Effective Writing in Psychology. Bernard C. Beins
If you have not already discovered that APA style involves detail after detail, you will learn it here. But we explain those details in ways that will permit you to follow them as you need to.
We also recognize that not all scientific communication occurs through papers. Consequently, in the last section of this book, we offer strategies for creating poster presentations, giving oral presentations, developing Internet presentations, and writing proposals for institutional review boards.
Finally, we have included a sample APA‐style paper to help you write and format your own work. One of the unique features of the sample paper is that it contains annotated errors that writers frequently make. Seeing a paper that illustrates errors that you might make often helps your writing more than seeing flawless papers. If you don't know that you made a mistake, it is hard to know that you need to correct it.
Features
We provide features in this book that we hope will make the process of writing more effective and efficient. First, we tell you not only what constitutes good writing, but why. As a result, you should be able to generalize the points beyond the specific examples we use. Furthermore, the examples in the book come from published research, which gives you a good sense of how effective writers convey their ideas.
Second, we use many tables and figures that illustrate specific guidance in many areas that pose problems for writers. Rather than simply listing formatting details, we have tried to bring them to life in ways that you will be using them.
Finally, as we noted above, we include examples of the types of errors students and researchers actually make. You can learn from the mistakes of others. The sample paper in the appendix includes stylistic and formatting errors that commonly occur so that you can see what to avoid.
Acknowledgments
A book is the product of its authors, but it also takes its final shape because of the contributions of others. For this book, we have benefited from the help of Linda Beins, a librarian extraordinaire with extensive insights into finding and developing information. We were also fortunate to have the keen eyes and intellect of Stephen F. Davis, Kenneth D. Keith, and Suzanne Baker, who provided us with feedback on early versions of the chapters.
Finally, we are grateful for the consistent help of Chris Cardone, executive editor, and Sarah Coleman, development project manager, two of Wiley‐Blackwell's astute staff who have made this project as seamless as it could have possibly been.
1 Writing Professionally
Write what matters. If you don't care about what you're writing, neither will your readers.
Judy Reeves
I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.
James Michener
When you write about psychology or any of the other sciences, you are telling a story about people. Scientists are people, complete with individual personalities, likes and dislikes, and ordinary human qualities. The way they are affects what they do and how they do it. As such, “science writing is not so much about science, but about people—human problems and their solutions, curiosity and discovery” (Holland, 2007). In this book, you will learn how to convey your thoughts on the important problems and solutions in psychology.
Introduction to Writing in Psychology
It would be hard to overstate how important it is to write effectively. Writing constitutes one of the “3 Rs” of a basic education: reading, writing, and 'rithmetic. In the world of business, success is dependent, in part, on effective writing. For high‐level positions, “writing is a ‘threshold skill’ for both employment and promotion” (College Board, 2004 , p. 3). In one survey, many companies noted that writing was important in hiring. One respondent asserted that, “in most cases, writing ability could be your ticket in … or it could be your ticket out” (College Board, 2004 , p. 3). Potential employees who do not write well are unlikely to be hired and, if they are, are unlikely to be promoted.
Graduate school admission may also depend on writing effectiveness. Graduate programs routinely request essays as part of the application process. This writing is “often used to make final selections of students with similar GPAs and standardized test scores. If you are on the borderline of being accepted and the admissions committee could go either way, a sterling essay can increase your chances of success considerably” (American Psychological Association [APA], 2007).
The type of writing that you learn in psychology provides the same skills that will help advance your career. You develop clarity and logic in your ideas, along with a style that will engage the reader. If you create such prose, you will attract the attention of possible employers and graduate school admissions committees, and you will effectively present your ideas in psychology.
Most people find psychology interesting and are eager to learn more about it. But they do not want to fight through dull and meaningless writing. As writers, our biggest hurdle involves turning complex, technical concepts into prose that others can appreciate.
Writing successfully is not easy. It requires knowledge of the topic we are addressing; judicious selection of the best words, phrases, and sentences; and editing and revising what we have composed. If there were a magical formula that we could use to generate good prose, everybody would succeed in communicating even complex and hard‐to‐understand ideas. If you have read the work of scientists, though, you will have discovered that, much of the time, scientific writing is dense and impenetrable. Many writers hide interesting concepts inside packages of dull prose.
On the other hand, people sometimes produce lively prose that may not convey the message accurately. Engaging, but deceptive, prose is no better (and may be worse) than accurate, incomprehensible writing.
Fortunately, there is the desirable middle ground that Sigmund Freud and Williams James occupied, where prose was stimulating, not sleep inducing. Those of us who do not initially fall into this category can learn to communicate effectively. The purpose of this book is to help you find the path to better communication. If you are motivated, you can work on the skills you need to get your point across meaningfully and accurately.
How Does Professional Writing Differ From Other Kinds of Writing?
If you are trying to write like a psychologist, your style will be unlike much of the writing that you have done in the past. When psychologists write professionally, they usually attempt to convey specific information with a great deal of precision, minimizing ambiguity and the possibility of misunderstanding. The adage to say what you mean and mean what you say is highly appropriate for technical writing. You want your reader to understand the points you believe are important, and you want the reader to know exactly what you intend to say.
In other forms of writing, the emphasis may be on crafting artistic prose. The writer attempts to impress the reader with both content and style. The words that Shakespeare wrote for Macbeth illustrate the point. Macbeth lamented that life “is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” These poetic words convey Macbeth's despair. However, Shakespeare's style would not be appropriate for a scientist because the style of science is to be straightforward and unambiguous so the reader does not have to puzzle through the words to find meaning in them.
Psychologists often receive training in how to write objective, scientific papers. Unfortunately, the writing style is often “bloodless” (Josselson & Lieblich, 1996 , p. 651), meaning that it is not particularly engaging. Sommer (2006) has encouraged psychologists to learn to write with color and style for lay audiences without sacrificing accuracy. But he also implied that the writing style in academic journals need not be dreary.