So What Who Cares They Say I Say? Trust The Answer

When you write a summary, you need to tell your readers enough about his or her argument so that they can judge its merits independently from you.

The “so what?” test can be a powerful tool for making your academic writing concise and ensuring it engages your reader.

Effective science writing and editing requires concise and persuasive language.

There are many tips on how to do this, from using passive versus active verbs, or using jargon-free language, to vague advice like “try to be concise,” although it’s difficult to give an exact formula for it how to write well and persuasively.

Common advice also focuses on grammar rules, which can be difficult for scholars who haven’t recently taken language refresher courses and is nearly impossible for the large number of non-English scholars, and advice doesn’t help if you don’t know how to turn it on.

To address this, I began using and teaching the “so what?” test.

To use this test, one simply breaks down a piece of work into paragraphs, sentences or even clauses or individual words and asks “so what?”. Asking that one simple question and thinking carefully about the answer as you work through it can remove redundant words, streamline vague or wordy sentences, and create arguments that will persuade your reader.

So, how does this “so what?” test work? First, let’s look at some questions you can ask yourself during the So What test, and then we can expand on them with examples so you can see it in action.

Questions to ask yourself during the so what? test:

Does this sentence contribute to my work?

This question is designed to remove vague or unimportant language from your manuscript.

Does this sentence add value? Important background information? a result? an interpretation of a result? If not, is it necessary?

This point can also help structure your document when you use it in context – ask yourself if the sentence fits in the manuscript, then section, then paragraph. Perhaps this sentence is useful, but not in its current position.

What does the reader learn from this sentence? Is this knowledge relevant to understanding my manuscript?

These questions are designed to remove points that are off-topic and therefore distract from your overall story. If the information you are submitting does not advance your specific story or is not required to understand your scholarship, then it should not be included in your work, no matter how relevant it may seem to the subject or current audience. Move your story forward, and your story only, and keep it concise.

Is the point of this sentence clear, or is it too convoluted and vague?

This point deals with the writing style. Can the reader jump right into your sentence and understand what you’re trying to say? If you are not sure, read it aloud or paste it into a translation website to have it read aloud to you. How far into the sentence do you have to listen before you get the point? Can you move the point of the sentence further forward to better grab the reader’s attention?

Also, try paraphrasing it, or have someone else paraphrase it for you. In this exercise, you may find that a sentence is either completely irrelevant, has already been phrased differently elsewhere in the paper, or could be drastically rephrased to improve readability.

If I removed that word/phrase/phrase, would the meaning of my manuscript change? OR, if I remove this sentence, how will my manuscript change, and is that acceptable?

This captures repetition and wordiness. If something can be removed from your manuscript without affecting the meaning, then it is irrelevant and you don’t need it. Use this exercise to remove parts that are mentioned multiple times in slightly different ways, remove excessive/passive wordiness, and ensure all of your writing is focused and relevant to your story.

Is this point understandable for my listeners, i. H. are the terms and concepts either available at the common level of knowledge of my readers or have they been adequately explained?

This point can capture inexplicable concepts that can confuse your reader. Make sure each term in the sentence you’re editing is understandable to your audience’s level of knowledge.

All manuscripts should be designed in such a way that a reader knowing only the lowest common course your reading base would have taken would understand all that was written. With general audience journals like PNAS, you have to assume your reader had the equivalent of Chemistry or Biology 101. This means that you don’t have to explain to him what RNA is, but should include a short clause that defines the function of microRNA or siRNA.

So how do we apply this test to our own work? Let’s look at an example:

“Polymers have recently been used to improve therapeutics.”

“So what?”

Even if your work is about the application of polymers in therapeutics, does this sentence add something to your work or argument? Not really, because that sentence doesn’t contain any real facts, meaning it doesn’t add any value, and because the reader is already reading an article about a polymer that has been used for therapeutics (hopefully that’s what this article is about, or something the sentence is REALLY irrelevant!), you probably already know this information. If you removed that sentence from an article on polymers and therapeutics, would the meaning change? Probably not.

Looking at some of the individual words here also brings up some issues. What types of polymers? therapeutics? What does “recently” mean? This month? this year? this decade? How about “applied”? Are these polymers conjugated with therapeutics? Used as a carrier of nanoparticles?

Overall, such sentences are common in science, and everyone writes them. They are the first draft of sets of ideas that are helpful in “outlining” the overall structure of the paper (it’s easy to add a paragraph after this sentence on the important background of polymers in therapeutics), but all too often they manage to be definitive drafts and mess up the whole text.

So how do we use the “so what?” test for this draft sentence to increase the impact of our writing?

First, we can make it more specific to our paper. What types of polymers are we writing about? How have these specific ones been applied to therapeutics? What do our applied polymers do to improve therapeutics? Is there a specific mechanism or improvement we are focusing on? What is the story behind and/or what are some existing examples of these polymers or applications?

Second, if that information is in a later and sentence, and that was just an introductory sentence, do we need it? We can probably delete it and our paragraph will have exactly the same effect. Otherwise, this information can be incorporated into future sentences to keep the flow moving in a way that is more useful to our reader.

Last but not least, how can we change our vague words to provide more detail that can make the writing more interesting for our reader?

As an example, we could write something like:

“Over the past 10 years, PEG-based polymers conjugated to rapidly degrading therapeutics have been shown to increase circulating half-life.”

This sentence answers many of the questions that came up in our “so what?” test. First off, we used adjectives to describe our vague nouns, which make the sentence (and therefore the manuscript) much more specific. This can actually improve our readership and therefore our impact by appealing very strongly to a small segment of readers, which is better than not appealing to a large segment of readers at all.

Next, we gave meaning to this phrase. Now the reader learns exactly which types of polymers have a very specific effect in the field of therapeutics. This will also draw readers’ attention to key points we wish to emphasize (PEG polymers and extending the half-life of therapeutics) rather than a phrase that causes them to digress.

Obviously, this sentence could be changed in a number of ways depending on what the paper will be emphasizing (stay tuned for a future post on identifying your specific audience and writing for them!), although this is a good start for a clearer sentence to create with greater impact.

Let’s look at another example:

“The polymer developed here showed a better half-life and less toxicity to meet the desired therapeutic requirements.”

While this sentence highlights the results of this study, it is almost too vague to be of any use. The reader does not know what “better” means and will likely page back through the paper to see the outcome of the polymer as well as the therapeutic requirements.

In fact, words like “better/worse,” “higher/lower,” etc. should never be used without a qualifying number. It MUST always be 4 times better, 3 times higher, etc. This also applies to the significance. Never state that a result is significant or insignificant without providing the p-value in the sentence.

If more than one polymer was tested in this study, this should be stated and the therapeutic requirements reformulated. To give the reader more meaning, the writer of this sentence should also consider adding a “so what” clause or second sentence. These phrases often begin with “mean/demonstrate/show/indicate that…” and explicitly explain why this is important or important.

So how could this sentence be modified to pass the “so what?” test?

“The polymer-drug conjugate MC121 therefore showed a half-life 20 times longer than the drug alone (~20 h vs. 1 h) with no demonstrated toxicity in mice. This means it can be a good lead target for treating target diseases that require a half-life greater than 5 hours to avoid constant IVs.”

But adding all those extra words makes my manuscript so long, and I’ve already crossed the word limit!

Yes, sometimes a clarification can make a sentence longer than the more vague version of the sentence, but the “so what” test can also be used to shorten a manuscript.

For example, I bet you’ve seen a lot of this type of academic writing:

“The polymer was used to extend the half-life of this drug to achieve a half-life in excess of 5 hours to avoid the need for continuous infusions of the drug.”

Applying the “so what” to this sentence, we find that almost half of the wording in this sentence is superfluous and the sentence is still vague. Expressions like “was applied to” result in confusing sentences that don’t provide much information. Why do we need to say something “was applied to the extension of…” when “extend” does it in one word, or when “was applied to” could be made much more specific, like e.g. B. “was conjugated to the free carboxyl acid of…”. Also, the excessive wordiness and passive structuring of the sentence make it difficult for the reader to understand, since the punchline of the sentence appears about halfway and is a bit lost in wordiness. If a reader isn’t paying close attention, it’s possible to lose track of what this sentence is trying to say before it gets to the point.

Therefore, the “so what?” test tells us that we should remove excessive verbiage and better emphasize the point of this sentence, while adding detail where possible.

What if we tried:

“To extend the drug’s half-life to more than 5 hours to avoid constant infusions, we conjugated polymer 121 to the free carboxylic acid of MC.”

Or, to make a completely different and yet more readable sentence:

“We hypothesized that conjugation of different polymers (1, 2, or 5 kDa) to MC could yield a conjugate with a half-life greater than 5 hours to avoid the need for continuous infusions.”

This application of the “so what” test is great for trimming and tightening up sentences, but sometimes more drastic action is required when the entire document is too long.

In these cases, compose your next draft with an “Additive so what” test.

For this version, start with a blank document and copy and paste one sentence at a time. Reapply the so-what test to each sentence copied into your new draft, but only copy in the sentences that pass.

In this situation, don’t ask “What is unimportant enough to remove?” but ask “What is important enough to keep?”.

The mentality shift here seems subtle, but it has had a major impact on streamlining the writing. So each sentence has to prove itself to make it into the final cut, which is more difficult/rigorous than a sentence that doesn’t exactly have to be superfluous.

Over time, the “so what?” test will be internalized in your writing and doesn’t always have to be an additional step. It will eventually be easier to spot the vague or unimportant sentences as you write them and correct them on the spot.

Oh hey – that sounds like becoming a better science writer!

If you still need a little more help, you can always check out our academic manuscript writing workshops!

Have fun writing!

hp We’d love to see your best examples of phrases that failed your “so what” test and what you did to fix them! Post your examples in the comments…

You say is the summary or statement of the opinion you are responding to; You know because you’re talking about someone else’s ideas

It means saying the same thing but in a different way. They want to build bridges that keep connecting and moving on. It helps to refer to the previous sentences and the central ideas of the work. Use transitional words like also, in addition, in spite of, etc.

—

used to emphasize that something is not important

Okay, we’re going to have a little story time. I started college at UNR in 2010. In my first semester I took an English 101 course (and hated it, but that’s beside the point). In this class we used the same You Say I Say book that we use now. Unfortunately, I don’t think I ever actually read the book or followed the advice it contained. So I had to write a paper for this class and the topic was basically why Nazis were bad. I thought it was pretty obvious why Nazis were bad, but when I got my graded paper back, the teacher had written “so what” and “who cares.” In my head I thought this lady is crazy, it’s obvious why this matters and obviously you (the teacher) care because you made me write this. Now that I’m more mature and wiser (or maybe it’s because I’m actually reading what’s being assigned now), I understand why the teacher wrote those comments on my work. All I had done was have my essay outline reasons why the Nazis were bad, pure and simple. I did not explain the context in which I wrote the work or why it is important for people to know this information.

Chapter 7 of They Say, I Say discusses the meaning of “so what” and “who cares.” Graff and Birkenstein (2010) summarize these questions best when they say: “Regardless of how interesting a topic may be to you as a writer, readers always need to know what a text is about and why it should interest them. All too often, however, these questions remain unanswered—mainly because authors and speakers assume that the audience already knows the answers or will find them out for themselves” (p. 92). This is exactly what happened with my paper. I felt the answers were so obvious that I didn’t need to address them. However, the answer to these questions is of great importance in our writings. You could write the clearest and most focused work with a spectacular thesis, but if you don’t answer these questions, the reader will still question the purpose of the work. It’s all related to purpose. We, as writers, have to make our audience believe that what we write has such meaning that if they don’t read it, they’re missing out.

A good example of who cares in They Say, I Say is the very first template/example. It says: “Parents used to think spanking was necessary. But recently [or within the last few decades] experts are suggesting that this may be counterproductive” (p.95). By stating that parents found spanking necessary, the authors make it clear that parents should take care of this issue. The templates for answering “so what” are super simple and straight forward. All involve stating (in different words) that issue x is important/significant/has major consequences/etc. Because _________. Although both questions may seem obvious to the author, it is still important to clearly articulate the answers to the questions. Otherwise, readers will feel confused and feel like reading is a waste of time.

Introduction:

In the introduction to They Say, I Say, the author provides effective templates for structuring essays. The authors believe that you (the author) should not only express your ideas and beliefs, but also say what others say. The authors also state that the best way to respond to an argument is to agree or disagree at the same time. They think this is the best way because it avoids the question of “yes” or “no” as there is no easy answer. This section also notes that these templates don’t limit creativity, they actually allow for more creativity when organizing.

I think these templates are very helpful for structuring essays. Having a clear argument in an essay is one of the more difficult aspects of writing a paper because you can’t use a simple word to justify an argument. The templates are helpful in that they allow the author to reason clearly and then interpret the opinions of others as well.

Chapter one:

In chapter one, the author focuses on the meaning of what others are saying. Basically, none of the important information should be left out. All information is required as the reader cannot be assumed to know what the author is talking about.

“Remember that when you start a conversation, you must start with ‘what others say’ and provide your own ideas in response” (p. 18).

“This little story illustrates an important lesson: in order to give writing the most important thing of all, which is a point, an author must clearly state not only his or her thesis, but also what larger conversation that thesis is responding to” (page 18). .

“Instead of starting with someone else’s views, you might start with an illustrative quote, a revealing fact or statistic, or a relevant anecdote” (page 20).

After I’ve finished reading, I would like to know how to insert an illustrative quote, insightful fact or statistic, or relevant anecdote into an essay. I feel like this is really difficult because it might seem like unnecessary information and I don’t know how to effectively relate an argument to it.

Graff, Gerald; Birkenstein, Cathy (2007-08-17). “They Say / I Say”: The crucial steps in persuasive writing (p. 20). WW Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

I came across an article by Selwyn (2014) that raises the issue of relevance when writing a peer-reviewed journal article. The “so what?” question is a hypothetical question that a reader will ask when they don’t understand why your research and this paper are important. The reader really asks: Why should I continue reading? Why should I care ?

When we work on a project and bring it to life, we often become short-sighted about the details. Since we consider the topic important, we assume that others will automatically understand and agree. Selwyn (2014), writing from his role as a member of the editorial board of Learning, Media and Technology, notes the importance of the so-what? Question is for magazine editors. He writes, “Just because we’ve published three papers on Twitter doesn’t mean we’re keen to publish more. What we aim to publish are articles that contribute to understanding the social complexities of digital technology and media use in education. That’s what the “So What?” Question means us” (p. 3). He grabs it so what? :

What relevance does the article have for practice in the field or for other aspects of the “real world”? What is the significance of the article for politics? What is the relevance of the article for other scientific research? What is the significance of the article for the theory?

You don’t have to worry about all those things, so what? Questions in an Essay – You’ll probably focus on one or two, but the questions will help you align your essay with your readers.

I hope this will help you think about the relevance of your research to your audience next time you write a paper.

(Of course, these questions can also be applied to a thesis.)

Here is the reference:

Selwyn, N (2014). “So what?” … a question that every magazine article has to answer. Learning, Media and Technology, 39(1), 1-5.