not choose a side in a paper concerning a debatable topic.
The nature of the scientific method is to create a debate, of course. This is done the moment the scientific writer formulates a hypothesis. The most basic form of a hypothesis is “X causes Y” (and the form that students should always follow). Such a formulation always has a built-in argument, the other side being “X does not cause Y.” This is the null hypothesis that social scientists use so often.
When writers review the literature regarding such a hypothesis, they must strenuously avoid personal opinions, prejudices, and (by any means necessary) feelings. If reading about a topic evokes emotion in the scientific writer, then another topic should be chosen at once. The mindset of the scientific writer should be one of curiosity, not positive or negative emotions. Emotion is the enemy of objectivity and, thus, the enemy of the scientific writer.
When writing in a formal style, word choice is essential. You can often eliminate poor word choices by moving from vague to concrete and general to specific. One way to look at formal writing is to avoid informal things. Avoid contractions. Avoid colloquialisms, meaning “sayings,” and manners of speech that make sense to you and your peers but would not make sense to someone with English as a second language. This is difficult for many because we naturally want to write as we talk. Some phrases represent a drop in diction, even when there is nothing wrong with them per se. They simply don’t match the tone you are trying to achieve. Don’t “check out” the specimen when you can better “examine” it.
English Grammar
A critical element of the formal style is adhering to the rules of Standard English Grammar. Nothing signals that a writer did not care enough to do an excellent job, as does poor grammar. This is so important, in fact, that I will devote the last chapter of this little book to discussing it. To be a good writer, you must master grammar. Mastery takes practice and lifelong study. The best way to “tune your ear” to proper grammar is to read widely and often. To get the basics down, you need to study the rules.
Having issued the standard professorial advice on lifelong learning, I will consider how to fill the gaps until mastery can be achieved. In the dim past, writers had to rely on people who specialized in correcting grammar mistakes in the writing of others. Today, we have software. In the world of grammar and style-checking software, there are many options. The checkers built into popular word processing software may suffice if your skills are good and you just need to check for typos. If you want to achieve mastery “on the fly,” I suggest something more robust. I use a product called Grammarly. This outstanding product charges a yearly subscription fee, but it is cheaper than most modern textbooks.
Let the writer not forget that people are the best judges of the quality of writing. Computers are getting very good at line editing, but they are not good at evaluating clarity, cohesion, and flow. If you are a university student, the odds are good that you have a “Writing Center” (by that or some other name) that will evaluate your work for these overarching facets of good writing. These people are wonderful, but they are not likely to know much about your discipline. They are technical writers, not social scientists. Email your professor and ask if they are willing to look over your paper and tell you if you are going in the right direction. They will likely direct you to the Writing Center if they do not have the time or inclination. You did not lose anything by asking.
The Third Person
The degree to which a formal writer can get away with using the first person (I/Me/Us/We) is largely discipline-specific. The formative era of the evaluator of such work is also something to consider. Professors may tell student writers to write for a particular audience (e.g., the professional community). In practice, students write for the professor who will grade the writing (or sign off on a dissertation). The best way to “get a feel” for the conventions of a particular scholarly community is to read the professional journals in that discipline. Regardless of the field, students who are not readers can never be good writers.
The student is best served when in doubt by erring on the conservative side. Follow all the old, stodgy rules about writing science well. Your English professor may use words like flat, dead, and pompous to describe such writing, but they are not the ones grading it after the student has survived freshman composition. The best strategy is to dispel the doubt and ask the professor. Professors primarily do writing when they are not teaching, and they often have strong opinions that they are more than happy to share.
With the above caveats duly issued, consider the guidance of the Seventh Edition Manual (4.16). The writer is reminded that pronouns replace nouns, and each pronoun should refer clearly and unambiguously to its antecedent noun. Writing in the third person does not always accomplish this objective very well. The new guidance is to “use the first person rather than the third person when describing the work you did as part of your research and when expressing your own views” (p. 120). So if you are a lone writer (as most students are), you will use the personal pronoun “I” when referring to your research methods or thoughts and ideas.
If you have a coauthor, you must use the collective pronoun “we.” Note that writers should only use “we” in the context of the current research project. In other words, do not use the “editorial we.” Use “we” to refer to yourself and your research partners, but not to describe humanity in general or a nonspecific group of people. Choose a more specific term, such as “people,” “humans, or “criminal justice researchers.”
I have always agreed with new rules regarding using the first person. I have gone so far as to fight a dissertation committee on the issue (I lost: Revise and resubmit). I see no reason to depart from the formal writing advice of never using the second person. Addressing the reader as “you” is the epitome of cozy, informal writing. That is not the tone the writer of literature reviews wants to achieve.
This all seems very complex at first blush. The writer of literature reviews need not worry too much. Literature reviews should be written objectively, and the author’s voice should be absent, at least until the conclusion, where careful statements may be made about the state of the art. Remember, the idea of a literature review is to summarize what others have found, not to write an essay concerning your own thoughts and opinions. So, for the most part, my recommendation stands: Choose to write in the third person and stick with it until the end.
Verb Tense (4.12)
Students writing “term papers” and other forms of literature reviews are advised to start with the past tense and stick to it. There are situations where the past perfect tense is desirable, but that is beyond the scope of the current discussion. The Manual suggests that the past or past perfect tense be used for literature reviews and the methods and results section. It is further recommended that writers use the present tense for the discussion section, presentation of conclusions, directions for future research, and so forth.
Writers of research proposals are in a bit of a different situation. By definition, a proposal is discussing things that have yet to happen. If they occur, they are in the future, so logically, the writer will want to discuss them in the future tense. By this logic, the literature review section will remain in the past tense, but elements past that point will be in the future tense. Just because this advice is logical does not mean that your professor will like it. Seek clarification about the professor’s expectations. If you are conducting research, try to get away with using the past tense for your entire proposal. Editing every verb in a lengthy paper for tense after the fact is maddening.
On Specificity
Specificity is probably the most crucial facet of distinguishing bad writing from brilliant writing. The precision with which a writer chooses words is of the utmost importance. This is perhaps even more important in the sciences, where precision is prized. A key to accomplishing this is to become a lifelong learner of words, always seeking to improve vocabulary. Professors who grade papers have a love-hate relationship with the thesaurus function built into word processing software. They provide quick access to better word choices, which professors love. They also offer a wealth of slightly wrong word choices for the ambitious plagiarist. A critical skill for the writer seeking quality is to grasp the subtle differences between words so that the absolute best one can be chosen.
Aesthetics will often guide a poet’s word choice. For artistic writers, words are chosen for reasons such as mood and rhythm. For the social scientist, words are chosen because they convey exact meanings. Some words and phrases should be removed from your vocabulary because they have become meaningless by indiscriminate use. Others were always useless or “void for vagueness,” as the Supreme Court would say. The scientific writer should focus on moving as far as possible from vague words and choose concrete and specific terms.
The first step to becoming a good writer is to become a collector of words. The limit to this, of course, is not choosing words that the writer doesn’t know intimately. It must be understood that minor differences make major differences in writing. Just because words are listed as synonyms in a computer program (or a book) does not mean that they have precisely the same meaning. Words are not fungible.
A related vice of the novice scientific writer is choosing absolutes. Asserting an absolute usually has to do with using “absolute terms,” such as “all,” “none,” “every,” “never,” “always,” and so forth. In the natural sciences, this may be appropriate. All water molecules contain hydrogen. However, such terms can rarely be used in the social sciences without creating an overgeneralization that lacks precision. They can also be offensive in the social sciences, where people are almost always the topic of discussion.
Precision versus Repetition
English professors often tell students that word choice should be varied. I would argue that this happens automatically when writers seek out the best word rather than becoming lazy and choosing the same word repeatedly because it comes to the mind quickly. The most significant caveat for the social science writer is never sacrificing precision simply to avoid repetition. This is often the case when it comes to the names of theories, programs, and variables. Variables must vary by definition, but what a writer calls them in a paper should not.
Also, be aware of “terms of art.” Terms of art are words and phrases that take on special meanings in a discipline-specific context. It may seem painfully repetitive, but terms of art should not be substituted. If you are writing a paper on the Fourth Amendment focusing on search warrants, you will wind up using the phrase “probable cause” dozens of times. “Probable cause” is a term of art, and it has a special meaning in evidence law. It should always remain as “probable cause.”
It Is Not an Essay!
The quickest way a student can offend their research methods professor is to email them referring to a literature review project as an “essay.” The student has once signaled that they have not been paying attention to the course content and will produce a terrible literature review that must be graded. Professors hate grading lousy writing, and they hate grading the wrong thing miswritten even more. This problem starts with professors of composition.
This, of course, is not the fault of those brave souls. They, after all, must have students write something. That something needs to be short and directed. A traditional essay handily suits that need. The social science student seeking to write well in the field had better consider these experiences akin to the picture books they read in kindergarten. They are building blocks but cannot stand as the final product.
An essay can be loosely defined as a short piece of nonfiction writing dealing with a specific topic. When assigned by professors, they usually require a thesis statement in the form of an argument. In other words, the goal of the essay is persuasion. Academic writers must typically provide facts (often with MLA citations) that bolster the argument. Classically, the introduction provides context (tells the reader what they are about to learn) and states the argument in a succinct thesis statement. The middle (body) of the essay presents facts and arguments designed to persuade the reader of the author’s thesis statement position. The conclusion usually restates the argument and why it is sound.
It can be determined from this description that a literature review is an entirely different species of writing. Nearly all of the differences can be attributed to purpose. Writing teachers nearly always teach students to consider their purpose in writing (and their audience), which the students almost always ignore when they start writing. Not heeding these important warnings has turned many literature review projects into rambling essays. A writer of literature reviews must first get the notions of argumentation and debate out of their head and keep them out. The purpose of a literature review is to review the literature (as the clever reader already guessed).
A literature review should begin with a hypothesis, not a thesis statement. (Another important way students can make professors swear at their monitor is to refer to a hypothesis as a thesis statement). A literature review describes the state of the art concerning that hypothesis. Most of the cited references should be empirical research reports, and each piece of evidence gleaned should be carefully documented. Ideally, the researcher will read and record notes on everything ever written about the topic. This, of course, is not practical for projects shorter than dissertations and books. For student papers, it will be a cross-section of the literature. The size of that cross-section can usually be gleaned from the instructions, often of the “10 page 10 sources” variety.
The actual writing of a literature review consists of weaving those pieces of evidence into a well-organized, cohesive paper that describes everything the scholarly community knows about the hypothesis. This isn’t as daunting as it sounds. It is worth noting that every empirical research report begins with a review of the related literature (usually as the “introduction”), so the hard work of combing the database has been done for you in many ways. In science, the most important studies are the ones cited most often. If all of the papers you are considering cite Smith and Jones (2021), you had better cite Smith and Jones.
A Note on Legal Research
Law is a wonderfully strange discipline that is more akin to philosophy than science. Social science disciplines such as criminal justice and political science often require students to write on legal topics. Lawyers often do engage in argumentation, and some of their writing has that purpose. Other times, legal writers are asked for a statement of the law. A statement of the law is akin to a social science literature review. Statements of the law require the same sort of objective treatment, devoid of personal opinions and prejudices. Students that conclude a passage on the Supreme Court’s opinion of a matter with their own opinion can seem a bit narcissistic. Here, too, the writer must consider the purpose of the paper. Mentions of “arguments” and “thesis statements” in the assignment are significant clues that objectivity is not desired.
Even when the student is writing a legal argument, it is best to argue with persuasive authority using an objective tone. For the student, the ideal level of objectivity may depend on the credential held by the professor assigning the paper. A more argumentative style may be required if the professor is a J.D. (a lawyer). If the professor holds a Ph.D., then scientific objectivity will likely be the target. People that do research at the doctoral level are bona fide scientists, so it is not surprising that they think and write like scientists. Professors get paid to answer questions, so seek clarification, and seek it early.
Keep in mind what a Ph.D. signifies. Most general content expertise is gained at the Master’s level. The focus of Ph.D. programs is becoming a scholar in the field, which means lots of research and statistics classes, culminating in a massive original research project called a dissertation. The professor with a Ph.D. may have once been a practitioner, but they most likely think like a scientist after completing their doctoral program. Even if they don’t think like scientists, they certainly believe that good writing looks like the stuff you find in empirical research reports. To get the best grades, learn to think and write like a social scientist.
Is It a Term Paper?
In universities around the globe, the term paper is ubiquitous. The nature of such papers can change from discipline to discipline and professor to professor. There is an unspoken assumption that you know basic grammar, how to type up a document and follow a style guide. These are generally required because when a university awards you a degree, it certifies that you are literate and can communicate well in written form.
Students, especially those taught to write “research papers” in high school, are taught a shoddy (says the social scientist) way of doing things. Students are often taught how to use mass media reports, random websites, encyclopedias, and books that essentially synthesize the original work of others. In the academic world, this is the job of the writer. The goal of the literature review writing is the analysis and synthesis of original research.
The most common examples of student papers do not accomplish this! Student papers are often merely rehashing secondary sources in a broad treatment of a generic topic with no depth. Students are also fans of argumentative papers that amount to long essays with a sprinkling of references to make their ramblings seem more academic. A literature review is something entirely different. The question that a literature review should answer is, what is the state of the art?
By “state of the art,” I mean what do scholars know about your research question? To answer that question fully, you should have read everything written about it and then summarized it in your paper. By everything, I don’t mean secondary sources, textbooks, and CNN stories. I mean the professional literature–the peer-reviewed journal articles. There are only two major types that you should use in a literature review: First, you should include articles that report on empirical research findings. Second, you should include theoretical (scientific) papers that directly relate to your research question.
I suggest that writers of term papers in the social sciences consider them miniature literature reviews. By doing so, you may find that you are going above and beyond the call of duty, but the likely result of that is receiving high marks. Of course, you will want to read the assignment carefully and look for departures from the principles outlined herein. Your professor, for example, may want you to write an argumentative paper. Your professor is always right, even when they’re not.
Continuity and Flow
Writers of fiction use various devices to move the story backward and forward in time. Scholars should avoid such artistic flair, choosing instead to write linearly so that their prose flows logically. One hallmark of an excellent writer is accomplishing this idea of flow with conciseness and clarity. Continuity refers to the logical consistency of ideas throughout a written work. Flow, which is a related concept, is more concerned with the cadence of the writing.
Often, novice writers understand a concept (you can extrapolate that from the text as a reader, more so as a veteran professor of research with a red pen), but a lack of clarity makes the actual words on the page vague and confusing. What you know and understand must make it onto the page, and it must be written so that your reader quickly understands what you have to say.
A key to writing papers that have continuity and flow is what a novelist might call structure. Structure essentially speaks to the basic idea of organization. The key to good structure is to break down your topic into logical subtopics and break down those into logical paragraphs. Good papers should be organized by topic and subtopics, not by the resources that the author plans to cite. There is a place for dealing with references one after the other; this is called an annotated bibliography.
Unless you are assigned something called an annotated bibliography, don’t write one! This is by far the most common mistake in papers written by students making a good faith effort to do a good job. To do a good job, you must outline your work before you begin writing. All good writing must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The longer your paper will be, the more effort you need to organize the middle so that it flows logically from one subtopic to the next.
The Objective Voice
If a statement is based on your personal tastes, feelings, beliefs, or opinions, it is known as subjective. It is not factual, although you may think it is. If other reasonable people can disagree with you, then you are usually dealing with a subjective topic. The opposite of subjective is objective. When a writer is objective, they are not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts. The statement “marijuana should be legalized” is entirely subjective. The statement “it is raining outside” is objective. There is a factual nature to the assertion, and its truth can be judged by making an observation; just look out of the window. Science is all about facts, so objectivity is a critical element of good science.
The objective voice (also called tone) tends to be impersonal because it does not include any identification of the writer. Rather than including opinions, the writer focuses on sticking to only the facts. These facts will often consist of the research findings you found in your literature analysis. This is why we cite sources in our professional papers: The reader wants to know where those facts came from. Social science readers are research savvy and want to see that you have cited primary sources (original research reports and theoretical papers). Nonsense is still nonsense, whether you have a parenthetical citation or not!
When there is a disagreement in the literature, the objective writer will take care not to show a bias toward one side. By “disagreement,” I do not mean moral or ethical arguments. Keep those out of your literature review entirely. Researchers may have different findings in their research, and the writer must present those findings without bias.
Keeping an objective tone is a primary reason social scientists avoid using personal pronouns. Traditionally, writers were advised to avoid:
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- I
- My
- Me
- Mine
- You
- We
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As we will discuss later, the thinking on this has changed along with the American Psychological Association (APA) recommendations in the latest edition of the Publication Manual. This should be of little concern, however, to the writer of literature reviews. When you are writing about the work of others, there is no reason to use the first person (I/Me) or to address the reader as “you.” Writers of stand-alone literature reviews can stick to the age-old advice and still meet the new APA standards.
When writing in a specific tone, it is essential to consider your word choice. You want to demonstrate a college-level vocabulary and use your chosen words precisely. If you don’t know exactly what a word means, choose a more straightforward word you fully understand. You absolutely must refrain from using hyperbole, colloquialisms, and expressions that suggest judgment and opinion. Formal papers are no place for jokes, so avoid sarcasm and try not to be witty.
The objective tone also requires that the writer avoid rhetorical questions. Rhetorical questions are posed to create a dramatic effect or drive home a point without expecting an answer. When you pose questions in a formal paper, you essentially break out of the objective tone, pointing to yourself as the author and simultaneously to the reader. All questions posed in a document are, by definition, rhetorical since the reader cannot possibly answer across time and space. This, of course, does not apply when you report on instrumentation for your study, such as informing the reader of your survey questions.
Organization
A literature review should be part summary and part synthesis of the literature that you are citing. The organizational structure should be by conceptual categories. Don’t fall into the trap of using the headings you find in the Style Guide for a research report. It is silly to talk about your methods and subjects if you aren’t doing original research. A good rule of thumb to demonstrate proper synthesis is to never cite the same source for more than two sentences in a row.
Things to Leave Out
When writing a literature review, it is important to remember what it is not. It is not an argument nor a treatise on law or policy. It is a thoughtful summary of all the research done on a research question. Given that, be sure to exclude the following:
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- Moral arguments (science can’t answer those!)
- Arguments about whether a policy/law is “good” or “bad”
- Statements of personal opinions or beliefs
- Statements about your “research” (you are reviewing, not conducting research)
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Developed by Adam J. McKee.
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