How can a writer’s choice of words convey a false impression of their knowledge of the topic in question?

Should you wish to appear erudite in your writing, here are four ways of doing so. Please note that this is intended to be tongue-in-cheek, but serious points will emerge.

The college essay

How to impress your tutor with the depth and breadth of your reading? How to convey, in a single sentence, that you know so much about this topic that there is a possibility that your knowledge exceeds that of your tutor. I tried this technique several times at university, and each time it received a tick next to it, and not counter-comments or questions from the tutor. The magic phrase to use is:

“It is amusing to note that…”

Ideally, there should be nothing remotely amusing about the thing you’re commenting on, thereby suggesting that you have some broader background understanding which sheds a rather different light on it.

I came across this technique in a book I referred to while researching a topic for an essay while at uni. It was in a footnote (ideal), and said something like the following. Let’s say the matter being discussed is that (according to the On This Day website), Peter the Great ended Russian Orthodox patriarchy on January 25th in 1721. In this case, the footnote might read:

“It is amusing to note that less than two months later John Aislabie, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, was confined in the Tower of London.”

As far as I know, these two events are not in the slightest degree connected, much less amusing. Nevertheless, that footnote does suggest that you’ve delved into the topic at some depth and discovered a kind of butterfly effect whereby a change in the situation in Russia affected the career prospects of a politician in England.

Another college essay

In an article I wrote for the student newspaper while at uni (happily included below), I discussed the technique used by both real intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals when it comes to discussing a topic. The example I cited was in the form of a conversation, but it could easily be adjusted for a written format:

Jones: After 1870, the output of the coal industry declined.

Smith: What period are you referring to, i.e. World War 1 or when? What do you mean by output? What type of coal? How have you measured the industry? Relative or absolute decline?

Thus, a sentence in your essay might read:

“According to Jones (1986), the coal industry saw a massive decline after 1870. However, Jones fails to specify whether this was an absolute decline or a relative one, and indeed even fails to state which measures he has based his statement on.”

Random marks

This is something Stephen Potter, author of the One Upmanship books recommends. Take any book from the library, and annotate it with completely random marks and comments. You can imagine that this would give the impression to future borrowers that they have merely skimmed the surface, and have little more than a superficial understanding of the text.

I have to say that trying to impress random strangers seems completely bonkers to me, plus I don’t like writing on books anyway. However, if this appeals to you, I’ve exemplified the technique by making random comments and marks on the article I mentioned a few minutes ago:

The comment at the bottom, by the way, reads “But surely not in the south?”. This is another Potterism, designed to stop any exposition by an expert dead in its tracks. I’ve tried it: it works.

The review

Turning to Potter again, he includes the art of “reviewmanship” in his examination of the art of one-upmanship. He suggests using phrases such as “I’m surprised that so eminent a scholar as Dr Whitefleet…”.

He also suggests using phrases like “delightfully fresh and spontaneous”, on the grounds that it suggests you are delightfully fresh and spontaneous! Another suggestion is “A rewarding experience”, which sounds like praise but which tells us nothing.

Concluding remarks

Although the suggestions in this article are not intended to be acted upon, they do highlight the importance of choosing words and phrases, and even punctuation in the form of question marks and exclamation marks., carefully To my mind, the phrase “it is amusing to note” carries a completely different weight to “it is interesting to note”. Writing that you are “surprised that so eminent a scholar as Dr Whitefleet…” has written whatever it is they’ve written suggests that not only are you familiar with Dr Whitefleet’s work but also that you have explored the subject more deeply than he or she has.

Indeed, on this last point, an article in itself (which I intend to write one of these days) is: what is the purpose of book reviews? It’s a fair question, because in some publications the answer seems to be not to inform readers about the book, but to inform them of the expertise of the reviewer.