Premise

Initial Rule: Start Simple

One potential “mistake” that many students make is thinking that they need to make their writing “perfect” when they start a paper (or any work). Instead, you should focus on getting your ideas out, then return to a draft as you work to specify your points at both the larger paragraph-level and smaller sentence-level scales.

In fact, that’s the entire premise behind writing as a “process”. Any ideas worth sharing need time and further focus to develop. Sometimes it helps to step away from a piece like an essay for a few days, then return with specific goals in mind—like specifying vague words and phrases to more emphatically represent the analysis and argumentation behind your ideas.

So What Are Some Examples?

Take, for example, some of the most common vague words that we often talk about in class, and why they’re a problem for more clearly expressing our ideas:

• “Thing” “Thing” is a vague word because, well, everything is a “thing”. It doesn’t clarify your subject other than that we’re talking about a noun, which is hardly specific or descriptive—and certainly not interesting.
• “It” “It” is a vague word because much like “thing”, it’s potentially applicable to even more situations, objects, etc.
• “This” “This” what? Such a word often leaves a reader wondering what exactly you’re referring to—whether that point is a previous idea, analysis, or other reference.
• “That” “That” often suffers from the same vagueness as “this”. “That” what? Again, with even just a bit further elaboration here, we can go a long way toward enhancing the clarity of our ideas.

There are other examples out there, but again, these are the most commonly found in paper writing, and are therefore some of the more frequent ones that you should at the very least be looking out for!

Do I Have to Replace All of These Vague Words Then?

The short answer is “no”. But you want to identify these (and other) vague words and genuinely ask if and where there are opportunities to more expertly elaborate upon what you’re trying to express.

Let’s take the following example and look at which vague words can at least be considered as opportunities for elaboration:

This isn’t the only problem that the author brings up about how it impacts students of different backgrounds. He also identifies how international students are affected by it. The author explains that “many foreign students have petitioned that the university change their policy. In fact, one group went as far as to protest outside the main Administration Building back in 2017” (para. 2). This shows how it involves everyone. This is the thing that bothers the author. He brings it up early in his article because it’s going to be a point he focuses on throughout the rest of it. It’s important, therefore, to establish how it impacts the rest of it.

There’s actually already some really nice elaboration in this paragraph—but there are also definitely opportunities as we can see all of the aforementioned potentially vague words here. While we don’t have to eliminate all of them, let’s see what happens if we try to imagine which specific examples can serve as opportunities to express the specific ideas more clearly:

This isn’t the only problem isn’t the only one that the author brings up about how it the issue impacts students of different backgrounds. He also identifies how international students are affected by it such a long standing situation. The author explains that “many foreign students have petitioned that the university change their policy. In fact, one group went as far as to protest outside the main Administration Building back in 2017” (para. 2). This These types of specific examples show how it involves everyone is involved, which seems to bother the author. This is the thing that bothers the author. He brings it up raises this universal impact early in his article because it’s going to be a point he focuses on throughout the rest of it remainder of his article. It’s important, therefore, to establish how it this particular point impacts the rest of it is integral to the rest of his analysis and argumentation.

Now let’s look at the edited version and how to compares to the original:

This isn’t the only problem that the author brings up about how the issue impacts students of different backgrounds. He also identifies how international students are affected by such a long standing situation. The author explains that “many foreign students have petitioned that the university change their policy. In fact, one group went as far as to protest outside the main Administration Building back in 2017” (para. 2). These types of specific examples show how everyone is involved, which seems to bother the author. He raises this universal impact early because it’s going to be a point he focuses on throughout the remainder of his article. It’s important, therefore, to establish how this particular point is integral to the rest of his analysis and argumentation.

As you can see, some “vague” words we can leave because we’ve taken the opportunity to clarify those we deem worth specifying towards more specific points. Phrases like “This universal impact” is a clear elaboration of the previously vague word of just “This”.

Some of these phrases might be clear enough—depending upon the context around this paragraph. E.g. the first sentence that starts with “This isn’t the only problem…” might be just fine if we’re referring to the quite clearly identified “problem” as we should assume is explained (and concluded) in the previous paragraph. If this is not the case, then maybe some more opportunities to clarify your points!

You want to think “logistically” in these ways—which is a fancy way of saying that specification is dependent upon what other details are going on around your words. Consider these further opportunities and you’ll be well on your way to more specific, emphatic, and interesting writing!