“I really hate writing conclusions. I am writing something now and I am very tempted to write the following as my conclusion: I wrote, I argued, it has finished. You can stop reading now. Thank you.”
— (via Bluesky January 2024)
This is a very common sentiment. I have seen it numerous times on social media over the years. (Which is why I’m not crediting this to any particular person) I assume that for every person who says this out loud, there are many more who have said it to themselves.
You are probably one of those people.
It is understandable that you feel this way. You’ve spent considerable time and effort articulating your argument, supporting it with evidence, and engaging with related arguments.
A conclusion shouldn’t add anything new, so why do you need to say anything at all?
Who are you writing for?
As I’ve argued elsewhere, as you move through the scholarly writing process, you shift from writing to clarify your own thoughts, to writing with a specific audience in mind. (Also see The Scholarly Writing Process: A Short Guide)
When you write the conclusion, you need to be even more specific about who this audience is.
You imagine that you are writing the conclusion for a scholar who has read the entire article carefully.
- The colleague you send your draft to before submitting it will read it this way.
- The peer reviewers for the journal will read it this way.
In many ways, these kinds of readers are representatives of the broader scholarly audience who will eventually read your article.
However, they differ from that broader scholarly audience in one significant way.
The role of friendly critic or peer reviewer requires making time to read the full article carefully. The average academic reader does make time to read carefully but also reads in other ways.
The conclusion is more important to some readers than others
Think of your own reading strategies. Think about the reading strategies you recommend to your students. (see What does advice for readers mean for you as a writer?)
More importantly, think about your process for deciding which papers you need to read, and how you prioritize them.
I suspect you, like many scholars, use a strategy very similar to the AIC method described by Raul Pacheco-Vega in “Finding the most relevant information in a paper when reading: A three-step method (the AIC technique)”
This method involves reading the Abstract, a few paragraphs of the Introduction , and the Conclusion.
Write your conclusion for these readers.
It should absolutely contain spoilers. As my own PhD supervisor said “You are not writing a mystery novel.”
Whatever you think of people who cite articles they have not read carefully, write your conclusion to reduce the risk that those people will not egregiously misrepresent your main argument.
Trust that the people who need to read the whole thing will do so
Most scholars for whom your argument is important enough to cite will read the paper carefully. Your conclusion may even encourage them to do so.
Whether they agree with your argument or not, your conclusion will indicate whether it is relevant to what they are working on. Or, it will spark ideas in the context of their specific expertise and context.
The AIC method is not a substitute for deeper reading.
It is a way to map a field, make decisions about what to read and how to prioritize that reading. It helps prevent you from going off on interesting tangents, while enabling you to take good enough notes to explore those tangents later if desired.
That relevance or spark will put your article on their to-read list and help your reader decide how important or urgent it is that they read it.
As Dr Pacheco-Vega says in the conclusion to his blog post about the AIC method:
“I absolutely do NOT recommend skipping the middle of the paper (methods, data, results, argument), but at least these three elements may provide a tool to decide on whether to do a detailed memorandum on the paper, whether to simply write a rhetorical precis, and what kind of information to look for throughout the paper for your Conceptual Synthesis Excel Worksheet.”
— Raul Pacheco-Vega, “Finding the most relevant information in a paper when reading: A three-step method (the AIC technique)”, 28 January 2017)
The importance of the conclusion for careful readers
By focusing on these rushed and overwhelmed readers when you write your conclusion, you will also serve the needs of the more careful readers, including your friendly critic and the peer reviewers.
What do those careful readers need from your conclusion:
- A reminder of your main argument
- A reminder of why this argument might be significant to them
- A reminder of who else this argument might be significant to
Reinforcing those main points is important. We have all read peer review reports that seem to have missed the main point, or were so committed to their own ideas that they were unable to engage fully with it, in favour of imagining the paper the reviewer might have written in its place.
The response to that kind of reviewer comment is never to write the paper the reviewer wanted. (See Peer Review: A Short Guide for more about this.) The response to that kind of review is always to consider how your reviewer was able to lose sight of your argument.
A good conclusion can go a long way to preventing this kind of thing.
While you’re thinking about the conclusion in this way, you might want to go back to those crucial paragraphs of the Introduction to make sure it is consistent.
And then have another look at your abstract to ensure that it contains enough detail, given the word limit, to encourage your ideal readers to read the introduction and conclusion, and hopefully put it on their to-read list.
Related Posts & Links:
What does advice for readers mean for you as a writer?
Writing summaries and abstracts
Communication vs Validation: Why are you writing
Pat Thomson also has several posts on writing conclusions, including: “Start with Writing Conclusions – Getting Stuff Sorted”
For an introduction to all the Short Guides in the series, including Finding Time for Your Scholarly Writing, The Scholarly Writing Process, Scholarly Publishing and Peer Review, head to my Books page.
This post was inspired by a post on Bluesky, the new social media network where you can follow me by invite only. It was originally sent to the newsletter on 16 February 2024 and has been lightly edited.
