Writing for nursing research, an essay on style: Continuities

Abstract

In the given–new model of sentence structure, each sentence begins with a context that the author and reader share, and each sentence concludes with new information, which also suggests how the next sentence will begin. As a result, the reader’s experience is never interrupted, so that consecutive sentences “ ow.” As Williams recommends, “generally, use the beginning of your sentences to refer to what you have already mentioned or knowledge that you can assume you and your reader readily share” This is the given information, which points toward the new information at the sentence’s end. You could also de ne this movement as a patterned sequence, as A–B, B–C, C–D, and so forth, where each pair of letters represents a sentence, and each letter after the rst in a pair is new and then in the next sentence familiar. We can put this more generally: In formal academic writing, we write linearly, such that each sentence should prepare the reader for the next, resulting in a continuous, logical development. This is one way to achieve coherence in what we are saying and satisfy our readers’ expectations.