In academic writing why do some recommend to avoid "announcing" the topic?
In academic writing, several articles on the topic of writing papers denounce the practice of "announcing" the topic.
As an example, if a paper were to read...
The goal of this study is to not be a study at all but to be a fictional paper of only one paragraph included as an example on stack exchange to demonstrate how a paper announcing its topic reads. This goal of this sentence is to fit some more content in with the previous paragraph on how sentences announcing their topic come across to the audience. In conclusion, this third sentence reinforces the point of the first sentence.
Why exactly is "announcing the topic" best avoided? What is a good way to explain it to others what "announcing the topic" does to a paper?
Examples of articles denouncing the practice include:
- From Arkansas State University
- Composition Course Hind's Community College
- Roane Community College
- Guide to Grammar.org
- Red Rocks Community College
- Writing Center University of Wisconsin-Madison
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If you think of yourself as reading a novel, rather than a scientific paper, it becomes very clear. If a novel started with 'In this novel, you will read..' you might find it awkward, or at least old-fashioned - I think there are Victorian novels which take this approach, but it is not the way of modern fiction. It removes the reader from being an active participant 'in the moment' to being a third-party observer, and it injects the voice of the author very load and clear.
In a scientific paper, you want the science to speak for itself, and as a reader, you don't want to be concerned with the authors in particular.
Another key message from novel-writing is to show people something, rather than telling them. This can also apply to scientific writing, and is relevant here I think.
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In this answer, I am going to explain to you why you shouldn't announce what you are about to write anyway.
It is boring and redundant and a waste of real estate on the page.
Start with a claim, or a key observation. Those can be interesting. Don't talk about your paper in your paper, get to your paper! A sentence saying "The goal of this work is XYZ." can be eliminated without any loss of information. It has to be followed by an explanation of what the heck XYZ is, so beginning with that explanation is better. Fewer words, same quantity of information.
Although such papers are not sales tools, the psychology of writing advertisements does still apply, to academic papers or novels: Readers want to be hooked by the first sentence, interested by the first sentence, and that is going to serve you well, if they are interested in the opening they will be happy to read some less interesting sentences to gain some context and lead them into the discussion or story or article or advertisement.
In advertising, we say that on every sentence the reader is looking for a reason to stop reading and throw it away. The only reason they don't is because you have created a question in their mind, and they are reading to get an answer, or you are saying interesting things that they want to know. Don't give them a reason to give up.
That is less true for academic articles, but the advice is sound. Don't bore them from the first sentence. They probably know what the article is about from your article title and the rest of the context; the journal it was in, the keywords you selected, etc.
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There are reasons to repeat yourself, but they differ to what you imply.
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Academic readers are usually skimming through hundreds of papers to find the results relevant to their current work, so
Try to tell them everything they need to know in the title
If that fails, try to tell them everything they need to know in the abstract, including results and conclusions. (Some journals discourage this, IMO wrongly).
If that fails, still be careful not to withhold information early on. i.e. in the introduction don't say "We test to see whether X predicts Y", say "We demonstrate that X predicts Y (R2=0.8, p=0.001 - or indeed better stats if your audience will understand them).
In a large paper on a complex topic it's easy to get lost, so do include signposting to help the reader remember their context. E.g. "The link between X and Z is a relevant consideration for our study of X and Y, therefore in the following section we discuss existing literature discussing links between X and Z."
But don't use the rhetorical device of "tell someone what you're going to tell them, tell them the thing, tell them what you told them" for the sake of driving a point home, as you would in rhetoric, or delivering spoken material as a teacher, etc. (Excepting the first sentence of the discussion/conclusions section where it is usual to summarize what you already told them, in shorter form). You repeat to make it easy for readers to find the appropriate part and remember context.
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