Reporting nursing research, an essay on style: Beginnings

Abstract

Like any science, doing nursing research requires writing about it. The better the writing, the more effective the dissemination of the research and its findings. Yet apart from Nurse Author & Editor, little literature focuses on writing about research in nursing specifically, and the few handbooks on writing for nurses (e.g., Oermann & Hays; Saver; Tornquist) address much more than style. Nonetheless, students in nursing research, even if skilled at writing clinical notes, may need to refine or refresh their mastery of style for writing research papers and dissertations. Their professors may need resources to teach style too. Here I suggest a principle of English sentence structure as a pedagogical and evaluative tool to address the mechanics of writing for nursing research. In the world of English composition, drawing on the work of linguists (e.g., Prince), it is usually spoken of as the given– new or old–new model of sentence structure, or the known–new contract between writer and reader. I draw especially on Williams' elaboration of the model, which tells us that well‐written sentences present two types of information, “given” and “new,” which together inform a logical, iterative sequence that yields what is often called the “flow” of written thought. This model is useful, because most of us intuitively recognize whether or not a text “flows” well, regardless of “grammar.” But few have consciously acquired an analytical model that tests how well writers establish and maintain that written flow of thought. The given–new model of sentence structure is grounded in the communication of context—the idea that whenever we write, we present contexts that we share with readers. Written words, sentences, and paragraphs create and iteratively re‐create those contexts, sequentially establishing, re‐establishing, and maintaining them so that they remain in the reader's mind without interruption of thought. In this article, I apply the model to beginnings; in a future article, I will develop its use beyond that. THE FIRST SENTENCE