A Work in Progress . . .
Below, we define many of the Key Terms that appear throughout the course of our Revision Guide. We define and unpack the terms that organize the categories of our Menu (Structure, Hierarchy, Argument, Evidence and Analysis, Key Terms, Orienting, Style, Tone, and Voice, and Clarity, Grammar, and Usage) in their introductions and, more briefly, in the introduction to the Revision Strategies Guide. We wrote these definitions through a lens conditioned by revsion and the use-value of the terms in this guide.
Each of the terms defined below links to its corresponding entry in the Index. In the Index, we list the Key Terms below in BOLD CAPS, which links to the term’s definition in the glossary, followed by hyperlinks to the Revision Strategy the term appears in.
To return to the anchor-linked alphabet below click: 
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
A.
An attempt to describe something intangible in concrete terms; more precisely, discussing a difficult or complex concept more directly, with emphasis on its larger implications, general importance, or new questions it raises.
Academic language differs from non-academic language in the degree to which it needs to deal with very precise and rigorously defined meanings. It uses terms with agreed meanings within the discipline, and often involves defining terms in specific ways that differ from that word’s everyday meaning. The overall effect of these efforts at communicating with precise technical meanings is language that is noticeably distinct from everyday language.
A phrase we use to mean “cross-disciplinary” or simply to refer to something’s impact across many academic disciplines. It is also used for educational initiatives focused on teaching a skill in multiple fields (i.e., “writing across the disciplines”).
The process of scrutinizing evidence — a book, scientific results, etc. — in order to draw a conclusion from that evidence. Analysis forms an opinion supported by sources and, unlike a summary, makes an argument based on the available evidence.
The reader or readers who will be engaging with your work. Depending on the content, this could be a specialist (i.e., a professor reading your work for class, or a colleague in your field) or a non-expert (i.e., a hobbyist, someone in a different field, etc.) Your audience affects how much (or little) background information you need to provide.
B.
C.
When we talk about claims in academic writing, what we are really talking about are truth-claims. Truth-claims are assertions about what is true, or real, or factual about the world around us. At the end of the day, all academic writing exists to assert and evaluate the validity of truth-claims. Think of it this way: in every academic discipline, scholars seek to understand various aspects of the world around us, to understand what is true about that world. When scholars make claims, they are claiming that their assertion is true. If another scholar has reasons to doubt that claim, they may feel obliged to refute the other scholar’s truth-claim and to offer an alternative claim of their own. Only truth-claims lead people to argue and debate the facts of the world around us.
The quality of being easy to understand as a result of clear communication, which can be achieved through factors including word choice, signposting, grammatical correctness, and background context. A work has clarity when its intended audience can understand its purpose, claims, and intentions without excessive rereading.
Complimentary claims support the primary claim without necessarily following from it. Their secondary emphasis comes not from their logical subordination to the primary claim, but from your authorial decision about the scope of the project. In other words, these are claims that support your primary claim, but are not the focus of your argument.
You may see phrases like: “On a related note…” “It also merits mention…” “It is worth noting…”
The part of your thesis or main claim that narrows your topic to one concept or idea and conveys your approach to it.
Contravening claims complicate the primary claim. They may appear superficially opposed to your argument, but, when interrogated, add nuance or supportive detail. They are often introduced as anticipated reader objections in order to answer questions the reader might have about your own argument. In the sciences, we often address claims of this kind in our discussion and/or conclusions when addressing the limitations of our studies or pointing to future research projects.
You may use language like: “The reader may object that… I contend, however…”
An argument that goes against your claim, presenting a different or opposing point of view. A counterargument can be mentioned intentionally in order to acknowledge you’re aware of differing perspectives before offering some evidence that supports your own claim and challenges the counterargument.
D.
A group of people who share a set of assumptions (discourses) and work toward a common goal, using a shared language to do so. Academic discourse communities are usually divided by field and sub-field.
A clash between two incompatible elements, either tonally or between two parts of an argument. Dissonance in argument prevents the reader from understanding the main claim and purpose of the work. Related to bait-and-switch.
Among less experienced writers, it is a common misconception to think that writing is a process of transcription in which a complete idea in one’s mind is transferred to the page (or screen) in a single step. However, writing almost never works that way. Instead, as more experienced writers know all too well, writing is itself involved in the process of thinking and rethinking the material you intend to communicate. Consider two of the words that are used as synonyms for writing: composing and drafting. When creating a piece of music, you have to hear how it sounds in order to keep thinking about how to make necessary additions and changes. Similarly, architects need to draw out (or draft) a possible building’s design in order to really consider those preliminary plans and to perceive shortcomings that need to be addressed. For the same reasons, early efforts to write something are a draft; they are a document that a writer needs to consider, evaluate, and revise.
E.
F.
First developed in the 1970s by Peter Elbow, free writing is a versatile exercise intended to help writers clarify their thinking about a particular aspect of their project. Free writing gives the writer time and space to get their ideas down on paper without the pressure of producing something intended for an external reader. The writer sets a timer for a specific length of time, typically 10 or 20 minutes, and writes uninterrupted for the entire duration without editing or attending to grammatical or structural concerns. In Elbow’s original conceptualization of the practice, which he links to “automatic writing,” he emphasizes the importance of never lifting pen from paper (or fingers from keys) even when the writer feels stuck. Instead, if the writer can’t think of a word or isn’t sure what to say, Elbow instructs them to just keep writing and repeat “I can’t think of what to say…” over and over until they find a way through (or the timer goes off).
The specific goal of a free write depends on the writer’s needs at that moment. For instance, if a writer is in the brainstorming stage and does not have a clear sense of what they want to write about, they might use a free write to capture their ideas and then use whatever writing they produce as a starting point for an outline or draft. If a writer is having trouble articulating their argument, they might use the free write to think through what they are trying to communicate to their audience and then turn back to key moments like their introduction and conclusion paragraphs and use what they produced to revise those sections. If a writer is struggling to understand how thinking from different scholars is connected to their own project, they might use the free write to sketch out some of the ways that their ideas, keywords, and projects intersect, and then use that as the starting point for their literature review. Ultimately, free writing is an exercise that uses writing to think; it is a means for a writer to take a step back from the project, clarify their thinking, and make strategic decisions about how to move forward.
Funneling, or the “funnel method,” is a technique that helps writers think about the broadest and narrowest dimensions of their argument, as well as how the smallest components of their writing (e.g. words, phrases, and sentences) work together to support the largest components of their writing (e.g. paragraphs, sections, and chapters). It is commonly used to help less experienced writers structure their introduction and conclusion paragraphs by asking them to envision the sentences as having the same shape as a funnel; in the introduction, the first sentence sets out a broad statement about their topic and the following sentences gradually move readers to a narrow statement of their thesis. In the conclusion, the first sentence presents a narrow restatement of the thesis and the following sentences gradually move readers to a broader statement about the real-world implications of their claim.
Yet, funneling can also serve as a reading strategy that asks the writer to think about their argument in increasingly finer detail, which is how we use it in Revision Strategies. The writer begins at the broadest level by rereading their draft and summarizing their main argument in a few sentences. Then, they reread the introduction paragraph and compare it to their summary to see if the two align. Next, the writer moves to the paragraph level, rereading each paragraph to make sure it works to support the main argument. Finally, the writer moves to the sentence level, rereading each sentence within each paragraph to make sure it works to support the claim of that paragraph. In working through this process, the writer gains a better understanding of each layer of their argument, and can revise to make sure their writing has a consistent focus and that all the parts work together to support the whole.
G.
H.
A bold claim OR one that diverges from norms of the field, or from what you have already discussed OR one that requires your audience to have a lot of background knowledge to understand/is being addressed to people outside of your field.
I.
J.
When academic writing employs technical terms either incorrectly or without defining them for the reader, the result is jargon. Often, people make the mistake of using the term “jargon” as a synonym for “academic writing.” It isn’t. Jargon is more accurately understood as the name for academic writing that uses a great deal of technical terminology, but in a way that leaves readers feeling very unclear of what is actually being said. In some cases, jargon happens when a writer with a firm command of the material simply fails to define their terms. In other cases, it happens when a writer with less command of the material uses jargon to intimidate their readers, to make their readers feel that they are at fault for not understanding. Good academic writing uses technical terms without letting readers feel like they have to deal with meaningless jargon.
K.
L.
A section of an essay that discusses sources about a topic in relation to each other. These sources are the scholarship of a particular field. Literature reviews may point out gaps in the existing scholarship, or they may collect the results of other studies (especially in the sciences).
The organization of claims and the transitions that connect them, which results in an ordered progression of ideas. This allows the reader to follow your argument’s development and stakes.
A claim that is very commonly made, has been made by many others or has previously been addressed in your project OR one that your audience is familiar with or understands already.
M.
A claim that is similar to one that others have made, but requires an understanding of others’ arguments or scholarship to understand OR one that requires some additional information that is not common knowledge to understand fully OR one that is being read primarily by people within your field, but not your sub-field.
Broadly, one’s approach to doing research (the “methods” you used to study or analyze something). Methods sections in some disciplines describe a researcher’s use of certain procedures to solve or understand a research question.
Mind mapping is a versatile technique for the visual organization and representation of information that can be useful at many stages in the writing process. To make a mind map–whether on paper or using a software program–the writer typically starts with a single main item they wish to explore: a concept, term, claim, theme, topic, chapter heading, etc. They put this item in the center of the map and then draw branches out from this center that they fill in, in turn, with items related to the one in the center. This branching process can be iterated as much as the writer needs. Some mind maps end at this stage and are mainly text-based representations of hierarchical information. However, the writer can also use their mind map to elucidate more complex relationships between items through categorizing items by color, connecting items via logical symbols, adding icons or illustrations, etc.
Mind maps allow the writer to work with their material in a new modality that clearly shows its most important components and how they are connected. The shift from verbal to visual thinking can spark fresh ideas for the writer or help them re-imagine options for presenting existing ideas. The writer might use a mind map early in their process to brainstorm everything they want to cover and begin to arrange this information. A mind map may help them improve their comprehension of a source they consult during their research by capturing, say, both the evidence for each claim its author makes and how those claims work together to build an argument. Before starting a draft, the writer could plan the overall structure and organization of their work by mapping out sections and subsections (a process similar to storyboarding). Using a mind map in this way can help writers easily visualize and decide between different possible arrangements of the sections. Mind mapping can also help the writer think through their work on a macro scale, whether they are considering major structural changes to an existing draft or wish to step outside of the writing itself to plan out what they need to get done for the project.
Mirror outlining is a strategy intended to help writers remember what they wanted to say and compare it to what they’ve actually written. To apply this strategy, the writer creates an outline of their current draft from memory without looking at the text. The purpose of this step is for the writer to capture what they think they are saying (or what they want to be saying) in each paragraph. Next, they create a reverse outline of the draft by rereading each paragraph, summarizing the main point in one or two sentences, and putting those sentences in a bulleted outline. This step captures what the writer is actually doing in each paragraph. Finally, the writer compares the two outlines to see if the documents “mirror” each other. If they do, this means that the writer has a clear understanding of their argument and is effectively communicating their ideas. If not, the writer may need to revise their work so that it more accurately reflects their intentions. Like reverse outlining, this is an adaptable strategy that can be applied to a whole text or to shorter sections of text depending on the writer’s needs.
There are several advantages to mirror outlining. In trying to remember what they said without reference to the draft, writers often discover (or rediscover) important points that they want to include but might have forgotten about when immersed in the writing process. Additionally, it helps writers identify what ideas should be most memorable to their readers and create a revision plan that will put those ideas front and center. Mirror outlining can be a generative tool for longer projects, where writers are prone to lose track of their claims throughout the drafting process, and can also be helpful with shorter projects like application materials where it is vital for writers to decide what key claims about their skills and abilities they want to communicate to potential employers.
N.
We like to think of our work’s narrative as the arc of the story we tell in a text. Every piece of scholarship tells a story about an object of study. Indeed, we think of storytelling as a particularly useful “off the page” framing paradigm that reminds us to consider our audience and what orienting information they need to know to understand the movements of our ideas and insights. Often, a sound narrative renders our text in a clear, logically coherent arc. Think of the academic narrative as a fairly straightforward timeline; more Moana than Momento.
O.
Information that is not clearly linked to a claim. In academic writing, information serves to support, complicate, and refute claims about some aspect of our world. Academic readers understand the relevance of information in terms of the claims they serve to support, refute, etc. When readers encounter information that isn’t clearly linked to a claim, they are put into a position of uncertainty in which they don’t know how to understand its relevance to your argument.
P.
The main idea that you are trying to prove or establish in your piece. It is often expressed in an introductory section through a thesis statement (in the humanities), or in a hypothesis (in the sciences).
Q.
R.
Reverse outlining is an adaptable strategy that makes the structure of a text more visible. Whereas writers create outlines in the pre-drafting stage to move from ideas to a draft, they create reverse outlines at varying points in the revision stage to help them take a step back from a completed draft and make key decisions about structure and content. There are different ways to approach reverse outlining, but the basic exercise involves reading through a completed draft, summarizing each paragraph in one or two sentences, and putting those sentences in a bulleted outline to create a skeletal version of the text. This helps writers assess how readers might experience their current structure, as well as whether each paragraph is making the claim that they think it is and includes sufficient evidence. Sometimes, writers use reverse outlining on a smaller scale to understand the structure of a particular section of their writing (e.g. a chapter in a book or a section in an article), or even to think through how they are structuring sentences within a single paragraph.
If a writer has concerns about a specific dimension of their project, they can create a reverse outline with that in mind. For instance, if a writer wants to understand what role their sources are playing in the current draft, they might create sub-bullets for each paragraph that capture all their evidence and color-code it so that they can see when and how they are using each source. Alternatively, if a writer wants to assess whether they are effectively connecting their sub-claims to their central claim, they might use sub-bullets to capture all the sentences where they forge those kinds of connections so that they can spot places where they might need to do more of that work. Reverse outlining can also be used as a reading strategy; creating a reverse outline of someone else’s text can help the reader more readily understand the parts of the argument and how they work together to support the claim.
A section of the essay that briefly lays out its subject, major arguments, and takeaways for the reader.
S.
Pauses in a paper when the author describes their argument up to that point, and/or what they will discuss next. These breaks also connect what was just discussed to the larger claims of the paper.
Words, phrases, and transitions that guide your reader through your piece of writing, letting them know which claims are most important and where your argument changes focus. Signposting can be very straightforward (“Having established x, I will now go on to discuss y”) or it can be more subtle (as with bridge sentences, which connect two paragraphs with a transition word like “but”, “however”, or “nevertheless.” ). Signposting can also be accomplished by topic sentences, which tell the reader what the following paragraph is about and how it relates to the piece’s main claim.
Storyboarding is a visual and/or text-based strategy that helps writers organize their argument with particular attention to the narrative arc or plot that they want to establish for readers. It can be used at many points in the writing process, and can take different forms depending on the writer’s needs. If a writer is moving from brainstorming to drafting, they create a storyboard by putting each of the points they want to make and/or evidence they want to use on separate index cards (or the digital equivalent), and arranging them to create a logical sequence that culminates in their argument. If a writer has completed a draft, they might use storyboarding as a kind of reverse outlining, writing the main point of each paragraph and/or any evidence they use on index cards (or the digital equivalent) and rearranging them to explore other possible narrative structures. The level of detail that writers attend to in creating their storyboards often depends on the narrative complexity of their project. For instance, writers working on longer projects where they must think about narrative not only at the level of sentences and paragraphs but also at the level of sections and chapters, might generate more detailed storyboards than writers working on shorter projects.
This multimodal strategy originated in the film industry, where it has long been used to help writers and directors consider how to communicate complex ideas to a broad audience with varied levels of knowledge and a diverse set of needs. While many writers perform text-based versions of storyboarding, sometimes using color-coding to help them visually distinguish between major and minor claims, evidence from different sources, etc., some writers create visual representations (i.e. drawings) of their main points instead to help them think through their ideas in a different medium. Ultimately, this strategy helps writers think through structure and hierarchy so that they can figure out what sequence of claims will tell the most compelling and fluid story for their intended audience.
Subordinate claims logically follow, or otherwise derive from, a primary claim. These are secondary claims that your primary claim entails as a matter of course. These may be introduced as component parts or notable consequences of your core argument.
Subordinate claims begin with language like this: “As a consequence…” “It follows, then…” “Incidentally, this suggests…”
Summative claims restate the preceding claims of a section in a condensed way. These are not entirely new claims, but rather restatements of already established claims in a new, synthesized way. These may be introduced in the closing paragraphs of a section, or in the conclusion to an article or chapter.
Summative claims use language like: “To restate the argument to this point…” “So far, I have established…” “In sum…”
T.
If you are a tactile (or kinesthetic) thinker, then you learn by touching or doing. Writing and revising can be hard for tactile thinkers unless they find ways to make the work of writing and revising more tactile.
An argumentative statement that can’t be answered with yes or no, but rather requires argumentation through examples and analysis to be defended. In the humanities, the thesis usually comes at the end of the introduction. This can also refer to your paper’s main claim as a whole (its thesis).
The attitude with which the writer speaks to the reader. This can be on the spectrum of formal to informal, or include other registers (i.e., friendly, mocking, lamenting) in order to establish a relationship between the writer and the reader.
A sentence at the beginning of a paragraph that describes the argument or subject matter of that paragraph. Topic sentences work in support of the main claim, showing the relationship of their paragraph to the argument as a whole.
Topic-sentence-paragraph-alignment:
Words that establish a relationship between two or more ideas, connecting them for the reader. These can be causitive (as a result, therefore), chronological (soon, later), contrasting (despite, on the other hand), etc.
U.
V.
The Vacuum is a conceptual space for writers to isolate one idea or part of their work – a Key Term, piece of evidence, claim, or other object of study – and develop their thinking about it and/or what they are communicating to their reader about it. Academic writing must do many complex things at once, and writers may find themselves overwhelmed while trying to think through these many aspects all together within their main working draft. When this happens, the writer can choose one element to focus on exclusively for a time, bringing it into the Vacuum, a different writing environment, by shifting from their draft to a new blank document. Having done this, the writer can then develop and refine this chunk of their work free from the distractions of the surrounding writing or additional elements interconnected with the one they have isolated. This refined work can then be brought back out of the Vacuum and returned to its context within the writer’s draft.
In addition to the benefit of breaking the revision process into smaller and more manageable tasks, “writing through the Vacuum” may also change a writer’s attitude towards the blank page, turning it from an imposing reminder of the difficult task ahead into a welcoming place to get unstuck while in the thick of the work.
Venn diagrams are a tool for comparing and contrasting two or more terms, concepts, or topics. The writer draws overlapping circles, one for each of the objects they are comparing. They then list the characteristics unique to the particular object in the regions that have no overlap and list the aspects that objects have in common in the regions where the corresponding circles overlap. These diagrams were originally developed in the field of mathematical logic as a way to visually represent the relations between different sets of elements. In line with this origin, they can help writers in any discipline add precision and rigor to the way they use terms or concepts that have some overlap. They may be used at many different stages in the writing process as a tool to clarify the writer’s thinking, but may also appear in the finished piece of writing as a powerful way to visually communicate the interrelationships between different objects under discussion.
As a thinking tool, the writer may use a Venn diagram in various ways. For instance, they might use one while brainstorming to help them decide whether two candidates for key terms with overlapping meanings also have important distinctions relevant to their argument or should be collapsed into one term. If the writer identifies logical or conceptual ambiguities in the way they have used two concepts, they might use a Venn diagram while revising to clarify how the two are related. These diagrams might also be used to think about what the writer is communicating to their audience, perhaps by comparing what the writer knows with what the implied reader knows. Overall, Venn diagrams help writers clarify how they are thinking about related ideas, whether for themselves during writing or for their reader as part of the final product. The visual format can also help the writer shift thinking modes if they are stuck, or make thinking about their core argument easier by temporarily narrowing their focus to the keywords and ideas central to their claim.
The term ventilation was first introduced by scholar Eric Hayot in his 2014 book The Elements of Academic Style, where he defined it as “how your writing breathes.” Writers can achieve more ventilation in their projects along many axes. At a granular stylistic level, writers can build in wider variation in their sentence length, registers in diction, or changes in tone. At a larger-scale structural level, writers can increase ventilation by shifting more between, say, the conceptual and the anecdotal, strategic use of figurative language, or simply variety of topic and information density within or between chapters
Importantly, greater ventilation is not, as one’s intuition might suggest, a matter of consistently slowing the pace of presenting new information, using a more personal voice, or tending towards a less formal register. More ventilated writing is more varied writing. It employs strategic and intentional shifts in tone, style, use of figurative language, jokes, etc., to change things up and hold the reader’s attention.
Ventilation can make writing both more engaging to the reader and also easier to comprehend, two interrelated goals in academic writing. By holding the reader’s attention and interest more fully, the writer encourages the kind of sustained cognitive engagement crucial to following the thread of a layered and intricate argument extended over a section, chapter or book.
W.
A word cloud (also called a tag cloud and first popularized as a “Wordle”) is a way to visualize and thus easily spot the most frequently occurring words in the text it is generated from. In the word cloud, words that occur more often are bigger. While writers can generate these word clouds by hand, there are several easy-to-use software tools that make the process faster and automatically filter out “stop words” like “the” that would be the most frequent words in any text but are usually unimportant for an analysis of its content.
The advantage of using a word cloud is that it allows writers to visually identify the keywords they use most often – whether intentionally or not – so that they can make more intentional choices about the language that they use. The writer might realize that they have not rigorously defined a term that appears frequently in their work or are relying too much on a common-sense understanding of it and choose to add it to their Key Terms. A writer wanting to ensure consistency in how they talk about their core ideas might check the word cloud for frequent terms with similar meanings and decide if there is a need to clarify how they distinguish between these terms or eliminate superfluous ones. At the level of style, the writer can check for words they may overuse in their prose or simply gain awareness of their unconscious patterns of language use. Ultimately, word clouds offer a visual means of identifying trends within a writer’s project that can help them more actively attend to their diction and define their core concepts.
