95. Making Statements More Uncertain 1

Numerical and general statements can be made vaguer so they are more likely to be true

NATURE AND IMPORTANCE OF HEDGING

Quite often we hear or read something that is almost true but not quite, like this:

(a) The population of London is 8.3 million.

The number 8.3 million is actually an approximation. The exact number of people who live in London is changing all the time and is probably impossible to discover at any one moment. Often such inaccuracy is acceptable; but sometimes it is not and can bring blame on the writer.

A simple way to ensure the accuracy of (a) is to make its wording less precise, so that it refers not to a single number but to a range. There are various ways of doing this: adding the preposition about, for example, or the adverb approximately, or changing the last part to exceeds 8 million. Ensuring the accuracy of statements by making them vague is commonly called “hedging”. This post and the next (96. Making Statements More Uncertain 2) are about different types of hedging and the language choices associated with them.

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THE HEDGING OF QUANTITIES

Quantities are especially likely to be mentioned in data analysis (see 115. Surveying Numerical Data).The language that can be used to hedge them can be classified as follows.

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1. Adverbs Like “Approximately”

The word approximately means “close to”. It suggests that a quantity named after it is perhaps the true one, or perhaps slightly more or slightly less.  Other adverbs like it include almost exactly, more or less, perhaps, probably (more definite than perhaps), roughly and virtually. There is also or so, used after rather than before a number.

Additional adverbs have part of the meaning of approximately. Some say that the named quantity is a maximum possibility (at most, at maximum, no more than), others that it is a minimum (at least, easily, no less than, no fewer than), others that it is more than the true one (almost, less than, nearly, practically), and others again the opposite (more than).

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2. Prepositions Like “About”

Prepositions that mean the same as approximately include about, around, close to and the multi-word in the region of, as well as the informal something like and the abbreviated c. or ca. (see 130. Formal Abbreviations). Similar to maximum-indicating at most are approaching, up to and the less formal going on for, while equivalents of less than and more than are respectively below and above / over / in excess of.

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3. Adjectives Like “Many”

Exact number words can often be replaced by a vague adjective like a few, many, numerous, several, some, various and informal a lot of (see 108. Formal and Informal Words), but not important (see 198. Indicating Importance). Also notable are a high (or low) percentage of (see 218. Tricky Word Contrasts 8, #1) and a large (or small) number of. Some of these adjectives – high, low, large and small – can be made slightly less extreme by means of the suffix -ish.

Quantity adjectives that can accompany a singular noun, such as high, can normally go either before it (has a high rate of change) or after it with a link verb in between (the rate of change is high). By contrast, adjectives that need a plural noun – many, a few, various, several – must mostly go before it (e.g. has many people – see “Quantity Adjectives” in 184. Adjectives with Limited Mobility).

The hedging use of a number-replacing adjective before a plural noun can assist introduction of a list when there is uncertainty about whether or not the list is complete (see 96. Making Statements More Uncertain 2 and 122. Signpost Words in Multi-Sentence Lists). It can additionally make a statement less “sweeping” (see below). For details about using vague number words with a following of, see 133. Confusions of Similar Structures 1 (#1).

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4. Verbs Like “Exceeds”

A verb expressing the meaning of approximately is approximates to. Instead of is more than we can say exceeds, surpasses or tops. An alternative to is less than is approaches.

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5. Other Possibilities

The adjective estimated can be used with a number to mean the same as approximately:

(b) An estimated 80,000 spectators watched the final.

An article like an is always necessary; the noun that necessitates it – in this case thousand – is obvious when the number is spoken but not visible in writing (see 67. Numbers in Spoken English). A similar usage is possible with a few other (non-hedging) adjectives, including huge, whopping, paltry and pitiful (see 115. Surveying Numerical Data).

Another alternative to the underlined words in (b) is the single word some. This is not the common adjective-like word meaning “a quantity of”. It must be pronounced like sum rather than with the reduced vowel /ә/ (see 256. Unusual Meanings of Familiar Words, #1).

A further possibility is to have the number first and or so after it. 

Slightly different, but still hedging, are the pre-number noun expressions a maximum of and a minimum of.

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HEDGING THE BROADNESS OF GENERALIZATIONS

Generalizations are statements about multiple or enduring times rather than single or brief ones. They include most statements about classes of things (see 162. Ways of Writing about Classifications). They run the risk of being inaccurate through being too broad. Examples are:

(c) Mammals live on land.

(d) Spain is warmer than Sweden.

Sentence (c) is too broad because it mentions too many mammals: all instead of fewer than all. The reason is the existence of mammals that do not live on land (whales and dolphins, for instance) – in other words, exceptions. Sentence (d) is too broad because it suggests Spain is always warmer than Sweden when on rare occasions the reverse is true. Statements like (c) and (d), which do not recognise the possible existence of exceptions, are sometimes said to be “sweeping”.

Sweeping statements in academic writing do not usually please tutors. One way to avoid them might be by highlighting exceptions (see 215. Naming Exceptions). However, even doing this can fail to achieve truth, as we may not know what all the exceptions are. We cannot simply argue that none exist because we have never seen or heard of any: The fact that every crow I have ever seen or heard of is black does not prove that every crow in existence is black! 

Thus, there is often wisdom, regardless of whether or not exceptions are mentioned, in avoiding the idea of “all” in generalizations, or its negative equivalent “no(ne)”. Very few all-referring statements are as safe to make as (e):

(e) Everyone will die.

In order to hedge a generalization so that it is not too broad, the following types of language can be used.

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6. Adverbs Like “Normally”

Normally means “in nearly all cases”. Adding it to a generalization thus allows for the existence of rare exceptions. The meaning of normally is so frequently needed that English has developed numerous synonyms. These include usually, typically, mostly, ordinarily, generally, in general, on the whole, nearly always, in most cases, for the most part, mainly, in the main, broadly speaking, by and large, overall, all in all and as a rule (for a difference between pairs like generally and in general, see 85. Preposition Phrases & Corresponding Adverbs). If it is never that needs to be hedged instead of always, one can say hardly ever or very rarely.

In some cases, “nearly always” may be considered too extreme, so that an adverb indicating a lower frequency is required. English does not disappoint in this respect, having adverbs for most subjective percentages. The following give some indication of the range:

AROUND 70%: often, frequently, much of the time, in many cases

AROUND 50%: sometimes, some of the time, in some cases, to some extent

AROUND 30%: occasionally, on occasion, in a few instances, to a small extent

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7. Adjectives like “Many”

In sentences like (c), where there is a general class name (mammals), an alternative to an adverb for making the statement less sweeping is an adjective that limits the meaning of the class name. Such adjectives mean the same as the adverbs – they just go with nouns instead of verbs. They are often the same ones that can also be used for avoiding inaccurate numbers (see #3 above). They include most, nearly all, very many, the majority of and a preponderance of, as well as indicators of lower-frequency like many, some, a few and very few.

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8. Verbs like TEND

The idea of “normally” can also be given to sentences (c) and (d) by adding the verb TEND (tend to live/tends to be). Alternatives to TEND are BE INCLINED (perhaps applicable mostly to people) and BE LIKELY. A verb that can express the idea of “occasionally” is can (see 237. Auxiliary Verbs in Professional Communication, #7).

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OTHER TYPES OF HEDGING

Some statements need to be hedged in case they are covering too few rather than too many possibilities – a different kind of hedging that needs to be done with its own special language. Details about it can be read in the post after this (96. Making Statements More Uncertain 2). Also considered there are predictions, plus statements that could be totally false rather than just too broad or narrow.

94. Essay Instruction Words

Essay questions usually contain key words like “discuss” or “why” that are easily misunderstood

NATURE & IMPORTANCE OF ESSAY INSTRUCTION WORDS

Most essays written by students are responses to an essay question set by a tutor. Essay questions usually contain one (sometimes more than one) instruction word specifying exactly what has to be done with the subject matter of the essay. Words of this kind are mostly verbs in the “imperative” form (see 128. Imperative Verbs in Formal Writing), instructing the writer to do such things as describe, discuss or account for something named by the rest of the question.

Essay instruction verbs are quite numerous and varied. As a result, they present a vocabulary-learning challenge to students whose mother tongue is not English. In addition, these words sometimes differ from each other in very subtle ways, with the result that nearly all students suffer some uncertainties about them.

This post presents a moderately complete list of essay instruction verbs, and attempts to clarify some of the major subtleties. It also considers alternatives to verbs, such as ordinary question words like why. Other posts within this blog that are particularly relevant to essay-writing are 24. Good and Bad Repetition,  59. Paragraph Length,  80. How to Paraphrase,  108. Formal & Informal Words,  197. The Language of Bibliographies and 297. Types of Response to a Question (#6).

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TWO TYPES OF ESSAY INSTRUCTION VERB

Essay instruction verbs fall into two main groups, illustrated respectively by describe and discuss in the following:

(a) Describe the process by which second language learners acquire grammatical competence.

(b) Discuss the importance of wind turbines within a national energy policy.

Describe in (a) here calls only for factual information, while discuss in (b), though also requiring facts such as the advantages and disadvantages of wind turbines, requires in addition some thought about these in order to reach a personal opinion about a quantity of importance. In other words, it requires argumentation (see 167. Ways of Arguing 1). This difference leads essays like (a) to be called “descriptive”, those like (b) “analytic”.

Analytic essays are very commonly required in higher education. Understanding the concept of analysis is thus very important. The need in an essay for an opinion to be given is a major indication that analysis is required (for advice on the nature of opinions, see 107. The Language of Opinions). However, not all analysis leads to opinions; analysing statistics, for example, can result in the discovery of previously-hidden facts (see 115. Surveying Numerical Data). Nevertheless, analysis leading to opinion is the most usual kind in essays.

If you are not sure whether an essay requires an opinion to be given, it can help to consider whether or not different correct answers are possible. Question (a) above does not allow different correct answers – only a single set of facts is implied to exist – whereas (b) allows a range from “not important at all” to “essential”. The “correct” answer could be anywhere within this range – and it can vary from student to student. Everything depends on the analysis. With this in mind, the reader might like to try identifying which of the following questions require an analytic essay:

(c) Outline the main options available for reducing traffic congestion in and between towns.

(d) Evaluate the poverty-reduction policies of the World Bank over the past 25 years.

(e) Assess the usefulness of dictionaries in foreign language acquisition.

(f) Explain the importance of the product life cycle.

(g) Compare and contrast the pollution problems of advanced and less advanced economies.

The questions requiring analysis here are (d), (e) and (g). In (d) the alternative answers range from “not successful” to “wholly successful” (with such intermediates as “quite successful”); in (e) they are “not useful” to “essential”; while in (g) they are “identical” to “completely different”.

Questions like (g) are particularly notable: it is not enough to list individual similarities and differences – these must also be used in order to judge overall similarity/ difference. Question (f) does not require analysis because no judgement of importance is required; the wording already implies that the importance is great, and the essay simply has to say how.

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LIST & SUBTLETIES OF ESSAY INSTRUCTION VERBS

Here is a moderately complete list of essay instruction words. Most, if not all, can be thought of as a subclass of so-called “citation” verbs (see 76. Tenses of Citation Verbs). Those marked * could require either description or analysis: they sometimes require merely repeating what a book or lecturer has said, sometimes working out the answer independently.

Description Words

*account for, define, demonstrate, describe, elaborate, explain, express, give an account of, *identify, illustrate, indicate, list, name, outline, portray, *review, show, specify, summarise, survey, trace.

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Analysis Words

*account for, analyse, appraise, assess, comment on, compare, contrast, critique, discuss, examine, evaluate, *identify, interpret, judge, justify, *review.

Notable points about these words are follows. Compare has a double meaning: either “identify similarities and differences” or simply “identify “similarities”. This may seem strange, but is not unique in English. Consider these:

In each case, the top term can mean both of the lower ones together or just one of them. This ambiguity of compare is probably the reason why essay questions requiring differences to be considered as well as similarities prefer to use the unambiguous compare and contrast. For a survey of language available for comparing and contrasting, see 149. Saying How Things are Similar and 216. Indicating Differences. For some other verb pairs commonly linked by and, see 209. Fixed Phrases with “and”.

Critique means “evaluate through identifying positives and negatives”. It is often preferred to criticise because that word has similar ambiguity to that of compare (it could mean either “give the negative points” or “give the positives and negatives”). Critique can also be a noun (a critique of…), in which case it has to be distinguished from criticism and critic (see 114. Tricky Word Contrasts 3, #11).

Some of the words in the above lists are very close in meaning to some of the others. This seems true of outline, review and summarise; of list and survey; and of appraise, assess and evaluate. It is not true, however, of account for meaning “explain” versus give an account of meaning “describe”.

Finally, discuss is probably the most common of all the words. It usually calls for the kind of argument where opposing lists of points are presented and compared in order to facilitate an overall judgement (see 168. Ways of Arguing 2). It is quite often placed at the end of a question, like this:

(h) Africa’s economic future lies in manufacturing, not agriculture. Discuss.

This essay would require manufacturing and agriculture to be separately analysed for the likely benefits and problems that expanding each would bring to Africa (for advice on doing this, see 277. Advantages & Disadvantages). These would then have to be evaluated in order to judge the truth of the statement in the question. Alternative answers would range from “the statement is true” to “the statement is false”, with such intermediates as “mainly true” and “partly true”.

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ALTERNATIVES TO INSTRUCTION VERBS

Sometimes an essay instruction is given with a noun derived from an instruction verb – description, for example, instead of describe, or definition instead of define. This seems especially likely to happen when the essay instruction requires more than what the verb means and adding the extra alongside the verb is difficult (see 39. “Decide” or “Make a Decision”?). For example, definition is much more able than define to accompany the idea of “standard”: standard definition is possible but not *define standardly.

Using a noun instead of a verb in this way typically necessitates addition of a “dummy” verb – give in the example above. Most essay instruction nouns seem to need GIVE (see 244. Special Uses of GIVE, #8), but exceptions like carry out an analysis sometimes occur. For a general survey of dummy verbs, see 173. “Do Research” or “Make Research”?.

Another alternative to an instruction verb is a question word. For example, (a) above could begin with how instead of describe the process…, (b) could have how important instead of discuss the importance, and (c) could use what are instead of outline (see 285. Complexities of Question Words, #2).

A question word can even be combined with an instruction verb to create an indirect question (with no final question mark – see 57. Indirect Questions in Formal Writing), e.g. explain how…, discuss why… and identify when…. Sometimes the question word is paraphrased with a noun, e.g. discuss the reason… (see 185. Noun Synonyms of Question Words).

The combination of how + adjective needs special care. Consider this:

(i) How useful is a knowledge of phonetics for learning foreign languages?

This does not assume that a knowledge of phonetics has any usefulness at all for learning languages. Possible answers range from “not useful” to “essential”, and an essay arguing the complete uselessness of phonetics knowledge for this purpose would be successful if based on competent analysis.

In the same way, how similar means that similarity may or may not exist and how important is non-committal about importance (see 198. Indicating Importance 1). There is no difference here from everyday English questions like How old are you? askable of a child and How far is … ? askable about somewhere near. All of these combinations are possible because the adjectives are “gradable” – able to indicate varying amounts (see 194. Adverbs that Say How Much). Essay questions containing this use of How…? can normally be paraphrased with To what extent …?.

Care is also needed to distinguish how with an adjective straight after it from how with a delayed adjective. Compare these:

(j) How important are wind turbines within a national energy policy?

(k) How are wind turbines important within a national energy policy?

Although (j) is like (i) in being open about importance, (k) is certainly not: it says wind turbines are definitely important and it wants to know how. The corresponding instruction word is explain (the importance of) – as in (f) above – rather than discuss or evaluate.

Further practice with instruction verbs can be downloaded from the Learning Materials page of this blog (sheet 14).

93. Good and Bad Lists

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The parts of a sentence-based list must each have the same grammar and follow on naturally from the list’s introduction

THE REQUIREMENTS OF GOOD LISTS

When a list is given in a single sentence, whether or not as bullet points, each of its parts usually needs the same grammatical form – for example, they must be all nouns or all verbs or all preposition phrases – and they must also combine grammatically with the surrounding words. These characteristics of a “good” list are not as easy to achieve as they seem: errors in the wording of lists are surprisingly common in professional writing, where list-giving is very frequent.

Here I wish to offer advice on how to word sentence-based lists so that they meet both the internal and the external grammatical requirements. For information about the wording around sentence-based lists, see 54. Sentence Lists 1: Incidental,  55. Sentence Lists 2: Main-Message and 74. Sentence Lists 3: Bullet Points. For advice on paragraph-length listing, see 122. Signpost Words in Multi-Sentence Lists.

Also relevant are the punctuation posts 17. Colons versus Semi-Colons and 50. Right and Wrong Comma Places, plus two descriptions of how and can link non-parallel structures (88. Exotic Grammar Structures 1, #3 and 289. Exotic Grammar Structures 8, #5).

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GRAMMATICAL CONSISTENCY IN LISTING

As mentioned above, all of the parts of a list need the same grammatical form. Here is an example of a list lacking this kind of grammatical consistency:

(a) *Foreign language learning requires motivation and study regularly.

The problem with this list, of course, is that the second item (underlined) is not a noun like the first (motivation). It is instead a verb (study) with accompanying adverb (regularly). The required noun is study – in this case spelt the same as the verb, but with an adjective (regular) placed before it instead of the adverb after.

Lists are not always made up of nouns; verbs, adjectives and even statements are common as well. Consider this inconsistent list:

(b) *There are various harmful effects of deforestation: rainfall diminishes, soil is eroded, and flooding.

The list here is one of mini-statements (“clauses”), each with a subject and verb. The inconsistency is in the last item (flooding) because, as a single word, it is not a clause. With the -ing ending and no additional verb it is either an adjective-like participle or a noun-like gerund (see 71. Gerund and Participle Uses of “-ing”). One way to fit it properly into the list is by adding the verb occurs: it will then be a gerund acting as this verb’s subject.

One place where list items commonly have the form of full statements is the “work experience” section of CVs. Consider this inconsistent example

(c) 2012-14:  Taught elementary English to adult immigrants.

    *2014-15:  Social events organiser for a language school.

Most real CVs would also give the names of the employers, perhaps in brackets before the full stops, but I have left those out here for the sake of simplicity. Both of these listed experiences have an acceptable grammatical form. The problem is that this is different each time: a sentence first, and then a noun phrase.

The sentence is based around the verb taught. Its subject is an understood I – left out in accordance with CV convention because it is obvious. The second item in the list has no verb at all, so is not a sentence. Its central word is organiser, a noun. The whole item can be made to match the first one by changing organiser into the verb organised and placing it at the start.

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CHOOSING THE GRAMMAR OF THE START OF A LIST

The grammar of the start of a list, which determines the grammar of the rest of the list, is primarily fixed by the wording before it. This wording and the start of the list must together make a possible sentence. Consider the following wrongly-constructed list sentence:

(d) *The reasons for controlling car use include noisy, polluting and endanger wildlife habitats.

The underlined part, which is the words before the list combined with the start of the list, do not make a correct-sounding sentence. The problem is that the last word before the list is a verb (include) of the kind that needs an object noun or pronoun after it (see 8. Object-Dropping Errors), yet the beginning of the list (noisy) is an adjective that is not describing a noun after it (possible only after link verbs like BE).

One way to correct the error is to add …the fact that they are… between include and noisy (see 153. Conjunction Uses of “that”, #1). The easiest way, however, is to change noisy into its related noun (their) noise (see the end of 225. Nouns Made from Adjectives). The second list item (polluting) is also a lone adjective – correct if noisy were correct, but needing after noise to become the noun pollution. The third list item (the verb endanger) is doubly wrong: it does not match the word class of the items before it, and it is still not a noun. A correct alternative is danger to… .

Lists introduced by a colon allow slightly more flexibility in their grammar. This is because colons usually follow a possible complete sentence rather than an incomplete one (see 17. Colons versus Semi-Colons). The list parts can usually be in either sentence or noun form. Consider again the list after the colon in (b) above. We have already seen that the problem with it can be rectified by adding occurs at the end, making all of the list items into clauses. An alternative is to make all of the list parts nouns (or their equivalents):

(e) There are various harmful effects of deforestation: diminishing rainfall, soil erosion and flooding.

An additional decision to make concerning the grammar of the first list item is where to end the introduction. Often you have to think about the rest of the list in order to make this decision. Consider the following:

(f) Foreign language learning involves the need to practise regularly.

Suppose the second part of a list in this sentence was to be costs a surprising amount of money. Since this begins with a verb (costs), the easiest word to begin the list with is also a verb – obviously involves in (f) because it has the same subject (learning) as costs.

However, if the second part of the list in (f) needed to say something like use a dictionary, then use could not be linked to involves in the same way that costs can, because it does not have the same subject (learning). Instead, its implied subject – something like language learners – is the same as the subject of practise, making this the verb to link it to, like this:

(g) Foreign language learning involves the need to PRACTISE regularly and USE a dictionary.

Here, use, like costs earlier, shows which verb it is linked to by mirroring its form: in this case the to form, or infinitive. Note, though, how the to of the first infinitive practise is not repeated before use – it is dropped as it always can be after and (see 148. Infinitive Verbs without “to”). Another way of viewing this is to say that the to in (g) is outside the list: each listed verb is the second half of an infinitive form. Avoiding repetition within the list in this way should always be a target. 

Finally, readers might like to consider how to improve the following clumsy sentence:

(h) ?Working outside the home can reduce women’s domestic boredom and they learn new skills.

This lists two benefits of women working outside the home. The first benefit begins with the verb can reduce, but the second begins with the pronoun they. The pronoun is necessary because without it the first verb’s subject (working outside the home) would nonsensically also be understood as the subject of the second verb (learn). The problem is that the pronoun, in giving different grammar to the second benefit, stops it looking like the second part of a list, so that it is not clearly enough linked to the cause working outside the home.

One way to give the two benefits the same form is to exchange the second verb for one that can have the same subject as the first, such as TEACH. The sentence would then end …and teaches them (or teach them if can needs to be understood again). This kind of synonym-manipulation is a major feature of writing, and is further illustrated within this blog in the posts 27. How to Avoid Passive Verbs,  46. How to Avoid “I”, “We” and “You” and 80. How to Paraphrase.