You may know how to self-edit for punctuation and proper APA
citation and how to paraphrase previously published material, but how can you
tell if what you wrote really flows? More urgently, what steps are you supposed
to take if your faculty instructor or committee chairperson tells you to revise
to improve “flow”? What are some ways to incorporate that kind of feedback?
Logic and Assignment Goals
In a standard, thesis-driven academic essay, making logical
connections between ideas is central to achieving the purpose of the
assignment. You still need to create logical connections between your ideas,
though, even if you are writing with a different goal. As a scholar, you will
need to learn to support and argue a point, but you will also need to learn to
discuss, explore, explain, reflect, summarize, synthesize, question, and participate
in many other intellectual activities in a logical, scholarly way. No matter
the goal of your writing, make sure the decisions you make as an author always seem
logical to your reader.
Building Connections
Whenever you connect two pieces of evidence together, the
first step is to make sure your reader knows the connection you are trying to
make. If you have a sentence with paraphrased material from one source followed
by a sentence with paraphrased material from a second source, it isn’t
necessarily obvious how those two sources connect. Putting two sentences next
to each other is not enough to show your reader what those sentences have to do
with one another; are you making a comparison? introducing a contradiction? building
the second idea from the first? Rely on transitional words and phrases to
signal to your reader how the different pieces of evidence logically fit
together and when you move from one point to the next. (You will hear more
about transitions later in this flow blog series.)
Keeping Connections Strong
As you make these logical connections clear to your reader,
make sure those connections themselves make sense. Logical fallacies are
examples of ways an author can rely on connections that aren’t really there, or
at least are not as strong as the author thinks. If you visualize logical
connections as the bridges connecting different ideas, a logical fallacy is a
bridge that will collapse when you try to stand on it!
Some of the more common types of logical fallacies you will
want to avoid include things like circular reasoning, hasty generalizations,
and non sequiturs. The thing to remember about logical fallacies is that they
can seem to make sense at first, but when you look deeper, the connection
disappears. That is why is it useful to review the types of common logical
fallacies so you know what to watch out for in your own drafts.
Think of including logical connections in your writing as
drawing a map for your reader. As you read over your own work, make sure you
ask yourself, “Will my reader know how I got from here to there? Will they be
able to follow that same path?” If you use sound logic and clear language to
signal the connection between ideas, it is easier for your reader to get to
where you want them to go! And those are the first steps in creating flow!
This is the first part in a five-part blog series. Tune in next week for our next strategy for enhancing flow in your academic writing: Using Topic Sentences.
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Lydia Lunning is a Dissertation Editor and the Writing Center's Coordinator of Capstone Services. She earned degrees from Oberlin College and the University of Minnesota, and served on the editorial staff of Cricket Magazine Group.
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