Priceless Writing Tips40 Great Clichés to Add to Your Academic Phrase Bank

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‘Avoid clichés like the plague,’ you’ve probably heard this tip too many times. However, this advice is almost useless for academic writers.

You can and should use clichés in academic papers. It’ll save you plenty of time and it can make your papers look much better.

Save this list to your academic phrase bank that can come in handy:

1. An experimental investigation was conducted to explore …
2. In this study, … was analyzed.
3. This article presents an exhaustive review of these studies and suggests a direction for future research.
4. The results reveal that …
5. Based on the results, …
6. The results also show that …
7. It was found out that …
8. It is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that …
9. X is one of the leading causes of …
10. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in …
11. The past decade has seen the rapid development of X in many …
12. One question that needs to be asked, however, is whether …
13. A serious weakness with this argument, however, is that …
14. The key problem with this explanation is that …
15. X’s argument relies too heavily on qualitative analysis of …
16. Many scholars have challenged X’s claim on the grounds that …
17. One major drawback of this approach is that…
18. Perhaps the most serious disadvantage of this method is that …
19. Most studies in the field of X have only focused on …
20. Much of the research up to now has been descriptive in nature …
21. A quantitative method was chosen to allow…
22. The design of the interview is based on …
23. According to recent reports, …
24. Smith (2001) holds the view that …
25. There is some evidence to suggest that …
26. This inconsistency can be explained by …
27. There are several possible explanations for this result.
28. The evidence from this study suggests that …
29. The strategies to improve X might include …
30. Most scholars generally place an emphasis on …
31. These data must be interpreted with caution because…
32. It is important to bear in mind the possible bias in the findings of this study.
33. The X approach has a number of attractive advantages…
34. Extreme X is a risk factor for Y.
35. X may be an important factor in …
36. X may have played a vital role in Y…
37. The evidence of X can be clearly seen in…
38. X is a good illustration of …
39. This research clearly confirms the importance of …
40. This research reveals the need for further investigation…

Do you have your personal favorite phrases (or cliches) you use (or even abuse) in your papers?