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Once you've written the first version of your research paper the next step is to edit and fine tune

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it.

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Now, the first thing I would recommend you look at is the length and you want to shorten your paper as

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much as possible.

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Very often this is actually necessary because the journals we want to publish in have a word limit.

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But even if you don't have a word limit,

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most of the time when you shorten your paper it gets better.

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So I encourage you to think about the question:

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are there sentences or even whole paragraphs that you could remove and the story of your text would

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still work?

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And if that's the case then most of the time that means that you should remove them.

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Another aspect that is worth thinking about is the structure - and especially the paragraphs.

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And ideally each paragraph should have one clear message. Each paragraph should make one point.

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And if you find that you cannot really tell what the point of your paragraph is - most of the time that

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will be because you're putting too much into one paragraph -

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Then I would suggest that you think again about how you want to structure your text into paragraphs.

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Very often it helps to just split a long paragraph up but sometimes you also may need a little bit more

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restructuring.

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Another thing to think about is your wording: is it consistent?

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So for example, I could call the so-called new view on depression

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the "information processing" view, I could call it the "focus" view, I could call it the "cognitive" view but

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ideally I should just pick one and stick to that in the whole paper because it makes the writing a lot

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more clear.

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Another thing to think about is: is everything you're saying true?

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And basically what this means is that whenever you make a claim you should have a citation for it.

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And if you don't have a citation for it, you should mark it as speculation.

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So you should use an expression such as "it is conceivable that" or" we speculate that"... something that marks

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your claim as something that is not yet established.

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And finally I also encourage you to think about the clarity of your writing and for that you can definitely

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use the "useful English expressions" sheet. And in the next lecture I want to zoom into this a little bit

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more and show you how we can use these expressions to really fine tune your writing.

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So I see you in the next lecture.