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HumanitiesClarity Across the Disciplines: An Analysis of Texts in the Sciences, Social Sciences, and Arts and

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10.1177/1075547004270164SCIENCE COMMUNICATIONHartley et al. / CLARITY ACROSS DISCIPLINES

Clarity Across the DisciplinesAn Analysis of Texts in the Sciences,

Social Sciences, and Arts and Humanities

JAMES HARTLEYUniversity of Keele

ERIC SOTTOHaifa, Israel

CLAIRE FOXUniversity of Keele

Computer-based readability measures were used to examine the clarity of texts written in the sci-ences, the social sciences, and the arts and humanities. Five studies examined texts that werewritten in these different disciplines for different audiences, moving from fellow researchers tostudents and the general public. Readability increased across these genres until it reached anasymptote. In several cases, the scientific texts used shorter sentences and were easier to readthan were their parallel texts in the other disciplines.

Keywords: academic writing; readability; text genres; passives; computer-based measures

Anyone who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he al-lows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple,brief, vigorous and lucid.

—Fowler and Fowler 1906

Authors’Note: Address correspondence to James Hartley, Department of Psychology, Univer-sity of Keele, Staffordshire, ST5 5BG, UK; telephone: 011-44-1782-583383; fax: 011-44-1782-583387; e-mail: [email protected]/depts/ps/jahbiog.htm.

Science Communication, Vol. 26 No. 2, December 2004 188-210DOI: 10.1177/1075547004270164© 2004 Sage Publications

188

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There is a long history of research and advice on clear writing (e.g.,Fowler and Fowler 1906; Strunk and White 1959; Williams 2002). In thisarticle, we wish to examine this issue in the context of academic literature inthe sciences, the social sciences, and the arts and humanities and to discussour findings in relation to readers’expectations and requirements in this field.Our research is driven by the belief that academics across the spectrum have aresponsibility to make their articles as accessible as possible.

However, most people, both lay and academic, think of various subjectdisciplines as being “hard” or “soft,” with others in between. Biglan (1973a,1973b), for example, asked more than two hundred academics within twoAmerican universities to distinguish between thirty-six subject matters. Heplaced these along a “hard-soft” dimension on one axis, a “pure-applied”dimension on another, and a “life-non-life” on a third. Thus, for example,mathematics was classified as “hard, pure, non-life”; biology as “hard, pure,life”; and English language as “soft, pure, non-life.” Becher (1989) based hisinfluential book on similar considerations, and Donald (1990) has replicatedBiglan’s findings. Today, however, some academics are questioning theplacement of their particular disciplines along such dimensions (e.g., Clark2003).

Other researchers have further complicated this discussion by similarlyarranging subfields within major disciplines along such “hard-soft” dimen-sions. Thus, although Biglan (1973b) rated psychology as a whole as a “soft,pure, life” science, Smith et al. (2000) have distinguished between differentspecialties within the discipline in terms of their degrees of difficulty, or“hardness.” Thus, the hardest subspecialty was neuroscience; child develop-ment occupied a middle position, and counseling was rated easiest. Further-more, some researchers consider that the important distinction should not bebetween “hard” and “soft” sciences but between so-called hard-to-do andeasy-to-do sciences. Berliner (2002), for instance, considers physics, chem-istry, and geology examples of easy-to-do sciences because researchers inthese disciplines find it easier to understand, predict, and control the phe-nomena they study. Psychology, on the other hand, is seen as a hard-to-do sci-ence because the conditions under which researchers predict and experimentcannot be adequately controlled.

Be that as it may, in this article, we want to argue for another point of view.We want to suggest that scientific discourse, because of its need for clarityand accessibility, is more likely to be easier to read than, say, discourse in thearts and humanities and the social sciences. Scientific articles, because theyfollow familiar formats and report on common procedures, are typicallyshorter than articles that lack these things (Biglan 1973b; Broadhead, Berlin,and Broadhead 1982; Hyland 1999). In addition, because scientific articles

Hartley et al. / CLARITY ACROSS DISCIPLINES 189



are more likely to have clearer structures and use less ambiguous language,then—as in speech—there will be less need to add clauses to qualify, clarify,and reduce ambiguity (see Schacter, Christenfeld, and Ravina 1991). Ein-stein’s first article on relativity, published in 1905, illustrates the point. Refer-ences are eschewed, the style is simple, and the only acknowledgement is to afriend for being helpful in discussions leading to the writing of the article(Holton 1988, 212–13). And, if readers think that Einstein is not a typicalexample, they might like to examine Watson and Crick’s (1953) announce-ment in Nature of the discovery of the properties of DNA.

But how to find evidence for our thesis? In this article, we report theresults from five different studies. In these studies, following Fleck’s (1935)notions of how facts develop as they move from elaborate explanations in ini-tial research articles to eventual one-word common knowledge, we distin-guish between scientific articles written for fellow researchers, general arti-cles written for academic colleagues, and texts written for undergraduates,beginning students, and the general public.

Table 1 lists our predictions for these studies. It can be seen that, in eachcase, we predict that texts written by the scientists will have shorter sentencesand will be easier to read than will parallel texts written by their colleagues inthe social sciences and in the arts and humanities. We further predict that, aswe move across the different text genres, the texts in each discipline shouldbecome easier to read. (Note that, in Table 1, we have placed social sciencetexts between the arts and humanities and the science ones, given that iswhere they occur in Butler [2003], de Solla Price [1970], and Hyland [1999],but we are less sure about our predictions in this respect, given Sokal’s infa-mous 1996 spoof article parodying the language of texts in the socialsciences.)

In Table 1, we also predict that science texts will have more passives thanwill arts and humanities texts and that social science texts will be in between.We make this prediction on the basis of previous research findings and folk-lore about the use of passives in scientific text (e.g., Ding 2002; Riley 1991;

190 SCIENCE COMMUNICATION

TABLE 1Predictions for the Studies Reported in This Article

Science Social Science Arts and HumanitiesTexts Texts Texts

Sentence lengths shortest medium longestReadability highest medium lowestPercentage of passives most medium fewest



Tarone et al. 1981). We shall discuss the relationship between clarity andpassives in more detail later on in the article.

Previous Studies

Before reporting on our own studies, we first present the data from twoother relevant enquiries. Tibbo (1992), in her article on the nature of scien-tific abstracts in the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, pre-sented data from a comparison of thirty such abstracts in each case. Theseabstracts were published in articles in high-impact journals in chemistry, psy-chology, and history in the mid-1980s. Table 2 presents the relevant data,which show that the scientific abstracts have shorter average sentence lengthsthan do those in the social sciences and in the humanities (which do not differin this case). Unfortunately, no measures of passives or readability werereported, but the results on sentence lengths are in line with the predictionsmade above.

Bazerman (1981) compared the language used in three articles—one fromthe sciences, one from the social sciences, and one from the humanities—“inorder to discover . . . the object under study, the literature of the field, theanticipated audience, and the author’s own self” (p. 362). These articles were(1) Watson and Crick’s announcement of the properties of DNA (Watson andCrick 1953), (2) Merton’s discussion of the resistance of scientists to study-ing multiple discoveries in science (Merton 1963), and (3) Hartman’s analy-sis of Wordsworth’s later style in the poem, “Blessing the Torrent” (Hartman1978). Each article was seen as providing just one example of articles fromtheir respective fields.


TABLE 2Measures for Abstracts in Articles from

High-Impact Science, Social Science, and Humanities Journals

Abstracts

Science journals Social science Humanities journals(N = 30) journals (N = 30) (N = 30)

Number of words 4,137 4,217 2,385Mean number of words 137 141 80Mean sentence length(words per sentence) 21 25 25

SOURCE: Tibbo (1992).



Bazerman (1981) provides extracts from the three articles in his article,and we used these extracts to add to his analyses. In effect, we employed acomputer-based style program (Microsoft’s Office ‘97) to assess the meansentence lengths (in words), the percentage of passive sentences, and a FleschReading Ease score for each extract. Table 3 shows the results. In line withour thinking, it can be seen that Watson and Crick’s 1957 science article hasthe shortest sentences and scores highest on the Flesch Reading Ease scale(i.e., is the most readable). Merton’s 1963 social science article has the mostpassives and is the least readable (according to the Flesch score). Hartman’s1978 humanities article, in contrast, has the longest sentences, but it alsoscores well on the Flesch by using shorter words and no passive construc-tions. These results, except for the passives, are in line with our predictions.However, as Bazerman found, it is not possible to generalize from individualarticles. Further study is needed with larger samples.

Five More Studies

We now report five additional studies, using larger samples and multiplemeasures. Across all of these studies we asked the same questions: Would theauthors’ styles of writing differ along the lines predicted in Table 1? And towhat extent would the results depend on the audiences for which the textswere written?

In these five studies, we used the same overall approach. This was, first, toenter short extracts from the relevant materials into a computer and then totest their readability using Microsoft’s Office ‘97 software. To ensure consis-tency with these measures, we prepared all of the extracts in the same way.Thus, we deleted the titles, the authors’ names, and the authors’ affiliations.


TABLE 3Measures for Extracts from the Three

Separate Articles Studied by Bazerman (1981)

Watson and Crick Merton Hartman(1953) (1963) (1978)

Number of words sampled 455 440 447Number of sentences sampled 25 15 12Mean sentence length

(words per sentence) 18.2 29.3 37.3Percentage of passive sentences 12 20 0Flesch Reading Ease score 56.1 27.6 52.9



We excluded any subheadings, lengthy quotations from other authors,bulleted lists, boxed materials, and student exercises. We also excluded anytables and figures, mathematical equations, and complex formulae. We stan-dardized differences between American and British spellings and abbrevia-tions, and we included no more than one passage from any one author.

Next, for each extract, using Office ‘97, we obtained a measure of thenumber of words counted, the number of sentences, the average length of thesentences, the percentage of passive sentences, and a computerized FleschReading Ease score (a measure of reading difficulty; Flesch 1948). Readersunfamiliar with this measure might note that it produces scores that rangefrom zero to one hundred, with higher scores indicating more readable text(see Table 4 for more details). Then, for each study we compared the averagesentence lengths, percentages of passive sentences, and Flesch Reading Easescores for the science, social science, and arts and humanities texts involved.As shown in Table 1, we predicted at the outset that science texts would have,on average, shorter sentences, higher Flesch Reading Ease scores, and morepassives than would the social science and the arts and humanities texts.

Study 1: Thirty Scholarly Research Articlesin Each of Three Disciplines

We found it almost as difficult to choose three journals representative ofthe sciences, social sciences, and the arts and humanities as it was to choosebetween three articles. We considered selecting articles from the same jour-nals used in Tibbo’s 1992 study but found that we did not have all of them inour library. We then thought that we might compare journals with similarimpact factors in the three disciplines but decided that we could not do thisbecause we judged it inappropriate to assume that similar impact factors


TABLE 4Flesch Reading Ease Scores and Their Associated Levels of Difficulty

Flesch ReadingEase Score Reading Age Difficulty Level Example

90–100 10–11 years Very easy Readers’ Digest80–89 11–12 years Easy Time magazine70–79 12–13 years Fairly easy U.S. News and World Report60–69 14–15 years Average Popular novels50–69 16–17 years Fairly difficult Introductory textbooks30–49 18–20 years Difficult Students’ essays0–29 Graduate Very difficult Scientific journals



would imply the same thing across different disciplines. We eventually set-tled on choosing articles from three prestigious and extremely long-runningAmerican journals: American Journal of Science (founded 1912), AmericanJournal of Sociology (founded 1895), and American Historical Review(founded 1895).

American Journal of Science is actually a journal for research geologiststhat publishes research articles and the occasional book review. AmericanJournal of Sociology, as its name implies, is written for research sociologists,and it publishes mainly research articles and book reviews, although it some-times includes symposia. American Historical Review contains research arti-cles, forum articles (on the same theme), forum and review essays, andnumerous book reviews.

In this study, we selected thirty concurrent research articles from issuespublished in 2001–02 from each of these journals, and we entered extractsfrom their introductions into the computer. We chose the introductions asthey are a specialist genre in their own right (Hartley, Pennebaker, and Fox2003; Swales and Najjar 1987).

Table 5 shows the results of our analyses. It can be seen that the averagenumber of words per sentence is very similar for all three journals. However,


TABLE 5Measures for Extracts from the Introductions to Scholarly Research

Articles Published in Journals in the Sciences, Social Sciences,and Arts and Humanities

Journal

American American AmericanJournal of Journal of HistoricalScience Sociology Review(N = 30) (N = 30) (N = 30)

M SD M SD M SD F(2, 87)

Number of wordssampled 266.2 24.7 267.5 20.6 258.5 27.1 —

Number of sentencessampled 8.5 2.1 9.4 2.0 9.1 2.3 —

Sentence length(words per sentence) 33.1 9.5 29.3 5.6 32.3 13.4 —

Percentage of passivesentences 24.2 18.2 15.5 18.2 8.3 11.8 7.12**

Flesch Reading Easescore 16.6 9.9 17.4 8.8 25.4 14.2 5.65*

*p = .005. **p = .001.



there is a distinct change in the percentages of passive sentences used in theextracts, with the scientific articles using significantly more than the arts andhumanities ones (and with the social science texts falling in between).Finally, it can be seen that the mean Flesch readability scores for the scienceand the social science extracts are significantly lower than those obtained forthe history ones. Here, then, is a case where the main results (except forpassives) are contrary to our predictions.

It is perhaps important to note at this point that authors in the AmericanHistorical Review use the numbered footnote method of referencing,whereas authors in the American Journal of Science and in the AmericanJournal of Sociology use the Harvard (name-date) system of referencing.This means that any article that uses the Harvard system to present long listsof references in the text (as many did) would be bound to score worse on ameasure of sentence length than would similar articles using footnotes. How-ever, because names and dates in the text often consist of only two or threeshort words, the overall Flesch measure is not greatly affected.

The appendix shows an extreme example. The first (top) piece of text hasits references in full, and the second (bottom) has these references deleted.For the top extract, the number of words per sentence is 23.7, for a Fleschscore of 15.7. For the bottom extract, the number of words per sentence is18.2, for a Flesch score of 23.0. Note that, although these differences aremarked, the Flesch scores for both passages still fall into the band “very diffi-cult” category, as shown in Table 4.

We might infer from this, because of the referencing systems used, that thesentence lengths reported in Table 5 for the American Journal of Science andthe American Journal of Sociology are slightly longer relative to those for theAmerican Historical Review. One way of checking this out would be to re-runthe analyses of the texts with their references deleted. We decided not to dothis, however, because one of the difficulties of reading scientific text stems,in part, from the referencing system used.

Study 2: Textbook Chapters Written for Colleagues

In this study, we examined chapters written in three similar textbooks forcolleagues in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities. We ini-tially aimed to examine extracts from the first page from each of twenty chap-ters in three texts, namely Moore and Exley’s (1999) Innovations in ScienceTeaching 2; Radford, Van Laar, and Rose’s (1998) Innovations in PsychologyTeaching; and Avery, Bryan, and Wisker’s (1999) Innovations in TeachingEnglish and Textual Studies. There were eighteen chapters in the psychologytext, twenty in the English text, and twenty-seven in the science one. In this




latter case, we took the first twenty chapters, excluding one from a pair thatwere written by the same authors.

In the process of doing this, we noticed that the chapters in Innovations inTeaching English and Textual Studies (Avery, Bryan, and Wisker 1999) dif-fered slightly from those in the other two texts. The chapters in the Englishtext each contained a preliminary introduction that was written almost in theform of a lengthy abstract, whereas this feature did not occur in the othertexts. Accordingly, for the sake of equality in the overall comparisons, wedecided to use extracts from the chapters from the English text written afterthese introductory abstracts (which accounts for the shorter numbers ofwords sampled here).

We also noticed that one article in the psychology text was exceptional inthat it had a Flesch Reading Ease score well below that of all the other articlesreported in this study; indeed, it was almost off the scale. Accordingly, wedeleted this article, leaving the data for seventeen chapters from this text.

Table 6 shows the average scores on our measures for the extracts from thetwenty chapters from the science and the English texts and the seventeenchapters from the psychology text. It can be seen that the science texts havesignificantly shorter sentences than the arts and humanities texts but that theyhave (not significantly) more passives and are thus less direct in this respect.The mean scores on the Flesch measure, although generally in line with ourprediction that science texts will be more readable than arts and humanitiesones, are not statistically significantly different from each other. Theseresults, then, give only partial support to our predictions.


TABLE 6Measures for Passages from the Science, Social Science,and Arts and Humanities Texts Written for Colleagues

Text Type

Arts andScience Social Science Humanities(N = 20) (N = 17) (N = 20)


Number of words sampled 348.4 49.5 314.9 36.9 257.9 50.5 —Number of sentences sampled 16.6 2.8 12.8 3.0 9.0 2.4 —Sentence length (words

per sentence) 22.9 3.1 25.9 6.0 29.0 6.1 6.85*Percentage of passive sentences 30.7 16.7 22.1 19.0 18.4 19.9 2.31Flesch Reading Ease score 38.7 8.3 33.1 8.3 33.9 11.4 1.94

*p = .002.



Study 3: Introductory Textbooks for Distance-Learning Students

The Open University in the United Kingdom has more than two hundredthousand students who obtain their degrees through distance learning (http://www.open.ac.uk). Of particular interest, as far as this article is concerned, isthat there are three foundation courses for beginning students—one in thesciences, one in the social sciences, and one in the arts and humanities. Eachcourse comprises a number of written units, supported by study-skills mate-rials, tutor-marked assignments, ancillary tapes, and television broadcasts.The courses are put together by a course team, which may comprise up totwenty people, and all of the written materials are heavily edited.

Nonetheless, we thought it would be of interest to compare samples fromthe three foundation course textbook series—Discovering Science (OpenUniversity 1997a), An Introduction to the Social Sciences (Open University2000), and An Introduction to the Humanities (Open University 1997b). Thebooks within these series differ in certain respects. The science and thehumanities series each contain three volumes, whereas the social scienceseries contains five. The chapters in the science volumes are anonymous,and, indeed, no author is attributed to any of them. There are five main chap-ters or sections in volume 1 of the science series, nine in volume 2, and seven-teen in volume 3. The five social science texts each contain four chapters, allwritten by different authors or pairs of authors. The three humanities textseach contain a different number of chapters (four, two, and five), and, again,these texts are written by different authors.

To resolve these difficulties, we decided to assemble eleven extracts fromthe science texts (three from volume 1, four from volume 2, and four fromvolume 3). These were obtained by taking extracts from every second chapterin volumes 1 and 2, and every fourth chapter in volume 3. We then chose tenextracts from the social science texts. These were obtained by taking extractsfrom every second chapter in each of the five social science texts. Finally, wechose nine extracts from the humanities texts. These were obtained by takingextracts from each chapter that was written by a separate author. Someextracts in these sections began with an introductory summary and some didnot. To equate the extracts in this respect, we deleted these introductorysections.

To summarize, we chose eleven, ten, and nine extracts, respectively, fromtexts in the three foundation course series, and we tried to match their formatsas closely as possible. The extracts from the social science and the humanitiestexts were each written by different authors. We do not know whether thiswas the case for the science texts, but we think that it is unlikely.




Table 7 shows the results of our analyses. In this table, the only result thatis statistically significant is the difference between the mean Flesch scores.Here, the mean Flesch score for the social science texts is much lower thanthat obtained for the science and the humanities texts (which do not differfrom each other). So, contrary to our predictions, there are no statistically sig-nificant differences in the predicted direction for reading ease between thescience and the humanities texts in these materials, and the texts do not differsignificantly in terms of their sentence lengths or proportions of passives.

Study 4: Magazine Articles Written for High School Students

There are, in the United Kingdom, a series of magazines published forwhat are termed A–Level students. Such students are normally between theages of 16 and 18 years old and are still at school, studying disciplines atAdvanced (A) levels before proceeding to higher education. In addition,however, many older students also take A-Level courses in Colleges of Fur-ther Education to gain additional qualifications.

These magazines (published by Philip Allan in Deddington, Oxfordshire)have much the same format. Each one in a dozen or so disciplines is pub-lished four times a year. Each has articles on separate topics contributed byindependent writers, and in-house articles specifically related to studying theA-Level topic in question. Thus, for example, there are articles on course-work issues and exam techniques. Each magazine is lavishly illustrated infull color, unlike any of the texts studied so far.


TABLE 7Measures for Passages from Introductory Science, Social Science,and Humanities Textbooks Written for Open University Students

Textbook Type

Science Social Science Humanities(N = 11) (N = 10) (N = 9)


Number of words sampled 304.6 18.5 279.6 24.6 259.9 89.3 —Number of sentences sampled 13.6 1.4 13.1 3.5 12.1 2.2 —Sentence length (words per

sentence) 22.5 2.0 22.4 4.5 24.7 5.0 —Percentage of passive sentences 23.9 24.6 13.3 7.9 18.6 8.2 —Flesch Reading Ease score 51.8 5.5 37.5 16.4 52.7 6.5 6.40*

*p = .005.



In this enquiry, we compared extracts from articles written by outside con-tributors from one volume of each of the magazines published for the aca-demic year 2001-02 in physics, psychology, and English. We selected fromeach volume fourteen articles that each provided references for further read-ing and thus were, to some extent, similar in purpose.

Table 8 shows the results. Here, there are statistically significant differ-ences on two of our measures. The science (and the social science) texts havemuch shorter sentences than do the arts and humanities texts, and the Fleschscores of the science texts are higher than those of the arts and humanities andthe social science texts. Thus, in this instance, our original predictions (apartfrom those for the passives) are supported.

Study 5: Magazine Articles Written for the General Public

Our last comparison was made between the writing styles adopted in mag-azines published for the general public. Again, it was difficult to decide herewhich magazines to use. Some are weekly, some monthly. Some are Ameri-can, some British. Some are “heavier” than others. We chose to compareextracts from the New Scientist (a British weekly), Psychology Today (anAmerican monthly), and History Today (a British monthly). All three maga-zines shared one feature: they each include approximately six specificallynamed “feature articles” per issue. Accordingly, we entered into the com-puter extracts from twenty feature articles from consecutive issues of eachmagazine.


TABLE 8Measures for Passages from A-Level Magazine Articles

in Physics, Psychology, and English

Magazine Type

Physics Psychology English(N = 14) (N = 14) (N = 14)



sentence) 21.9 2.6 21.4 5.3 27.0 6.9 4.94*Percentage of passive sentences 23.4 21.9 16.5 11.2 23.6 25.6 —Flesch Reading Ease score 50.2 10.6 35.4 15.6 41.7 11.7 4.73*

*p < .015.



Table 9 shows the results. Here, again, there are statistically significantdifferences on two of our measures. The science (and the social science) textshave shorter sentences than do the arts and humanities texts, and the Fleschscores are higher for the science (and social science) ones than they are forthe arts and humanities. Once again, our initial predictions are mainly sup-ported (except for the passives, which do not differ significantly from eachother).

General Discussion

In this article, we have reported the results that we obtained when we com-pared the writing styles of academics in the sciences, social sciences, and thearts and humanities across a range of publications. We predicted that the textswould get easier as we moved across the range from scholarly article to intro-ductory expositions. But we also argued that the scientific writers would pro-duce shorter sentences, more passives, and have texts with higher FleschReading Ease scores than would writers in the arts and humanities and thesocial sciences in these different types of text. Our results seem to suggestthat, to some extent, we were right, but they have qualified our originalpredictions.


TABLE 9Measures for Passages from Magazines Available at Newsagents

in Science, Social Science, and the Arts and Humanities

Magazine Title

New Psychology HistoryScientist Today Today(N = 20) (N = 20) (N = 20)



sentence) 20.5 3.2 20.0 4.7 26.4 5.3 12.50**Percentage of passive sentences 13.8 9.3 13.6 12.4 20.7 15.9 —Flesch Reading Ease score 46.7 8.0 49.0 12.4 37.0 15.9 5.84*

*p = .005. **p = .000.



Audience Effects

Table 10 shows the mean Flesch scores across the different disciplines forthe different text types found in studies 1–5. It can be seen that the FleschReading Ease scores increase for all three disciplines as we move from schol-arly journals to texts for colleagues and then to texts for students; however,they remain steady, or decline slightly, with the student magazines and themagazines available for the general public (with the exception of PsychologyToday). So perhaps there is an asymptote or “ceiling effect” with these lessacademic kinds of material. Further studies of this phenomenon would be ofinterest.

Sentence Lengths

Table 11 summarizes the number of times our prediction was correct (or inthe right direction) in terms of sentence lengths for the science texts in the fivestudies reported. As predicted, the average sentence lengths are shorter forthe science texts in four of the five studies (and, indeed, six out of seven, if weinclude the data from Tibbo [1992] and Bazerman [1981]).

In point of fact, sentence lengths in scientific articles have been remark-ably consistent over the years (see Table 12). Of course, whether or notshorter sentence lengths are a correlate or predictor of reading ease is a matterfor debate, and this issue has been widely discussed (see Peck MacDonald1990; Seltzer 1983). In our view, sentence length is not a critical measure ofreadability, but, clearly, long sentences do not help. It is interesting to notethat our data do not support the observation by Marckworth and Bell (1967)that there is more variability in the sentence lengths in science than in otherdisciplines.


TABLE 10Summary Table of the Mean Flesch Reading Ease ScoresObtained in Studies 1–5 for the Science, Social Science,

and Arts and Humanities Texts

Mean Flesch Reading Ease Scores

Study Science Texts Social Science Texts Arts and Humanities Texts

1. Scholarly journals 16.6 17.4 25.42. Texts for colleagues 38.7 33.1 33.93. Introductory textbooks 51.8 37.5 52.74. A-Level magazines 50.2 35.4 41.75. Newsagent’s magazines 46.7 49.0 37.0



Passives

Table 11 also summarizes the number of times our predictions were cor-rect (or in the right direction) concerning the proportion of passive sentencesused in the science texts in our five studies. Clearly, the stereotypic view of


TABLE 11Summary Table of the Results for the Predictions Made

at the Outset of This Article: Were Resultsin the Predicted Direction for Science Texts?

Shorter More Higher FleschStudy Sentence Lengths Passives (%) Reading Ease scores

1 No Yes No2 Yes Yes Yes3 Yes Yes Equal4 Yes Equal Yes5 Yes No YesTotal 4 / 5 3 / 5 3 / 5

TABLE 12Comparison Figures Obtained in Other Studies of Sentence Lengths

and Flesch Reading Ease Scores in Journal Articles

M (length, M(Fleschin words) score)

Marckworth and Bell (1967)Eighty extracts from learned and scientific writing, written in 1963–4 23.8

Broadhead, Berlin, and Broadhead (1982)Thirty natural science articles 23.8Forty-six humanities articles 25.3Thirty-six social science articles 26.0

Bazerman (1988)Five experimental articles in physics published in 1980 23.7

Harmon (1992)Fifty highly cited science articles from 1945–88 24

Hartley, Sotto, and Pennebaker (2002)Introductions to eighty-two highly cited psychology articles 25.9 28.8Introductions to eighty-two standard psychology articles 28.2 27.2

Hartley, Pennebaker, and Fox (2003)Introductions to eighty standard educational psychology articles 27.4 20.5Present study (study 1)Introductions to thirty standard geology articles 33.1 16.6Introductions to thirty standard sociology articles 29.3 17.4Introductions to thirty standard history articles 32.3 25.4



scientific writers using more passive sentences than writers in the arts andhumanities and in the social sciences is generally supported. It is interestingto note, however, that the proportion of passives used in the science texts issmallest (14 percent) in the newsagents’ magazines (see Table 9).

We therefore think it important to note here that general statements in thewriting literature about the large percentage of passives in scientific articlesmight, in fact, be misleading—a point made earlier by Tarone et al. (1981).Riley (1991), for example, demonstrated this when she examined the per-centage of passives in twelve experimental articles from the Journal ofSpeech and Hearing Disorders. She found that the proportion of passivesused varied according to sections in the articles, as follows: Introduction, 10percent; Method, 36 percent; Results, 16 percent; and Discussion, 9 percent.In addition, in our own studies, there is a huge range around the means inevery one of our tables that report the use of passives, suggesting that theiruse is very variable.

So perhaps we should note here that we are not entirely in agreement withthe view that more passives means less readable text. In our view, experts andguidelines on writing academic text overstate their case when they seek toincrease clarity by forbidding passives. There are many different sorts ofpassives, and they serve a variety of rhetorical purposes (e.g., Cornelis 1997;Rodman 1981; Tarone et al. 1981).

Readability

Tables 10 and 11 also summarize the number of times our predictionswere correct (or in the right direction) concerning the readability of the sci-ence texts as measured by the Flesch. Here, we were correct for three of ourfive studies (or four out of six, if we include the Bazerman [1981] data).

Data in the form of Flesch scores are useful here for making comparisonsbetween different texts, and the results can be reasonably compared withthose from other studies that make similar measures (see Table 12). Thesedata, too, add further information to that provided in earlier studies wheresentence lengths (and other measures) were counted manually as indicatorsof readability (e.g., Broadhead, Berlin, and Broadhead 1982; Peck MacDon-ald 1990). Computer-based methods of counting have the advantage oversubjective methods in this research by being objective, consistent, andreplicable and by allowing more numerous samples of text to be investigated.(However, see Note 1 for their limitations in this respect.)

Nonetheless, our reported Flesch Reading Ease scores, like, perhaps, ourpassives, have to be taken with a pinch of salt. Basically, the essential ideaunderlying the Flesch score (and many other readability measures) is that one




can measure the difficulty of a piece of text by combining with a constant twomain measures: the lengths of the sentences and the lengths of the wordswithin these sentences. Putting it simply, all that is being said is that a text thathas long sentences and long words within them will be more difficult to readthan a text that has short sentences and short words. This, of course, is naïve,although it does contain an element of truth. Long words are not alwaysharder than short ones (compare the average with the mean), and some sen-tences can be short but difficult to understand (e.g., God is grace). Formulae,numbers, and mathematical symbols (e.g., E = MC2) are, of course, not reallytreatable with a readability formula (again, see Note 1).

Furthermore, we need to note that the perceived difficulty of texts lieslargely in what the reader already knows about the topic being discussed.Thus, we might find some texts that are quite easy for knowledgeable personsin a particular discipline but quite incomprehensible for others without thisbackground knowledge. Therefore, the Flesch scores reported in this articleare indicative only of the difficulty of the text “stripped of context and mean-ing” (Bazerman 1981), and Flesch himself urged caution in interpreting suchnumbers: “What I hope for are readers who won’t take the formula tooseriously and won’t expect from it more than a rough estimate” (Flesch1949, p. xi).2

Texts in Different Disciplines

With the exception of Bazerman (1981), Broadhead, Berlin, andBroadhead (1982), Hyland (1999), and Tibbo (1992), we have not been ableto find any other studies that have examined the language used in texts fromseveral contrasting disciplines. As noted earlier, Tibbo examined the writingstyles of abstracts from articles in the humanities, sciences, and social sci-ences. Broadhead, Berlin, and Broadhead examined articles from a range ofdisciplines and found, as we did, that the average sentence lengths increasedas one moved across from articles in engineering, natural sciences, and socialsciences to ones in the humanities and literature (see Table 12). However, interms of grammatical structures, Broadhead, Berlin, and Broadhead foundhigh variability and more overlap than distinctions. Hyland (1999) providedmore recent comparison data from fifty-six journal articles written in variousdisciplines using rather different measures. Table 13 shows his results for thethree disciplines relevant to this article. It can be seen that, in every case, thephysics articles scored lower than the philosophy ones and that, in three outof the five cases, the sociology ones fell in between. Hyland argued that therewas evidence that an author’s stance or position vis-à-vis the text was clearerin the philosophy articles than in the physics ones. However, in line with our




thinking, we might argue that an article that has more hedges will be moredifficult to read than a more straightforward one—although we agree that it ishard to sustain this view for the other measures.

Concluding Comments

We began this article by remarking that we were concerned with the clar-ity of written texts in general and how people perceived this clarity. Here, wehave reported our findings using computer-based measures to compare textswritten in the sciences, the social sciences, and the arts and humanities for arange of different audiences. It appears that, as far as scholarly articles areconcerned, scientific writing is less accessible (in the main) than is writing inthe social sciences and the arts and humanities. However, the more typicalfindings for the other levels of readership studied in this article have been thatthe science texts have been more readable (as measured by sentence lengthsand the Flesch scores) than the parallel texts in the social sciences and the artsand humanities, even though the science texts may contain more passives.

As it stands, our article may convey the impression that we believe that allarticles within their particular genres will exhibit similar textual characteris-tics. However, this is not so. Just as there are different subspecialties withinthe disciplines (as described by Smith et al. [2000] for psychology), thesesubspecialties might reflect different writing styles. Clearly, the results


TABLE 13Text Features (per thousand words) in a Total of

Seven Academic Articles in Each of the Disciplines Listed

Discipline

Feature Physics Sociology Philosophy

Hedges 9.6 13.3 18.5Attitude markers 3.9 7.0 8.9Emphatics 6.0 4.6 9.7Person markers 5.0 3.5 6.5Relational markers 1.6 4.6 11.8

SOURCE: Hyland (1999, 107).NOTE: Hedges allow the writer to withhold complete commitment (e.g., possibly, might be, per-haps, could be, etc). Attitude markers allow the writer to express a position (e.g., unfortunately,hopefully, etc.). Emphatics allow the writer to emphasize the force of a position (e.g., it is obviousthat, of course, definitely, etc.). Person markers allow the writer to use the first-person pronoun(e.g., I believe that, we can see that, etc.) Relational markers allow the writer to address the reader(e.g., let us now turn to, consider that, note that, etc.).



reported in this article are restricted to the materials that we have chosen toexamine and to the tools that we have used for making our analyses. Differentextracts and different tools may produce different results—as exemplified inthe work of Hyland (1999). Accordingly, additional research with moretexts, more subspecialties, and more sophisticated measurement tools is nowneeded to illuminate further the differences between modes of academicwriting and ways of making them more accessible.

AppendixThe Effects of Using Strings of Multiple Referenceson the Clarity of Text (On top is the original text.

On the bottom is the same text without the multiple references)

Student resistance to learning is a central, endemic problem of educational sys-tems (Waller 1932; Coleman 1961; Stinchcombe 1964; Bidwell 1965; Swidler1979; Cusick 1973; Bowles and Gintis 1976; Willis 1977; Apple 1979; Giroix1983; Davies 1995). Classroom disruptions and defiance of teacher authoritybring the instructional process to a grinding halt. As such, student resistancedefies educational goals and the functioning of schools. The study of studentresistance within classrooms gives educators a better understanding of thelearning process that takes place within the technical core of the school. Class-room disruptions bring to light the tacit foundations on which the instructionalprocess rests. Moreover, rebellious behaviours of students reveal the socialprocesses by which classroom order is constructed, maintained, and altered.

The study of the microsocial processes that generate resistant behavioursinforms several domains of sociology that are concerned with topics of socialconflict and change. The social processes generating student defiance in class-rooms are similar to the social processes generating factory strikes (Burawoy1979; Fantasia 1988), changes in worker productivity (Homan [1950] 1992;Burawoy 1979; Crozier 1964; Goffman 1961), collective protests (Gurr 1970;Gould 1995; Jasper and Nelkin 1992; McAdam 1982; Schwartz 1976; Tilly1978), social movement recruitment (Snow et al. 1986; McCarthey and Zald1977), and political change (Diani 1966; Tarrow [1993] 1998). Moreover, thestudy of student resistance can potentially describe wider sociological con-cerns of social reproduction and change. Classroom breaches incite ritual pro-cesses of redress and reintegration that the social order is remade and learningroutines carry on (McFarland 1999). In some instances, student challenges canalter the classroom situation for good. These moments of resistance, then, arewindows into social processes that construct, maintain, and permanently altersocial settings.

Student resistance to learning is a central, endemic problem of educational sys-tems. Classroom disruptions and defiance of teacher authority bring theinstructional process to a grinding halt. As such, student resistance defies edu-cational goals and the functioning of schools. The study of student resistancewithin classrooms gives educators a better understanding of the learning




process that takes place within the technical core of the school. Classroom dis-ruptions bring to light the tacit foundations on which the instructional processrests. Moreover, rebellious behaviours of students reveal the social processesby which classroom order is constructed, maintained, and altered.

The study of the microsocial processes that generate resistant behavioursinforms several domains of sociology that are concerned with topics of socialconflict and change. The social processes generating student defiance in class-rooms are similar to the social processes generating factory strikes, changes inworker productivity, collective protests, social movement recruitment, andpolitical change. Moreover, the study of student resistance can potentiallydescribe wider sociological concerns of social reproduction and change.Classroom breaches incite ritual processes of redress and reintegration that thesocial order is remade and learning routines carry on. In some instances, stu-dent challenges can alter the classroom situation for good. These moments ofresistance, then, are windows into social processes that construct, maintain,and permanently alter social settings.

NOTE: Text reproduced from McFarland (2001) with the permission of the author and the Uni-versity of Chicago Press.

Notes

1. It is important in research of this kind to use the same computer program throughout. Dif-ferent computer programs written to predict readability produce different scores, and differentprograms written to automatize the Flesch measure give different results (even though they pur-port to be doing the same thing; see Harris 1996; Mailloux et al. 1995; Sydes and Hartley 1997).Thus, although the data provided in this article are comparable, they might not be the same as thatprovided by another measure. Furthermore, the data from different programs get more variablethe more difficult the text being assessed (Sydes and Hartley 1997). Generally speaking,computer-based measures of readability have difficulty dealing with complex grammatical con-structions, different forms of the passive voice, formulae, reference citations, and the like inscholarly text. This implies that the data from study 1, in particular, should be considered to be in-dicative rather than precise. More sophisticated tools are being developed to analyze text struc-tures, but such systems currently still require researchers initially to code the text by hand (seeJackson and Moulinier 2002; Upton and Connor 2001; Vidal-Abarca et al. 2002).

2. Readers might be interested to know that Microsoft Office ‘97’s Flesch Reading Easescore for the introduction to this article is 37.7.

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JAMES HARTLEY is research professor in the Department of Psychology at the Univer-sity of Keele in Staffordshire, England. His main interests lie in written communicationand in teaching and learning in higher education.

ERIC SOTTO lives in Haifa, Israel. He has farmed, taught English, and worked inteacher education. He is a chartered psychologist and an accredited psychotherapist andis now mostly engaged in writing and psychotherapy.

CLAIRE FOX earned her Ph.D. in 2002 in psychology at the University of Keele,Staffordshire, England, and then worked as a research associate in the School of SocialRelations. She is currently a teaching fellow in the Department of Psychology at Keele.




clarity across the disciplines: an analysis of texts in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and...

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