When writing an academic piece, many students make the mistake of including a value judgment inappropriately or without backing it up with solid evidence. Assigning a value judgment to a topic can be vague and may not tell your audience exactly what you mean. For a clear and concise argument, value judgments should be left out of your academic writing. Here are some tips to navigate your academic writing without using value judgments.
What is a Value Judgement?
A value judgment is a claim that places a judgment on someone or something as good or bad. Value judgments share the writer’s opinion on the moral value of the topic. Value judgments include saying that a topic or person is good, bad, or anywhere in between.
Value judgments can also include what someone should, could, or ought to do in a certain situation. When a writer makes a value judgment, they interject their opinion on possible next steps. These judgments do not add value to your argument and only work to share your opinion. Ironically, value judgments do very little to add actual value to your academic writing.
Isolating your Audience
Not only do value judgments do little to add value to your work, but they can also isolate your audience and make your writing less convincing. When you place a value judgment in your work those who disagree with your judgment will feel isolated from your argument. Value judgments make it easier for your audience to discount the points you make in your writing because they can see your opinion. If your audience opposes your opinion or sides with the original point you are placing a value judgment on, it will be extremely difficult to convince them that what you are saying in your writing has value.
Staying Objective
Academic writing is all about using what others have said in the past to help support your claims. When doing this work, it is important to stay objective with both the material and the individuals who have produced that material. Staying objective can help you use the information you have on hand to create a sounder argument by using the fact of what is being said. Subjectivity can minimize the impact of your claims because you are relying more on how the information feels and not its actual impact on the topic. To write strong academic pieces, you must stay objective when using others’ work to support your claims.
Follow the Three C’s
The three c’s can help you write academic work without muddying the water for your audience. Following the three Cs will ensure that you are communicating your claims as best as you can.
Clarity
Your main ideas, claims, and arguments all need to be easily identifiable in your work. Your audience needs to be certain of exactly what you are trying to say. Make a list of your claims and be sure that they are present within your work. Value judgments can make your points less clear and levels of doubt within the audience’s mind. To ensure clarity in your academic writing you must state your claims clearly without adding your opinion or value judgment to each point.
Conciseness
Being direct in your academic writing helps your audience see your claims front and center. Keeping your writing concise can help you drop unnecessary fluff and use the space to provide more support for the things you are trying to convince your audience of. One of the first things that need to go from your academic writing when making it more concise is value judgments. Value judgments add little value to your claims and only work to make your points less direct. You can make your work more concise by reviewing each sentence and determining what it is that that sentence accomplishes. If you cannot find the answer, it is time to cut the sentence. You can also make your work more concise by cutting out unnecessary words like ‘very’ and ‘really’.
Consistency
Your message needs to be the same throughout your entire piece. You do not want to present conflicting arguments or change the main point throughout your piece. Value judgments can make it more difficult to stay consistent in your writing by adding a layer of opinion-based claims that can contradict or weaken your main idea. You can ensure that your message is consistent by reviewing your work and asking yourself if the main idea is present throughout. If at any point the claim changes, you need to revise the piece for consistency.
Say What you Mean
Academic writing is a place for you to make new claims with the help and support of others who have done the work before you. When you are writing an academic piece, you are the authority on the subject you are writing about. This is important because it means that you can directly say the things you need to say to make your claims without needing to add qualifiers or value judgments to the work.
Academic writing is your space to prove that you can synthesize other material and use it to make something new. You do not want to obstruct that process by interjecting opinions that add little to your argument. Make clear, concise, and consistent claims so that your audience can see how you have used your sources to support a logical claim.
The most important thing in academic writing is communicating your points to your audience. Nothing should stand in the way of you saying the things you need to say in your work to do that properly. Although value judgments may seem like a valuable addition to your work that puts your own two cents in, you can provide your thoughts through claims that are well-developed. Communicating your main idea and supporting that idea with great evidence is going to get your point across much more effectively than sharing a value judgment within your piece.