If that sort of transition helps you keep the flow, go for it. Then, when you’re done, go back, find these phrases, and delete them.

Xiao-Li sent me a draft paper and asked for my reactions. In addition to substantive comments, I wrote:

On page 11, you say, “It is also worth stressing that…” You can remove those six words! Everything in your paper is worth stressing. See here.

This is standard advice that I give, but this time XL pushed back:

I am aware of your disliking “It is worth to note” or anything of that sort, and indeed every time I write something like that I’d remind myself what you would say, and if it is really necessary. In those cases I decided to retain such phrases, I found without them the flow got interrupted a bit too much for my taste. That is, such phrases for me are often more for the purpose of a smoother transition from one message to another (weakly) related one, than for actually emphasizing the importance of the message. Does that make sense to you?

I replied:

It’s your call. I don’t know Chinese. I know some French, and I think style is different in different languages. So it could be that removing “Note that” could make the writing seem awkward in Chinese, even if it makes it more readable in English. I think that “Note that” etc. in writing are the equivalent of “Umm” and “Uhh” and “Y’know” in speech: they allow the worlds to flow more smoothly for the writer or speaker, but they are a distraction for the reader. When speaking, we can train ourselves to avoid saying Umm etc.; when writing, the task is easier because we can go back and clean up what we wrote.

So that’s my take. Phrases such as “Note that” don’t generally make your article easier to read, but they can make it easier to write. And that’s important. If that sort of transition helps you keep the flow, go for it. Then, when you’re done, go back, find these phrases (also “Of course,” “very,” “quite,” “Importantly,” “Interestingly,” and a few more), and delete them—or, I should say, decide by default to delete all of them, but keep them where you decide they are absolutely necessary.

35 thoughts on “If that sort of transition helps you keep the flow, go for it. Then, when you’re done, go back, find these phrases, and delete them.

  1. Likewise, you don’t need “So that’s my take.” :)

    But, as with the other examples, it signals to the reader where they are in the argument. They signal the context. It’s part of the road map. I vote “for”. (I agree, when they’re not serving a mapping function, leave ’em out.)

  2. I find all such annotations (note that, it is important to, one thing to emphasize, etc etc) are really poor writing. I am particularly guilty of poor writing, having been inadequately trained. My general studies writing course did not provide me with what I need, nor has writing for journals, graduate school, or anything else. Working with lawyers has provided the best education, although I leave it to lawyers to heavily edit since they are generally much better writers than me. I accept that there will be differences in style in different languages (and perhaps different disciplines), but for the most part I think it is just poor ability to write.

    One thing that interests me (perhaps I should say, “It is important to note that….”) is the parallels between good visual display,good writing, and critical thinking. Tufte has always stressed the common features. Inability to write concisely and clearly is similar to inability to produce clear visualizations, and both are related to difficulties identifying and communicating important parts of a research study from details that are more of academic interest. I am guilty of all three, and would venture to say that most academics are as well. There are precious few examples of clear writing in academic journals.

    My evidence: read a random sample of journal article abstracts.

  3. This reminds me of a quote from Mark Twain:

    Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

  4. “I think that “Note that” etc. in writing are the equivalent of “Umm” and “Uhh” and “Y’know” in speech: they allow the worlds to flow more smoothly for the writer or speaker, but they are a distraction for the reader.”

    This reminds me: I think Bob Carpenter is brilliant and is also a great writer. I recently watched Bob Carpenter’s “Bob Carpenter – 0 to 100K in 10 years: nurturing an open-source software community” presentation on YouTube, which was about 60 minutes long, and I think he said “Right” about 152 times! (Couldn’t help but count after it became apparent it was going to happen a lot.) I agree that these types of speech-related fillers are distracting. I think they are a lot more difficult to control than written filler, since they occur live–right–and are sometimes the product of nerves–right–or speaking about difficult material. Public speaking is **hard**! Even for uber-brilliant people!! (Bob, I admire you–please don’t take offense!!!)

  5. Everything in a paper may be worth stressing, but “It is also worth stressing…” is advocating what follows relative to the rest of the paper.

    In pure mathematics, one area of a paper can contain information where misunderstandings are nearly impossible to a trained reader, and these areas can be followed by sections where even with incredibly close reading it is easy to misinterpret or misunderstand the reasoning or definitions. When an author takes a few words to indicate to the reader that the next line(s) are tricky or nuanced and require especially close reading compared to what has been done so far in the paper, they’re giving a helping hand to the reader in the decoding of the information. In my experience, these sorts of “superfluous” phrases can often be quite nice in these settings.

    Blaise Pascal wrote “I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.” and in certain situations there is wisdom to this desire for brevity. Taken too far, though, hinders understanding and does a disservice to the reader.

    • Wine:

      As I wrote, my recommendation is: “decide by default to delete all of them, but keep them where you decide they are absolutely necessary.” I start from the presumption that they’re not needed, but, yes, they can be useful.

      My goal in writing is to be clear and to be entertaining, not to use the minimum number of words.

  6. Inasmuch as Andrew has an extensive paper trail, no doubt some clever data analyst will find him frequently violating the very admonitions he just proposed. John N-G has already found one today–“So that’s my take.” Some grad student somewhere will be busy writing Rcode (or in Stan!) to categorize and display the violations visually. And predicting which one is likely to be be next.

  7. “a smoother transition from one message to another (weakly) related one”

    You’re passing up a chance to say _how_ the second message is related to the first one. Therefore? Nevertheless? On the other hand? More broadly? More specifically?

  8. I think that “note that” often falls under the category of “meta-discourse.”

    Just to borrow one definition mute or less randomly selected:

    More specifically, metadiscourse can be defined as “the range of devices writers use to explicitly organize their texts, engage readers, and signal their attitudes to both their material and their audience” (

    As such, I think you might be underestimating the utility, when looking at writing as a kind of interactive process.

    • I will note that the way that metadiscourse is used, or necessary, interacts with how writing is structurally organized.

      I don’t know about Xiao-Li’s native language (your post suggests that it isn’t English)…

      Preferred organizational structure varies a lot across language and culture.

      For that reason, sometimes, non-native English speakers can really benefit from explicit use of metadiscourse because it can help compensate for a less natural feeling for the organizational structures.

      Unfortunately, many non-native speakers of English have a hard time incorporating metadiscourse features. Because, in some cultures, writing has more of a function of transmitting information from the writer to the reader and is less viewed as a dynamic interaction between the writer and the trader.

    • I want to second and amplify this. FWIW, I was a journalist before being an academic (turned down a job at a top newspaper) and dabbled in other forms of writing. I also received a bit of training in composition and taught writing extensively in college. I worked a lot with students about issues like this.

      If you have a straightforward, unilinear story, just tell it and leave out the bells and whistles. In more analytical writing you often have multiple threads with dependencies of some sections on others, sometimes in ways that defy sequential exposition. I pushed for a roadmap as soon as possible after the initial hook, followed by periodic road signs indicating where the reader was in the structure (and not just the sequence) of the argument. At their best, little nudges of emphasis, like the one in the OP, can be ways to help readers connect ideas that might not be contiguous in the narrative. I agree with Andrew, however, that this should not descend to the level of a nervous tick, not only to avoid bloat but also to avoid devaluing the markers that actually mean something.

      People make fun of academic writing, and rightfully (writefully) so, but sometimes its habits follow logically from the complexity of academic content.

        • Still, with this…

          > I think that “Note that” etc. in writing are the equivalent of “Umm” and “Uhh” and “Y’know” in speech: they allow the worlds to flow more smoothly for the writer or speaker, but they are a distraction for the reader.

          I just think that’s too broad a statement. Often metadiscourse is a way to step outside of the actual writing for a minute to have a discussion directly with the reader about the writing.

          It can certainly serve a purpose unlike “um,” which is more just a placeholder in spoken discourse. In metadiscourse dmfesrures can be like a way of signaling to the audience – outside of the words themselves – nuance or subtleties in much the same way as easily recognizable ways of doing that in speech, such as changes in tone, speed, pitch, loudness (which of course also work quite differently across language – for example in Chinese where change in tone can signify an entirely different word as opposed to connotation of a particular word).

  9. In a way Xiao-Li is right. Usually you can’t take those phrases out. If your organization is messed up, those phrases smooth over the jumbled ideas, mortar dumped onto a haphazard stack of bricks. You can’t just take them out because they’re the mortar that holds the jumble together. So if you have those phrases and you think the writing doesn’t “flow” when you take them out, then you need to rewrite the thing so you don’t need them.

  10. Andrew:

    There could be some context missing from this post but this seems a bit odd:

    > I don’t know Chinese. I know some French, and I think style is different in different languages. So it could be that removing “Note that” could make the writing seem awkward in Chinese, even if it makes it more readable in English.

    It seems odd to make the connection to foreign languages when the argument by XL at its face is “I disagree and think these phrases help the flow in these instances.” Like why not just take it as a difference in opinion on what makes something readable in English? Why presume that the reason for someone’s preferences comes from the organizational structure of Chinese? Perhaps I’m missing something about Chinese (which I do not know) or XL but your response seemed a bit dismissive.

    Also, I might be whooshing over the joke but in addition the the phrase John N-G found, there’s also “And that’s important” in this post. “I should say” is also likely unnecessary. But maybe your point is for formal writing and not informal writing. Or maybe it was an intentional joke.

    On the substantive point of this post, I actually do enjoy those “Note that” phrases when used in moderation. It allows the writing to flow more conversationally. “Uh” and similar phrases are also good with me when it’s sparse during e.g. seminars and such. A presidential speech or something like that shouldn’t have any “uh”s though. It matters what sort of tone you’re going for.

    That being said (another one of those phrases?), I think Andrew’s advice to default to removing those phrases is a good one since I think people often default to them too much naturally.

    • Ab:

      1. Chinese is XL’s language and sometimes he’s asked me to check his papers for English. Not recently but that’s the background. XL is multilingual in a way that I am not, and it wouldn’t surprise me if his fluency in two languages gives him a perspective that I don’t have. I know basically zero Chines and I could well imagine that the structure of the language is different enough that it could change the way some of these phrases would be used, in the same way that French and Dutch, which I know a little bit, have some different patterns than English.

      2. I don’t think that phrases such as “that’s important” are always bad, just that we should not default to them. Also, yes, I take blog posts and blog comments seriously, but I put more care into published articles and books.

  11. What I learned in Freshman English (AKA “American Thought and Language”) was, you write it how you write it, then you think about what you’ve written and revise it. My first “theme” (short essay) came back with lots of phrases crossed out in red pencil. I had to admit the essay covered the same ground without them. It became somewhat automatic to eliminate unnecessary stuff (although I have slipped since), but also you have to think about how somebody else might misinterpret what you have tried to state, and whether what you wrote is actually what you meant.

    In Elmore Leonard’s essay on (fiction) writing, among other things he advises to never end dialog quotes with anything but “he/she said”. Cormac McCarthy goes one better; he just gives the dialog without any quotation marks or anything else. I enjoy the writing of both.

    Sample, from “No Country For Old Men” (as usual for good books, the book is better than the movie):

    You don’t believe it though, do you?

    Probably I don’t.

  12. In my opinion, the key problem here is the people who write professionally (scientists for example) often are not able to take the reader’s perspective when preparing a draft for the outside world. You have to have a program running in your head all the time, trying to see what you just wrote from the reader’s perspective.

    Xiao-Li should read Keys to Great Writing, and On Revision: The Only Writing that Counts.

    People use things like “It is important to note that” or “Note that” because they haven’t thought about information structure. Ignoring information structure causes all kinds of other problems relating to coherence, an example is rough topic shifts. One can emphasize something through pure syntactic variation. However, discourse markers like “however” are there for a reason, and I would use them to control the flow of the text. But placement is crucial; I find it odd to find “however” at the end or the middle of a sentence; it’s usually much clearer as a signal if it appears at the beginning. In speech it feels better to me to put however as an interjection in the middle of a sentence, but not writing.

    Another thing that bugs me to no end is the use of “this” when the referent of “this” has to be worked out by the reader; another example of not taking the the reader’s needs into account.

    I have had people in my lab who insisted that it’s the reader’s job to engage with the material. I feel this is completely wrong; it’s the author’s job to make the text as accessible as possible; the reader should not be put under cognitive load.

    • Shavran –

      > I have had people in my lab who insisted that it’s the reader’s job to engage with the material. I feel this is completely wrong; it’s the author’s job to make the text as accessible as possible; the reader should not be put under cognitive load.

      I think it’s maybe useful to consider that the general expectation can be different across different lamguages/cultures. What by the English-writing convention might be considered clear and precise and properly organized writing, can be considered condescending or pedantic in other languages/cultures. I’ve had students from other cultures say that the conventions of academic writing in English render writing “ugly” or treat the reader like a child.

      I find it useful to frame this question as a contrast between “Writer-responsible prose” and “reader-responsible prose,” although the same question of “responsibility” can also play out in other communication contexts. . For international academics working in the US, one obstacle for effective communication can be integrating an understanding that in the American context, the responsibility shifts towards the speaker or teacher being responsible for the student or listener understanding the material, and away from the student or listener being responsible for understanding what the teacher or speaker has said.

      • On the other hand, consider German. Academic writing in German is painful for native Anglophones; we find it repetitive and overly worked out. So that makes me wonder how it goes down with people from the cultures Joshua is referring to.

      • Hi Joshua,

        Well, I know all about being international, having lived in India (where I was born), Japan, and the US, and now Germany. I speak English and Hindi natively, and Japanese (my BA was in Japanese) at a level that I was translating patents in Japan in a law firm, and I speak French and German as well, and am very familiar with scientific writing in French, German, Japanese, and English.

        I do agree with you that across languages, the expectations are sometimes radically different. E.g., as Peter pointed out, German formal writing is deliberately inscrutable, and if you read Merleau-Ponty or Roland Barthes or Bourdieu, they display this weird tendency of sounding great (well, French always sounds great) but saying nothing much (Camus’ fiction was an exception, but I found his philosophical writings also along the same lines as Bourdieu). I also notice that German native speakers import their German-style inscrutable writing into English, usually with disastrous results (multiple center embeddings, complex nominalizations, almost incredible non-local syntactic dependencies, things like that).

        I fel that people from different cultures need to learn to adapt to English conventions: English–for better or worse—is the international language of communication. Just as when I write German, I switch to using long nominalizations and inscrutable prenominal relative clause constructions, when writing English it’s better not to use German (or French) conventions of convoluted writing.

        I’m hardly an Americophile, but I feel that when it comes to crisp and clear writing in English, the American writing/scientific community generally got it right. Is following their lead a kind of cultural imperialism? Probably, but I don’t feel that’s important, just as I don’t feel that it’s important that my being a native speaker of English is a result of British imperialism. I am a product of that colonial history, but there’s no point dwelling on where it all came from. Similarly, we are writing in the here and now and it’s in English.

        PS I sometimes have to read dissertations in French and German as an external reviewer or the like, and at least in linguistics, the French dissertations are remarkably clearly written. The German dissertations too; I don’t know for sure, but it could well be that this move towards clarity is coming from the dominant English culture in science, and it is a good thing.

        PPS Even Germans can’t understand formal written German some of the time :) That kind of inscrutable stuff is still considered good writing style, at least according to my former German teacher. I find that hilarious.

        • Shravan –

          Thanks for the interesting comment. Based on your name I assumed you had some experience with writing in different languages across cultures, but had no reason to expect you’d have experience with Hindi, Japanese, French and German as well as English!

          As for this…

          > Is following their lead a kind of cultural imperialism?

          That’s something I think about a lot – so please excuse a long and somewhat rambling response (I’m trying to weave a lot of threads together here).

          I’m of somewhat different mindsets on that issue – to some degree depending on context. Among my various incarnations I’ve worked with non-native speakers of English on how to effectively communicate in American academic, business, and social contexts. In another incarnation I’ve worked with students from relatively under-represented communities on how to communicate effectively (mostly in writing) in (elite, to the extent that matters) academic institutions. Working with the international clients/students, I wasn’t particularly concerned about the imperialism question – and as such I felt relatively unrestrained in encouraging them to adopt an American style of communication; doing so would inevitably help them to achieve their identified goals. With the under-represented students (minorities and students from rural backgrounds) I tread a little more lightly. While their success in the academic institutions was directly linked to their success in adopting American-academic conventions for communication, I was aware that in communicating that they should adopt “non-native” style (so to speak) I was tacitly delivering a message about a superior/inferior hierarchy – one that I can accept as a practical question related to how they might best succeed, but that I don’t accept as a blanket categorization for how to communicate “effectively.” Judging the effectiveness of communication styles can slip between objective assessment to subjectivity (and “imperialism”) in ways that can be tricky to recognize.

          As you know from your experiences in Japan and other countries, communication styles can be more or less hierarchically structured across language/culture. In a class with Koreans, a younger student often won’t feel comfortable offering an opinion until an older student next to them has given their opinion first. Even interrupting the teacher to ask a clarifying question could be considered inappropriate and selfish, since it’s more the student’s job to understand what the teacher said (and not interrupt the teacher for individual benefit) more than it’s the teacher’s job to make sure the student understood.

          I’m generally a fan of a more American style of communication but I’m also aware that there are strengths and weaknesses of different styles – as we might see in how well some Korean students do in some academic settings because of their well-developed sense of “responsibility” for understanding.

          I extend that aspect of differences in the cultural conventions for communication to writing. I’m generally a fan of the “writer responsible prose” and of less hierarchical, less top down, less didactic styles of communication more generally.

          So I agree with you here:

          > I’m hardly an Americophile, but I feel that when it comes to crisp and clear writing in English, the American writing/scientific community generally got it right.

          But I do think it’s important to interrogate the question of what is or isn’t “imperialistic” in that regard (as it seems you agree), and whether a potential imperialism might be less than fully objectively based, and what the full range of implications of that imperialism might be across contexts. Adapting to different communication styles can be very challenging and sometimes pushing people to adapt before they’re ready can create a sense of being assaulted- where people (perhaps rightfully) dig in as a kind of defense as opposed to ideally, gaining the power and flexibility to pick and choose as best suits their interests and goals.

  13. Similar advice: when giving a lecture, don’t modulate your voice to emphasise certain points. All of your points must be equally important. Deliver all lecture in a same bland voice.

    Never use a pointer. Everything written on blackboard (or shown on the slide) should be equally valuable.

    When asked to provide an abstract for you talk, send the whole talk. If any word can be removed from your talk, your job as a scientist is failed.

    • Mikhail:

      I guess different things work for different people. When I speak to an audience I find it very helpful to modulate my voice, as long as I don’t do it so strongly that it’s a distraction.

      But I agree about not using a pointer. I just write directly on the board and speak while I’m writing. When I use a projector, I project onto a screen that’s at my level so I can stand right there and point with my hand as needed. I find pointers to be unhelpful.

      Regarding your third point, I can’t “send the whole talk,” as the talk does not exist before I give it. There’d be nothing to send!

      Finally, a talk is given in real time so it’s not really possible to remove words from it. Writing is different because you can go back and clean it up. There are lots of things that sound just find live but can be improved in writing.

      • I think you’re missing the sarcasm, Andrew.
        Or perhaps I’m missing yours.

        Mikhail’s comment is excellent!

        Your post today (“… Why are human conversations so different from our conversations with computers?”) is an excellent response to this post on transitional phrases in text.

        This is not a well written comment.

      • Andrew, it *should* be clear that Mikhail is being sarcastic, and rather droll too! But you are polite, and perhaps realized that.

        Fortunately for everyone, I studied Chinese at Swarthmore (along with statistics). Chinese is more succinct than English and has many formalized sentence structures which make it easier to ensure grammatical correctness. Tones aren’t even represented in writing, and volume modulation is effective for speech when tones are relevant. It is much easier to learn and use Chinese than French!
        Regardless, your advice to XL is correct. “It is worth stressing…” is exasperating for a reader. Something REALLY worth stressing can be prefaced with N.B.

        Shravan’s point about using a style guide is good advice, e.g. Strunk & Wagnalls is a slim paperback that costs a few dollars.

        As for compositional flow, chipmunk’s comnent gets to the heart of the matter. That may be too blunt for advisor-student rapport or for a mostly well-written draft though.

  14. joshua, thanks for that detailed and thoughtful reply. i agree with the points you raise. my own experience has been that people judge the non native writer’s scientific work implicitly when they see failings in their writing or even their accent. amazingly, even professional linguists do this (eg mocking a foreign or non standard accent in public settings like talks; i have to fight this tendency too). that is why i insist among my own students that they at least write in a way that it does not attract this kind of attention and negative perception.

    • Shravan:

      One reason I like to give classes and lectures in French is that then I can’t “cheat” by using my command of the English language to imply things. My French is pretty basic, so if I want to say something in French I have to either say it or not say it. This adds clarity and can also be helpful for students who are not native English speakers.

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