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How I prepare ICA papers (version 2024): Style
Posted on Nov 12, 2024
by Chung-hong Chan
In 2021 and 2023, I wrote about how I prepare my ICA papers. This year, 2024, I wrote three papers . Interestingly, all three were prepared in different ways: One was more or less the same as what I described in 2023, one was Microsoft 365, one was —This is new to me— Typst. It was quite refreshing to write in a Markdown language with a web-based editor that can give instant feedback.
As there have not been many changes in this regard, I wanted to write about another aspect: Writing.
Believe it or not, my type of people write for a living. One way or another, our research involves writing. Even programming involves writing. To write well, of course one has to have a good grasp of the language. For an obvious reason, I have a natural disadvantage. I still struggle with grammatical number, for example. More than 50% chance my prepositions are incorrect. Because of that, I try to compensate that by reading a lot, with a hope that my language would be improved through reading. I actually like to read books on languages, especially the English language. But this post is not about the language. Instead, it’s about style.
Like the language itself, a style can influence clarity. A style can also convey a particular attitude. This point is quite like music. Why is rock music so effective in conveying a certain attitude? Style, in comparison to language usage, is opinionated. Using the music analogy again, the music is not more “correct” when it sounds like rock music. Style reflects one’s worldview. According to Wikipedia, one can also use Weltanschauung as a loan word. I just wanted to write down some expressions I would try hard to avoid in my writing style. These expressions are somehow incompatible with my Weltanschauung. I will explain why these are my opinion. But before that, I would like to quote CS Lewis: “Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’: otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.” (Emphasis original)
- “in the era of …” / “in the … era”: This has become a game for me to search for “era” in the conference program and see what era we are in according to communication researchers. In 2023, I found the following: “digital era”, “new era of corporate liberalism”, “era of climate change”, “era of preference-based media effects”, “era of evolving technology and Automation”, “Platform Era”, “pre and post #MeToo era”, “ social media era”, “streaming era”, “post-truth Era”, and “post-Pokemon Go era.” According to the Oxford dictionary, “era” has three meanings: a long and distinct period of history, e.g. Victorian era; a system of chronology, dating from a particular event, e.g. the Christian era, aka. the Common Era; or the geological definition: a major division of time that is a subdivision of an aeon and is itself subdivided into periods, e.g. Paleozoic era. Geologically speaking, we can say we are in the Cenozoic era. Officially and if you are English, we are in the “new Carolean era”; in Japan, the Reiwa era. But we are not historians or geologists and therefore I would avoid devalue the meaning of “era” and self-aggrandize the importance of a particular object as era-defining and therefore your research is important in such an “era”.
- … turn: I never use this also on the same ground of avoiding self-aggrandizing language. I think the first widely known “turn” (Wende) is Linguistic Turn, which was coined by Gustav Bergmann. In the past, a “turn” was really big. It is not just a change in research methodology. Remember, Wittgenstein was widely considered to be the origin of the Linguistic Turn. But he himself would not self-aggrandize and call his work a “turn.” If you are one research group writing a paper on “xyz turn”, it’s your change in research direction or methodology. Probably not collective. Similar to “era”, I would leave the job of naming a collective change to historians of science or philosophers. The same goes with “paradigm shift.”
- insight(s): I avoid this as much as I can because this word is quite hollow now. I think the issue is that this word has been so overused and therefore loses its meaning. Another issue is that “insight” in some situations can mean something like “intuition” or “eureka!” (“Suddenly, I have an insight into how to solve this crossword puzzle.”). The same goes with the adjective “insightful”.
- I/We believe: I am not crazy enough to say first person pronouns have no place in scientific writing, although if there is only one author, saying “we” is a bit too royal. I believe, however, that “we believe” should have no place in the traditional positivist tradition of science, no matter how often we say this. If you are believer of either postpositivism or critical theory, well, the word believe might have a place. In fact, I am more and more a critical realist rather than a pure positivist. So, I should say believe in my papers. However, it is better not to because I am also apathetic agnostic. A final point about translation. The German verb glauben can mean at least two things: “believe” or “think.” For example, one can say ich glaube an Gott, den Vater, den Allmächtigen, den Schöpfer des Himmels und der Erde (I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.) Also, ich glaube, du spinnst, du bist verrückt! (I think you are crazy, you are out of your mind!) It also means that, I should probably say less “I/we think…”. Same rule about positivism/postpositivism/critical theory.
Final warning: The above is my opinion. It’s okay to have different views.
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