The information on this page formatted as a handout that can be printed for convenient reference as you write.
accentuated | held the view that |
accepted | hypothesized |
accessed | identified |
acknowledged | illustrated |
added | implemented |
administered | implied |
advised | indicated |
affected | inferred |
agreed | interpreted |
analyzed | investigated |
appraised | justified |
approached | knew |
articulated | linked |
assessed | listed |
assumed | maintained |
assured | mentioned |
attributed | noted |
believed | observed |
categorized | outlined |
characterized | pointed out |
charted | posited |
claimed | presented |
clarified | professed |
classified | proposed |
concluded | realized |
concurred | reasoned that |
confirmed | recognized |
commented | refined |
compared | reflected |
considered | regarded |
contrasted | regulated |
created | relied on |
debated | reported |
declared | represented |
deduced | requested |
defined | responded |
demonstrated | revealed |
derived | questioned |
described | showed |
detected | sought to |
documented | specified |
differentiated | stated |
disagreed | studied |
discovered | submitted |
discussed | subscribed to |
encouraged | suggested |
estimated | surveyed |
evaluated | theorized |
examined | thought |
excluded | took into consideration |
explained | uncovered |
explored | understood |
expressed | used |
felt | utilized |
focused on | viewed |
found | wondered |
generated |
accused | guaranteed |
achieved | highlighted |
acknowledged | ignored |
advocated | inferred |
affirmed | insisted |
announced | intervened |
argued | justified |
asserted | maintained |
assumed | misinterpreted |
believed | monitored |
blamed | negated |
challenged | objected to |
claimed | opposed |
complained | persuaded |
conceded | presumed |
concluded | promised |
condoned | prioritized |
confirmed | proved |
contended | recognized |
contradicted | refuted |
criticized | reinforced |
declared | rejected |
denied | required |
determined | restricted |
deviated | revealed |
discounted | stressed |
dismissed | substantiated |
disputed | supported the view that |
disregarded | threatened |
doubted | underscored |
emphasized | upheld |
endorsed | urged |
established | validated |
exhorted | warned |
extolled | |
Adapted from American Psychological Association publication manual (7th ed.).
An official website of the United States government
The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.
The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.
Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .
Marco pautasso.
1 Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France
2 Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France
Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [1] . For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [2] . Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [3] . Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [4] . For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way [5] .
When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [6] . However, it is likely that most scientists have not thought in detail about how to approach and carry out a literature review.
Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [7] . In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights also come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well as feedback from reviewers and editors.
How to choose which topic to review? There are so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may have had the same idea in the meantime. On the other hand, only a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8] . The topic must at least be:
Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9] , but also from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should also select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (e.g., web services in computational biology) will automatically define an audience (e.g., computational biologists), but that same topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer science, biology, etc.).
After having chosen your topic and audience, start by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:
The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review ( Figure 1 ), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your issue, my advice is not to give up, but to carry on with your own literature review,
The bottom-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not just a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climate change on plant diseases, where there appear to be more literature reviews than research studies [33] .
When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:
If you read the papers first, and only afterwards start writing the review, you will need a very good memory to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My advice is, while reading, to start writing down interesting pieces of information, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the time you have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.
Of course, this draft will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11] , but you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank document. Be careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this stage, so as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save you time.
After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a minor review: it may well attract more attention from busy readers, although it will inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development, but may then be left in the pile of the very important papers “to be read” by readers with little time to spare for major monographs.
There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same point applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and interpretation of each reviewed study, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12] . A similar distinction exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13] , [14] . When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, depending not just on the nature of the material found and the preferences of the target journal(s), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15] .
Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a full review, it is good advice to keep it focused 16 , 17 . Including material just for the sake of it can easily lead to reviews that are trying to do too many things at once. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18] . If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this case a focused review would only deal in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.
While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to be balanced with the need to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may be circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.
Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does not just summarize the literature, but discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19] . After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:
It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense.
Like a well-baked cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader's time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does not work or is rarely used. However, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-home messages make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [20] .
How can you organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to order and link the various sections of a review [21] . This is the case not just at the writing stage, but also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can be very helpful to structure the text too [22] .
Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way as research papers, and rightly so [23] . As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps improve a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft one more time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.
Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the merits of the paper, and on how to improve it, but such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24] .
In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their own work [25] ? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus risk giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could also occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they will tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it.
In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-denial. If a reviewer is up to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to be objective in reviewing one's own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may be achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.
Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today's reviews of the literature need awareness not just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of inquiry, but also of the latest studies, so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a series of papers in press (the same applies, of course, to older, overlooked studies (“sleeping beauties” [26] )). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that it can take months before these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature up to a certain point in time, but given that peer review can be a rather lengthy process, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and impact on further research and society.
Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that there may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of science [27] – [32] . I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.
Many thanks to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, G. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.
This work was funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as part of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.
The APA manual discusses tense in the section on Smoothness of Expression on Page 65. The lit review of an APA style paper should be in past tense (The researchers found...) or present perfect (The researchers have shown...). The methodology should be in past tense if it has already happened. The results section of the paper should also be in past tense, and implications of the results and conclusions in present tense.
Was this helpful? Yes 181 No 41
Trustee Library: 625 Academy Street, Gainesville, Georgia 30501 | | | (P) 770-534-6113 or Toll-Free 800-252-5119, x6113 | (F) 770-534-6254 |
Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts
This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.
Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.
Note: This page reflects APA 6, which is now out of date. It will remain online until 2021, but will not be updated. There is currently no equivalent 7th edition page, but we're working on one. Thank you for your patience. Here is a link to our APA 7 "General Format" page .
Writing in APA is more than simply learning the formula for citations or following a certain page layout. APA also includes the stylistics of your writing, from point of view to word choice.
When writing in APA Style, you can use the first person point of view when discussing your research steps ("I studied ...") and when referring to yourself and your co-authors ("We examined the literature ..."). Use first person to discuss research steps rather than anthropomorphising the work. For example, a study cannot "control" or "interpret"; you and your co-authors, however, can.
In general, you should foreground the research and not the researchers ("The results indicate ... "). Avoid using the editorial "we"; if you use "we" in your writing, be sure that "we" refers to you and your fellow researchers.
It is a common misconception that foregrounding the research requires using the passive voice ("Experiments have been conducted ..."). This is inaccurate. Rather, you would use pronouns in place of "experiments" ("We conducted experiments ...").
APA Style encourages using the active voice ("We interpreted the results ..."). The active voice is particularly important in experimental reports, where the subject performing the action should be clearly identified (e.g. "We interviewed ..." vs. "The participants responded ...").
Consult the OWL handout for more on the distinction between passive and active voice .
Switching verb tenses can cause confusion for your readers, so you should be consistent in the tense you use. When discussing literature reviews and experimental procedures that have already happened, use past tense ("Our study showed" ) or present perfect tense ("studies have proven" ). Also use past tense when discussing results ("students’ concentration increased" ), but use present tense when discussing what your results mean and what conclusions you can draw from them ("Our study illustrates" ).
Clarity and conciseness in writing are important when conveying research in APA Style. You don't want to misrepresent the details of a study or confuse your readers with wordiness or unnecessarily complex sentences.
For clarity, be specific rather than vague in descriptions and explanations. Unpack details accurately to provide adequate information to your readers so they can follow the development of your study.
Example: "It was predicted that marital conflict would predict behavior problems in school-aged children."
To clarify this vague hypothesis, use parallel structure to outline specific ideas:
"The first hypothesis stated that marital conflict would predict behavior problems in school-aged children. The second hypothesis stated that the effect would be stronger for girls than for boys. The third hypothesis stated that older girls would be more affected by marital conflict than younger girls."
To be more concise, particularly in introductory material or abstracts, you should eliminate unnecessary words and condense information when you can (see the OWL handout on Conciseness in academic writing for suggestions).
Example: The above list of hypotheses might be rephrased concisely as: "The authors wanted to investigate whether marital conflict would predict behavior problems in children and they wanted to know if the effect was greater for girls than for boys, particularly when they examined two different age groups of girls."
Balancing the need for clarity, which can require unpacking information, and the need for conciseness, which requires condensing information, is a challenge. Study published articles and reports in your field for examples of how to achieve this balance.
You should even be careful in selecting certain words or terms. Within the social sciences, commonly used words take on different meanings and can have a significant effect on how your readers interpret your reported findings or claims. To increase clarity, avoid bias, and control how your readers will receive your information, you should make certain substitutions:
As with the other stylistic suggestions here, you should study the discourse of your field to see what terminology is most often used.
Writing papers in APA Style is unlike writing in more creative or literary styles that draw on poetic expressions and figurative language. Such linguistic devices can detract from conveying your information clearly and may come across to readers as forced when it is inappropriately used to explain an issue or your findings.
Therefore, you should:
Skip to Content
APA, Chicago and MLA are the three main referencing systems/writing styles used at Massey. Re commendations they make in relation to verb tenses are summarized below. Implementing these recommendations may be especially important if you are planning to publish work in a journal that requires certain style guidelines to be followed. However, for assignments or theses at Massey, it is important to be guided by any advice your lecturer or supervisor may provide in relation to use of tenses.
Simple past tense
Present perfect tense
Note : A shift of tense may be used to indicate that the research findings are still relevant.
Simple present tense
Both Chicago and MLA recommend the use of the simple present tense (e.g. ‘argues’) or present perfect tense (e.g. ‘has argued’) in the following situations:
No matter how long ago the work was published, the present tense is used, and even a deceased author ‘argues’ or ‘claims’.
Note : If the context is clearly historical (rather than textual), use of the past tense is acceptable.
These pages are provided as a guide to proper referencing. Your course, department, school, or institute may prescribe specific conventions, and their recommendations supersede these instructions. If you have questions not covered here, check in the style guide listed above, ask your course coordinator, or ask at Academic Q+A .
Page authorised by Director - Centre for Learner Success Last updated on 17 November, 2020
Have a study or assignment writing question? Ask an expert at Academic Q+A
To help you understand active and passive voice use, watch this video below by lund university:.
American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Azar, B. S.; & Hagen, S. A. (2009). Understanding and Using English Grammar (4th ed.). Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall Regents.
English verbs have:
A few examples were created by us at Ontario Tech University.
We chose a semi-structured approach (active).
was chosen (passive).
Most of the time we use the active voice in speaking. APA recommends that we use the active voice in academic writing as much as possible.
The passive is most frequently used when it is not important to know exactly who performs an action or when the speaker or writer wants to focus attention “on the recipient of the action rather than on the actor” (p. 77).
to provide guidance for the researcher conducting case studies (indicative).
Be mindful of APA formatting , style and usage issues! (imperative)
be interpreted properly (subjunctive).
Most of the time, in both speaking and writing, we use the indicative mood. For example, to ask questions and make factual statements.
When we want to express commands and requests, however, we use the imperative mood.
) and in the verb to be (which remains ‘be’ in the present for all persons and becomes ‘were’ in the past for all persons).
Evaluation feedback identified a need for a more condensed checklist for readers and reviewers (past).
constitutes a case study varies (present).
A case study will never provide conclusions with statistical significance (future).
methodology for software engineering research (simple).
The acceptance of empirical studies in software engineering and their contributions to increasing knowledge is continuously growing (progressive).
We have found interviews, observations, archival data and metrics being applicable to software engineering case studies (perfect).
For the past few years, researchers have been investigating the effectiveness of the use of case studies in engineering (perfect progressive).
There are twelve combinations of tenses and aspects in the indicative mood:
The most commonly used verb tenses in academic writing, however, are the simple present, simple past, present perfect, and simple future tenses .
APA (2010) says that, in an academic paper:
Note: For more information on verb tenses, see the overview of past tenses , present tenses , and future times pages.
Verb tense in signal phrases and to describe action, get help from the writing centre.
Search WriteAnswers for FAQs on your topic:
Can't find what you need?
RRU community members can use the button below to send your questions directly to the Writing Centre. We'll send you a private reply as soon as we can (typically within one business day of receiving the message).
You will use many different tenses within your writing and shifts between tense are fine, as long as they accurately represent the action described by the passage. Where learners sometimes encounter difficulties is when they mix verb tenses within a sentence or description.
For example, "the tide is high and it flooded the road".
For more information, examples, and self-test exercises, please refer to The OWL at Purdue: Verb Tense Consistency .
Deciding the appropriate verb tense usually comes down to using the one that best reflects the time period of the action described in the text.
Signal Phrases
The choice of using present or past tense in signal phrases for paraphrases or quotations largely depends on the discipline in which authors are writing or the style guide they’re following.
According to APA Style, "the past tense is appropriate when expressing an action or a condition that occurred at a specific, definite time in the past, such as when discussing another researcher's work" (American Psychological Association [APA], 2020, p. 118). When expressing "a past action or condition that did not occur at a specific, definite time or to describe an action beginning in the past and continuing to the present", use the present perfect tense (e.g, Lee (2015) has used...).
Using the past tense to refer to other researcher's work reflects that the quotation or paraphrase presents the author’s thinking at the time of writing the text, which happened in the past. The published text may not reflect the author’s current thinking, so putting the signal phrase in present tense makes a claim that can’t be investigated within the source material. If you’re unsure of which tense to use in signal phrases, please check with your instructor, supervisor, or journal editor.
Describe Action in Text
The APA Style manual provides suggestions on which verb tense is appropriate for various sections of a thesis, major project or journal article:
As much as possible, try to be consistent with your chosen verb tense within a section "to ensure smooth expression" (APA, 2020, p. 118). If the verb tenses suggested above don't make sense for the purposes of your document, please check with your instructor or academic supervisor to get their opinion on the best approach for your document.
American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000
We apologize for any inconvenience as we update our site to a new look.
Most common verb tenses in academic writing.
According to corpus research, in academic writing, the three tenses used the most often are the simple present , the simple past , and the present perfect (Biber et al., 1999; Caplan, 2012). The next most common tense for capstone writers is the future ; the doctoral study/dissertation proposal at Walden is written in this tense for a study that will be conducted in the future.
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of written and spoken English . Pearson. https://doi.org/10.1162/089120101300346831
Caplan, N. A. (2012). Grammar choices for graduate and professional writers . University of Michigan Press.
Simple present: Use the simple present to describe a general truth or a habitual action. This tense indicates that the statement is generally true in the past, present, and future.
Simple past : Use the simple past tense to describe a completed action that took place at a specific point in the past (e.g., last year, 1 hour ago, last Sunday). In the example below, the specific point of time in the past is 1998.
Present perfect: Use the present perfect to indicate an action that occurred at a nonspecific time in the past. This action has relevance in the present. The present perfect is also sometimes used to introduce background information in a paragraph. After the first sentence, the tense shifts to the simple past.
Future: Use the future to describe an action that will take place at a particular point in the future (at Walden, this is used especially when writing a proposal for a doctoral capstone study).
Keep in mind that verb tenses should be adjusted after the proposal after the research has been completed. See this blog post about Revising the Proposal for the Final Capstone Document for more information.
APA calls for consistency and accuracy in verb tense usage (see APA 7, Section 4.12 and Table 4.1). In other words, avoid unnecessary shifts in verb tense within a paragraph or in adjacent paragraphs to help ensure smooth expression.
When explaining what an author or researcher wrote or did, use the past tense.
However, there can be a shift to the present tense if the research findings still hold true:
To preview what is coming in the document or to explain what is happening at that moment in the document, use the present or future tense:
To refer back to information already covered, such as summaries of discussions that have already taken place or conclusions to chapters/sections, use the past tense:
Rules for the use of the present perfect differ slightly in British and American English. Researchers have also found that among American English writers, sometimes individual preferences dictate whether the simple past or the present perfect is used. In other words, one American English writer may choose the simple past in a place where another American English writer may choose the present perfect.
Keep in mind, however, that the simple past is used for a completed action. It often is used with signal words or phrases such as "yesterday," "last week," "1 year ago," or "in 2015" to indicate the specific time in the past when the action took place.
The present perfect focuses more on an action that occurred without focusing on the specific time it happened. Note that the specific time is not given, just that the action has occurred.
The present perfect focuses more on the result of the action.
The present perfect is often used with signal words such as "since," "already," "just," "until now," "(not) yet," "so far," "ever," "lately," or "recently."
The 12 main tenses:
Conditionals:
Zero conditional (general truths/general habits).
First conditional (possible or likely things in the future).
Second conditional (impossible things in the present/unlikely in the future).
Third conditional (things that did not happen in the past and their imaginary results)
Subjunctive : This form is sometimes used in that -clauses that are the object of certain verbs or follow certain adjectives. The form of the subjective is the simple form of the verb. It is the same for all persons and number.
Note that these videos were created while APA 6 was the style guide edition in use. There may be some examples of writing that have not been updated to APA 7 guidelines.
Didn't find what you need? Email us at [email protected] .
Departments.
Walden University is a member of Adtalem Global Education, Inc. www.adtalem.com Walden University is certified to operate by SCHEV © 2024 Walden University LLC. All rights reserved.
Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow , the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.
Q&A for work
Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.
I am currently writing my bachelor thesis and have to do a small literature review for it. Unfortunately, I don't know which tense I should use. Do you write ?
I am quite confused about what tense to use.
I don't think there are any general standards. It depends on your field and, potentially, your adviser's preferences. I tend to prefer the active tense (since I think that any sentence that mentions a work kind of presents said work), but pick whatever you like as long as you are consistent about it.
(My field is maths/computer science; other domains might have common standards)
Generally speaking any are acceptable. If you focus on the authors then "did show" or "have shown" feels about right. But if you take the citation to mean the paper itself, then the present tense is fine since the paper still exists and does still show...
However, advisors can be a bit picky on some such things, so it would be good to ask whether they think it makes a difference.
In a few rare circumstances, future might even work if a paper hasn't yet appeared, as in one of your own. But, as Gnosophilon says, consistency is probably a good choice.
In almost all cases people will understand you no matter how you write it. But there are exceptions, such as when some things need to be put in historical context, perhaps with older results being replace by new research. That doesn't seem to be your concern here, though.
My preference would be option 2, the simple past. There is IMO a good reason to prefer it. Quite often it is natural to say something like "Hager et al. showed [statement]. Subsequently, Smith et al. showed [stronger statement]." This (or anything else that indicates the papers were written at different past times) doesn't really work with either of the other options.
The already-given advice to ask your advisor is good general advice for academia. It doesn't always work; some advisors are less helpful than they should be. But if they will be grading your work, they can be the most reliable about how they want it to look.
Another piece of general writing advice is to look for already-published examples in your field. A lot of papers have a section that is a small literature review - how do they do it? This is nice because you can learn more than just what tense to use.
IMAGES
COMMENTS
Verb Tense. Verbs are direct, vigorous communicators. Use a chosen verb tense consistently throughout the same and adjacent paragraphs of a paper to ensure smooth expression. Use the following verb tenses to report information in APA Style papers. Paper section.
Nov 04, 2021 4237 The 7th edition style manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) provides suggestions on which verb tense is appropriate for various sections of a thesis, major project or journal article: Past or present perfect tense: "Literature review (or whenever discussing other researchers' work)" (APA, 2020, p. 118), "method" (APA, 2020, 118), and "description of procedure ...
Writing a Literature Review A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say "literature review" or ...
APA 7: Verb Tense and Reporting Verbs Verb Tense The past tense or present perfect tense are appropriate when discussing a researcher's work. Use the past or present perfect tenses in your in-text citations. Past
Mastering Verb Tenses in Literature Reviews. Deciding on which verb tense to use when writing the literature review sec tion ofa manuscript is challenging. Edi tors find that verb tense problems are common in literature report sections of manuscripts. Authors, reviewers, and ed itors need to be able to spot incorrect verb tenses in literature ...
In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense. Go to:
Discussion Phrases Guide Papers usually end with a concluding section, often called the "Discussion." The Discussion is your opportunity to evaluate and interpret the results of your study or paper, draw inferences and conclusions from it, and communicate its contributions to science and/or society. Use the present tense when writing the Discussion section.
Citing Literature in Your Text Literature Review. • Summarizes, interprets, and critically analyses research. • Focus on the authors and research. • Tense: past, present & future. • Third person. structure • Formal languageWhen you use information from sources you have read, you need to choose a suitabl. on.
Use the past tense (e.g., researchers presented) or the present perfect (e.g., researchers have presented) for the literature review and the description of the procedure if discussing past events. Use the past tense to describe the results (e.g., test scores improved significantly ).
Dec 12, 2016 135175 The APA manual discusses tense in the section on Smoothness of Expression on Page 65. The lit review of an APA style paper should be in past tense (The researchers found...) or present perfect (The researchers have shown...). The methodology should be in past tense if it has already happened.
Verb Tense Switching verb tenses can cause confusion for your readers, so you should be consistent in the tense you use. When discussing literature reviews and experimental procedures that have already happened, use past tense ("Our study showed") or present perfect tense ("studies have proven" ).
APA, Chicago and MLA are the three main referencing systems/writing styles used at Massey. Recommendations they make in relation to verb tenses are summarized below. Implementing these recommendations may be especially important if you are planning to publish work in a journal that requires certain style guidelines to be followed.
The simple past tense or present perfect tense is appropriate for the literature review and the description of the procedure if the discussion is of past events ( pp. 65-66). The simple past tense is appropriate to describe the results (p. 66).
The title Walden University Writing Center and tagline "Your writing, grammar, and APA experts" appears on the screen. The screen changes to show the series title "Formatting & Style" and the video title "Verb Tense.". Audio: Guitar music. Visual: A slide appears with the following: Verb Tense.
Abstract Content The abstract addresses the following (usually 1-2 sentences per topic): key aspects of the literature review problem under investigation or research question(s) clearly stated hypothesis or hypotheses methods used (including brief descriptions of the study design, sample, and sample size)
The APA Style manual provides suggestions on which verb tense is appropriate for various sections of a thesis, major project or journal article: Past or present perfect tense: "Literature review (or whenever discussing other researchers' work)" (APA, 2020, p. 118), "method" (APA, 2020, 118), and "description of procedure" (APA, 2020, 118) Past tense: "Reporting of results" (APA, 2020, p. 118 ...
APA style allows either past or present tense for discussing the literature, so long as you are consistent. Style guides are all well and good, but they have sometimes been described as "anti-style" guides.
Use the past tense (e.g., researchers presented) or the present perfect (e.g., researchers have presented) for the literature review and the description of the procedure if discussing past events. Use the past tense to describe the results (e.g., test scores improved significantly).
Generally speaking any are acceptable. If you focus on the authors then "did show" or "have shown" feels about right. But if you take the citation to mean the paper itself, then the present tense is fine since the paper still exists and does still show... However, advisors can be a bit picky on some such things, so it would be good to ask ...
What tense should I use? - Literature Review Guide - Subject & Study Guides at TUS Library Midlands. TUS Midlands: Library.
We, the APA Style team, are not robots. We can all pass a CAPTCHA test, and we know our roles in a Turing test.And, like so many nonrobot human beings this year, we've spent a fair amount of time reading, learning, and thinking about issues related to large language models, artificial intelligence (AI), AI-generated text, and specifically ChatGPT.