To link sentences which are closely related

Closely related sentences are often linked to emphasise their relationship and to vary the pace of the writing. For example:

I read the book in one evening. It was not very helpful.

One way to link these sentences is with a comma and a word such as and, or, but, nor, for, so, yet (called co-ordinating conjunctions).

I read the book in one evening, but it was not very helpful.

For variety in sentence structure, the semi-colon can be used to link closely related sentences instead of a co-ordinating conjunction and comma.

I read the book in one evening; it was not very helpful.

The semi-colon tells the reader that the second clause is closely linked to the first clause. Note how sentences joined in this way are similar in either theme or grammatical structure as shown in the example below.

Personal writing utilises the first person form; impersonal writing utilises the third person form.
He was nervous about giving the speech; he asked for water several times.
The deadline has come forward a week; everyone's help will be needed.

For use with otherwise, however, therefore…

The semi-colon can be used to link sentences which also use words such as otherwise, however, therefore, as connectors. These connectors (known as conjunctive adverbs) also include: moreover, nevertheless, thus, besides, accordingly, consequently, instead, hence.

I did not finish reading the text; instead, I watched the news.

(Notice that the connecting word instead is followed by a comma.)

The research is far from conclusive; nevertheless, it has some value in this case.
Dr Suptri argues that the research shows an increase in such occurrences; however, many experts would dispute this.

The colon

The colon acts as a pause which introduces related information. It indicates that the reader should look forward to information that follows on from the earlier statement. Some of the main ways a colon can be used are shown below.

To introduce a list

The colon can be used to introduce the items in a list.

Topics discussed will include: the structure of viruses, virus families and current concerns in virology.

Students joining the department undertake to: attend all lectures and tutorials, meet deadlines for written work and contribute to tutorials and seminars

To introduce an explanation, conclusion or amplification

The colon can also be used to introduce an explanation, conclusion or amplification of an earlier statement. The use of the colon separates and highlights the second statement, showing that it follows on from the first.

Tai chi is more than a form of physical exercise: it is meditation in movement.

After extensive research, the committee came to its conclusion: development could not take place without further funding.

Summary

The semi-colon and colon are often underused, yet their correct use can enhance the clarity of your writing. Beware of an over dependence on the comma and full stop, as this can make for ambiguous and repetitive sentence structure. Look in your writing for opportunities to use the semi-colon and colon in the ways described in this guide.

Related content

 

Comments

· Pinned by Mentor

Amy Barnes MENTOR

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12 SEP

Something to think about is that new research is being published all the time. I'd advise setting up a Google Alert using appropriate keywords so that you will receive a notification when new papers, news items, etc., become available.

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Rebecka Wulfing

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1 hour

In terms of textbooks I´ll turn to my local Univeristy library (Stockholm University) who allow non-students to benefit from their services. I only used peer-reviewed for my masters. The downside is that it takes longer for the information to be published. Since I want to do my PhD in a fast changing field (politics and media on social platforms) the access to new and relevant information can be a challenge.

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Amy Barnes MENTOR

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4 hours

.

(edited)

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· MA

Mercy Atieno Odongo

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8 hours

I would urge to get associated with your former institution of learning. They tend to have affiliations with other institutions of learning granting rights to access. I have found this very useful

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Eric Odanga

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11 SEP

What l often do is to use google scholar and get leads from the referenced journals or books. The trick is to narrow down to your research topic by using different key words.

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Edoardo Gazzoni

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11 SEP

I'm lucky because in Italy we have free access to all Libraries. We can enroll freely university libraries moreover the other one. They have a lot of journals, so I think that won't be difficult to find my litterature

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Oliver Castaño Mallorca

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10 SEP

In respect ‘peer review’ some related papers uploaded to Academia or to Google Scholar seems to be the main resources for academic reviews that at first stage I’ve managed ultimately.
On the other hand there’re lots of ‘open access’ online libraries. I’d like to share with you one of them, for example, thought it's only works out to download ‘textbooks’, it’s also very useful.

https://monoskop.org/Monoskop

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Kala Rao

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10 SEP

The read, read, read mantra has changed to search, search and more search. I include a range of key terms and this certainly helps. Additionally, based on reading history, Science Direct has started emailing me relevant articles too.

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Ted Nierras

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10 SEP

During my master's I had access to a university library and as a PhD student obviously will have the same. If I need to do a lit search as part of a PhD proposal then I would just use Google Scholar and open-access journals: I find there is already too much rather than too little material. For fellow students who find that there is too little, perhaps expand your search terms a bit?

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Dot Bremner

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10 SEP

Accessing relevant literature seems difficult. I live in North of Scotland and there are no libraries in my area with Academic research facilities. Google scholar so far only shows two hits for my topic. Other suggestions given seem to give similar results.

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Antony otter

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09 SEP

clearly peer review is the 'gold standard', however in my view other types of research can be used as evidence, but just has to be handled differently and investigated more thoroughly.
More open access has to be the way forward, but there has to be a suitable funding model to recognise the costs involved as nothing is 'free'

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David Moss

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09 SEP

In my experience in industry, important documents like contracts, requirements and technical specifications are subject to rigorous peer review. I don't know quite how it works in academia though where there generally don't seem to be the same financial incentives.

Organising the material

Comments

It is important not to get ‘lost’ in all the material that you read to prepare your literature review. You should always make notes on what you are reading, which will then enable you to plan a structure for your literature review. But don’t try and read everything – you are not doing a PhD yet! You are first aiming to get a ‘feel’ for the work that has been done or is current in your proposed field of study.

As you read an article it is helpful to keep the following questions in mind:

• What is the main research problem for the authors and why is it an issue?
• How have they chosen to frame the problem? Might there be other ways to do this?
• What literature do they point to in developing their research questions? How do these questions relate to what other people have done?
• What are the research questions posed? How clear are they to you?
• If there is an empirical component, then what kinds of methods do they adopt?Are there other alternatives?
• What are their key findings? And just as importantly, what did they not find? What is absent?
• What conclusions do they draw from the findings? Do these appear to be valid?
• Overall, what might you think is the contribution of the paper to the research literature? (This last one is not easy at this stage – after all, you are only just starting out and so cannot easily say if a paper is right and what its full contribution or value might be – thus think about whether the ideas or arguments convince you).

Make short notes on all these issues as you proceed in your reading. Use these notes to help you decide how to use (if at all!) what you have read. Some material may be useful because it helps you in building a theoretical or conceptual framework. Other material might help in suggesting a method. All of what you read should help in guiding you towards a set of research questions that appear to be meaningful in the light of what is already known (and not yet known) in the area you propose to study.

Of course, some material helps because it represents exactly what you do not want to do. Offering a critical reading of this material can indeed be a useful component of your literature review: it may be that what you want to do is provoked by a failing in the literature so far read to adequately address a particular issue, or to ask certain kinds of questions.

Refer back to Step 2.7 for planning and referencing tools that may help you with this. There also are various reading and note-taking strategies, and you may already use a method that works well for you. One such strategy is the Cornell Method, which is explained in this blog post.

Activity

Take one of the sources you found using Google Scholar in the previous Step, and using the Cornell method, or another if you prefer, practise taking notes and recording your findings based on the questions above. Record these in your reflective journal.

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 3.11. Planning your literature

Comment

It is difficult to say exactly how much material you need to write a convincing literature review. You will need to provide a list of references of all the material you have drawn on at the end of your proposal. The quality of the material you have discussed is just as important as the quantity. A long list of references that are not really central to the area looks far less convincing than a small number of key, very significant articles.

The academic staff who will read and consider your overall proposal will have a number of expectations. They will expect you to demonstrate that you have a fair sense of current trends in the area. So, if all of your references are over twenty years old, then you have immediately failed at this task. But, at the same time, staff will not expect you to be anything like an expert on the field or to know what they know as faculty members. What is important is to show that you can think your way through the literature, synthesise a range of work, indicate where there are debates, and ground your own ideas in an existing tradition (which can include showing how your work challenges or is set against a given tradition). The key thing is to convince the reader that you are creative thinker, who is not simply reproducing what has been done before, but someone actively wishing to participate in moving scholarly work forward in a chosen or specific area.

So how can you show this? Again, think in terms of a storyline:

The problem you wish to address comes first, presented in a succinct yet forceful way. This is the ‘news’ or ‘headline’ that makes the reader want to read on. Arguably, if they are not hooked by the first two paragraphs, it is unlikely that they will be convinced by your proposal as a whole. From the notes that you made last week, review your research problem to ensure that you present it clearly and grounded in the literature.

Next comes the introduction of the literature. Only discuss literature and research context that are directly relevant to your research questions. Describe the key approaches and indicate how your proposed work relates to them. Focus on particular concepts and findings and draw them together to frame the problem. Be very focused in what you use from an individual paper or book – you do not need to summarise everything it says, just take the key points that relate to what you aim/would like to do. Make sure your discussion is woven around a key thread or set of ideas. You are building an argument, not offering a textbook-style overview.

Ensure that there are a number of ‘highlights’ in your review. You might think of these as ‘plot twists’ in a story. They might be things such as the identification of a gap in the literature, an attempt at relating two or more ideas or concepts in a different or unexpected way, a critical reading of a particular theorist or theory. These highlights are key to convincing the readers that you have thought about what you have read.

Finally, the literature review should conclude with a set of research questions. These should clearly be grounded in the framework you have developed with the research and should be meaningful in relation to the literature or context that you have discussed. The research questions are also the means by which you establish how the problem you set up at the start could be addressed. In this sense they are a kind of resolution or culmination to the story. You may need to revise and refine the research question(s) that you developed last week to ensure it meets these criteria

3.12

MORE STEPS TO GO

Write a Literature Review

Based on the guidance and information that you have now worked through and the literature that you have collected, we’d now like you to write a draft literature review. Including the problem formulation, the review of the literature and the research questions, this should be somewhere around 1,000 words long – though do be aware that you are likely to have to revise, expand or cut down on sections as you go along. Such editing and rethinking of your work is a normal and expected part of the process and will help you reflect on and develop your ideas.

You might consider the diverse skills that you will require to prepare a PhD proposal and then undertake doctoral research as ‘academic literacy’ which may include a combination of: academic writing; critical thinking and reflection; doing research; independent learning; information literacy; mobile learning; note making; numeracy, maths and statistics; personal development planning; reading; referencing; and time management. In short, academic literacy is therefore the ability to research, read and write on a subject matter for an academic purpose whilst understanding the academic social context (Koutsantoni 2006)*.

We would advise you to write your literature review into a Word document or similar first and then copy and paste it into the box below when you are happy with it, as you cannot edit you work after pressing Submit.

^{*Koutsantoni, D. (2006) Rhetorical Strategies in Engineering Research Articles and Research Theses: Advanced Academic Literacy and Relations of Power’, Journal of English for Academic Purposes 5(1): 19-36.}

ASSIGNMENT GUIDELINES

The reviewers will be asked to give you feedback on the following aspects of your assignment, so you should consider these when writing:

• Is the research problem presented first in a succinct yet compelling way? How ‘accessible’ is the research problem? Are the questions clear?
• Is the literature discussed directly related to the stated research question?
• Has the review built a focused argument and identified an appropriate research context?

3.13

MORE STEPS TO GO

Write a literature review