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  • Which Reporting Verb Should You Use, and What Does It Commit You To?

    Which Reporting Verb Should You Use, and What Does It Commit You To?

    Every reporting verb commits you to a position on the source it introduces, whether you intended one or not. Writing that Smith claims something rather than shows it places you at a distance from Smith, and an examiner will read that distance as deliberate. The problem is that UK universities cannot agree on what the common verbs signal.

    Why does the verb matter at doctoral level?

    Because a literature review is an argument about a field, and the verbs are where that argument is actually made. You cannot write eighty thousand words of neutral summary and then assert a contribution at the end; the sorting has to be visible in the sentences, and the reporting verb is the smallest unit in which it becomes visible.

    Warwick states the underlying principle: “Reporting verbs differ in terms of their strength; for example, ‘to suggest’ is much weaker, and more tentative, than ‘to argue’.” Abertay puts the consequence for the reader: “in sentence B, however, the reader senses from the verb ‘claimed’ that the author is merely expressing an opinion.”

    This matters at three specific moments in a candidature. In the literature review that goes to your upgrade or confirmation of registration panel, the verbs are how a panel judges whether you have a position or a reading list. In the submitted thesis, they are what an internal or external examiner checks against the cited paper. And in the viva voce, the commonest form of the question is not about your verb at all — it is “do you think that is a fair characterisation of what they were doing?”, which is the same question asked out loud.

    What do the UK guides actually say?

    Three UK universities publish reporting-verb taxonomies. They do not agree.

    Warwick uses three categories. Neutral verbs “do not indicate any value judgement on the part of the writer”. Tentative verbs are used “when the writer has an inclination to believe something but still wishes to be hesitant”. Strong verbs are for “if the writer has strong arguments to put forward and is absolutely sure of his or her ground”.

    Leeds uses the same three names with the same definitions — strong verbs “convey a degree of certainty about an issue”, neutral verbs “do not indicate any value judgements on the part of the author”, tentative verbs “show that the writer tends to feel a certain way about an issue but is not wholly sure”.

    Newcastle abandons strength altogether and sorts by stance, which is a genuinely different and more useful axis. Its six categories are neutral description of what the text says; acceptance as uncontested fact, having critiqued it; recognition that this is one perspective among possible others; agreement with that perspective; disagreement with it; and slight reservations, “probably true but being cautious”. Newcastle also concedes the untidiness: “depending on context, they might be used to convey more than one stance, so you’ll notice that some appear in more than one category.”

    Where exactly do they contradict each other?

    On the two verbs doctoral writers use most when they want to signal something.

    Verb Warwick Leeds Newcastle Academic Phrasebank
    claim Strong Tentative Disagreement with the cited author Ungraded — interchangeable with argues, suggests, maintains
    assert Strong, listed alongside argue Not listed Both “one perspective among others” and “slight reservations… being cautious” Not listed

    Read that first row again. A candidate following Warwick who writes “Smith claims” has, on Warwick’s own account, used a strong verb and aligned herself with a firm position. A candidate at Leeds writing the identical sentence has, on Leeds’ account, hedged. A candidate at Newcastle has signalled that she disagrees with Smith. Three UK universities, one sentence, three incompatible commitments.

    The Academic Phrasebank, meanwhile, declines to grade at all, offering “argues / claims / suggests / maintains / concludes / points out” as a single substitution set. That is a reasonable editorial choice for a phrase resource, but it means the most widely used UK writing aid will not settle this for you either.

    A hand-built bank of reporting verbs sorted into columns by the strength each one commits to
    Because the published taxonomies conflict, the usable version is one you build for your own field.

    Is there evidence about how the verbs are actually used?

    Yes, and it is more decisive than the guidance. Bloch’s corpus analysis of reporting verbs in academic writing, published open access, found a clear asymmetry between the two verbs the UK guides fight over:

    “While there were a number of instances of argue used to express agreement, there were no instances where claim was coded in this way.”

    Not a tendency — an absence. In that corpus, claim never carried agreement. The same study found that “mention was the only one having 50% of its uses coded as negative while three other reporting verbs — explain (30%), state (30%), and claim (25%) — had at least one-quarter of their uses coded as negative”, against an overall picture in which “72% of the sentences were coded as positive.”

    So in the writing examined, claim is a distancing verb. Newcastle’s classification matches actual usage more closely than Warwick’s or Leeds’ does. Bloch also names precisely the population most at risk of getting this wrong: “These kinds of distinctions between the uses of argue and claim can be difficult for L2 writers, who may frequently interchange argue and claim as if they both had the same meaning and usage.”

    Does any of this vary by discipline or by chapter?

    Both, and the variation is measured. Deng and Li, analysing 160 applied linguistics research articles, report that “Quantitative articles tend to prefer reporting verbs denoting research acts and display neutral evaluation towards outside knowledge, whereas qualitative articles make more use of discourse- and cognition-oriented verbs and exhibit more positive evaluation, particularly in the pre-methods sections.”

    They also find movement within a single document: “pre-methods sections are characterized by a preference for reporting verbs denoting research activities and carry neutral evaluation, whereas post-methods sections make greater use of discourse-oriented verbs and show an increasingly positive stance toward the reported work.” In thesis terms, your literature review and your discussion should not sound alike, and the verbs are one of the places that difference is carried — see our guide to the discussion chapter for what changes there.

    At the level of whole disciplines, Hyland’s work on academic attribution reports — and this is available to us only at abstract level, so it is quoted as such — that writers in the humanities and social sciences “were more likely to use integral structures, to employ discourse reporting verbs, and to represent cited authors as adopting a stance to their material” than scientists and engineers.

    The practical instruction is the same in every case: calibrate against your own field, not against a general list.

    Is naming the author the same decision as choosing the verb?

    No, and conflating them is a common error. Whether you write “Brennan (2021) found that…” or “Supervisory contact predicts completion (Brennan, 2021)” is a decision about what occupies the subject position — the person or the claim.

    The Academic Phrasebank notes the disciplinary pattern: “In some cases, where the individual author is important, the author’s name will be the main subject of the sentence; in other cases, the author’s name may only be mentioned in brackets… The ‘author as subject’ style is less common in the empirical disciplines (sciences) and more commonly used in the humanities.” Bloch’s corpus splits roughly two to one in favour of integral citation.

    The structural consequences of that choice — whether a review reads as organised by source or organised by claim — are worked through in our guide to the literature review chapter. This page is about the verb; that one is about where the citation sits.

    An external examiner reading a literature review and questioning how a source has been characterised
    The verb is the written record of a judgement an examiner can check against the cited paper.

    How should you actually choose, given the guides conflict?

    Stop trying to look the verb up, and derive it instead. For every source, answer one question before you write the sentence: what is my relationship to this work? There are only four answers that matter in a thesis.

    1. I accept it and build on it. Verbs that report a finding without distance — shows, demonstrates, finds, establishes, identifies.
    2. I report it without committing either way. Neutral verbs — describes, reports, examines, notes, observes, states.
    3. I treat it as one position among possible others. Verbs of argument — argues, contends, maintains, proposes, theorises. This is the largest category in most literature reviews and the one most often collapsed into the first.
    4. I resist it. Distancing verbs — claims, alleges, assumes, asserts without support. Use these deliberately and be ready to justify each one in the viva, because an examiner who disagrees will notice.

    Then check the discipline. Open three articles from the journals you cite most and note which verbs actually appear. That is a more reliable guide than any of the four taxonomies above, because it reflects what your examiners read every week.

    What does a verb audit look like in practice?

    Do this once per chapter, late, when the content is settled.

    1. Extract every reporting verb in the chapter with its citation.
    2. Count them. If two verbs account for most of the list, your chapter is not distinguishing between sources it accepts, sources it reports and sources it resists.
    3. Beside each, write which of the four relationships you actually hold. Where the verb and the relationship disagree, the verb is wrong — that is the whole test.
    4. Check every distancing verb individually. Each one is a small claim about another researcher, and each should survive a direct question about whether it is fair.
    5. Confirm the pattern shifts between the review and the discussion, as Deng and Li’s data would predict. If your discussion sounds like your literature review, the stance has not moved.

    Getting this right is also what makes a contribution to knowledge legible: a contribution is defined against what the field already holds, and the verbs are how you show which parts of that you are accepting and which you are pushing against. It is the same judgement your examiners will test.

    Doing it across eighty thousand words

    A verb audit is straightforward on one chapter and unmanageable across a whole thesis written over four years, because the pattern you are looking for is a pattern across sources you last read in your second year.

    Draft your thesis in Tesify: keep the whole document and its sources in one workspace so a chapter written in year two can be checked for stance against one written in year four, and let the bibliography format itself while you spend the time on the judgement. The scholarship stays 100% yours — the verb is your position, and no tool should be choosing it. There is a free tier, so you can run the audit on one chapter first.

    Frequently asked questions

    What is a reporting verb?

    The verb that carries a cited author into your sentence — argues, shows, claims, suggests. It is not neutral packaging. Warwick states the principle: “Reporting verbs differ in terms of their strength; for example, ‘to suggest’ is much weaker, and more tentative, than ‘to argue’.”

    Do UK universities agree on which verbs are strong?

    No, and the disagreement is severe. Warwick lists “claim” as a strong verb; Leeds lists the same verb as tentative; Newcastle lists it under a stance of disagreement with the cited author. Three UK universities, one verb, three incompatible readings.

    Does “claim” signal that I disagree with the author?

    In most academic English, yes — and the corpus evidence supports it. Bloch’s analysis of reporting verbs found that “While there were a number of instances of argue used to express agreement, there were no instances where claim was coded in this way.” Use it only when you intend distance.

    What is the difference between “argues” and “asserts”?

    Abertay puts it as a difference of force: “the verb ‘argues’ has less strength than the verb ‘asserts’ which is much stronger… the second verb could be used to indicate that the author believes something to be close to a fact.” Note that Newcastle grades “asserts” differently, so this is not settled.

    Which reporting verbs are genuinely neutral?

    Verbs that report an action rather than evaluate it. Warwick’s neutral set includes describe, show, reveal, study, note, point out, indicate, report, observe, examine, state. Leeds defines the category as verbs that “do not indicate any value judgements on the part of the author.”

    How many reporting verbs does a thesis need?

    Fewer than a list implies, but more than three. The failure examiners notice is a literature review where every source “states” or every source “argues”, because a flat verb choice reports that you have not sorted your sources into those you accept, those you use and those you resist.

    Do reporting verbs differ between disciplines?

    Yes. Deng and Li found that “Quantitative articles tend to prefer reporting verbs denoting research acts and display neutral evaluation towards outside knowledge, whereas qualitative articles make more use of discourse- and cognition-oriented verbs and exhibit more positive evaluation”. Read your own field before adopting any list.

    Do reporting verbs change between chapters?

    The evidence says they do. Deng and Li report that “pre-methods sections are characterized by a preference for reporting verbs denoting research activities and carry neutral evaluation, whereas post-methods sections make greater use of discourse-oriented verbs and show an increasingly positive stance toward the reported work.”

    Is it safer to just use neutral verbs everywhere?

    No. A thesis has to take a position, and neutral verbs throughout make an examiner ask where your judgement is. Neutrality is a stance too, and used everywhere it reads as an absence of one rather than as caution.

    Where does the author’s name go in the sentence?

    That is a separate decision from the verb. The Academic Phrasebank notes that the “author as subject” style “is less common in the empirical disciplines (sciences) and more commonly used in the humanities.” Naming the author foregrounds the person; citing in brackets foregrounds the claim.

    Is this something examiners actually notice?

    It surfaces most often as a viva question rather than as a written comment — an examiner asking whether you have characterised a source fairly. The verb is your written record of that judgement, and it is the first thing checked when an examiner reaches for the cited paper.

    What is the fastest way to audit my verbs?

    List every reporting verb in one chapter, count each one, and mark whether you accept, use or resist that source. If the counts are dominated by one or two verbs, or if verbs and stances do not line up, the chapter is not yet saying what you think it says.

  • You Have Read 300 Papers and Have No Literature Review Chapter. How to Build One (2026)

    You Have Read 300 Papers and Have No Literature Review Chapter. How to Build One (2026)

    Here is the failure, and almost every doctoral researcher writes it once. You have read for two years. You open a document and start working through what you read: a paragraph on Ahmed, a paragraph on Brennan, a paragraph on Chowdhury, each accurately summarising a study. Forty pages later you have something that is thorough, defensible, laborious and not a literature review.

    It is an annotated bibliography with the headings removed. The diagnostic takes five seconds: look at how your paragraphs begin. If most of them open with a researcher’s name, you have organised by source. A literature review is organised by claim.

    This page is about closing that gap, and it assumes the reading is done. If the problem is that you have notes rather than sources, the earlier stage is covered in our workflow for turning three years of notes into chapters.

    This chapter is assessed before your thesis is

    Worth knowing early, because it changes how seriously candidates take it. The literature review is not only a thesis chapter; at many institutions it is a formal progression requirement in its own right.

    UCL’s criteria for upgrading from MPhil to PhD status include “Demonstration of sufficient awareness of the context of the work and completion of such tasks as a review of relevant literature and a bibliography”, alongside the ability “to formulate a viable hypothesis or research question that could be completed within the normal time frame”. Those two sit next to each other for a reason: the panel is checking that your question comes out of the literature rather than being asserted alongside it. The wider mechanics of that gate are in our guide to the MPhil to PhD upgrade and confirmation review.

    So this chapter gets read closely twice by different people with different jobs: once by a panel deciding whether you should continue, and once by examiners deciding whether you have contributed anything. Both are reading for the same thing, which is the subject of the next section.

    What the chapter is actually for

    Not to prove you have read widely. Your bibliography proves that, and nobody is impressed by volume.

    The chapter exists to build the case that your contribution is necessary. Everything in it should be doing one of three jobs: establishing what is known, establishing how it is known, or establishing what is not known. The third is the one your thesis exists to change, and a review that never arrives there has failed regardless of how much it covers.

    This is why the review and the contribution claim are the same argument told at different lengths. Your one-sentence statement of your original contribution to knowledge is the compressed version; the literature review is the expanded version that makes it credible. If they do not match, one of them is wrong, and it is usually not the review.

    Sources that were read carefully but do not belong in the literature review chapter
    Most of what you read does not go in. Reading it was not wasted — it is what lets you judge the twenty per cent that does.

    The organising decision that fixes most of it

    There are four ways to order a literature review, and choosing wrongly causes more damage than any amount of poor prose.

    By source. One paper per paragraph. Never correct in a doctorate. This is the failure described at the top of this page, and no amount of editing rescues it, because the problem is the skeleton rather than the surface.

    Chronologically. Occasionally right, and much more rarely than it is used. Chronology earns its place only when the development of the idea is itself your point — when you are showing how a field changed its mind and why that matters to your question. Used by default, it produces a narrative with no argument, because “and then someone else did a study” is not a claim.

    By theme or construct. The default for most doctorates, and correct most of the time. Each section handles one idea and reports what the field collectively knows about it, with the individual studies cited as evidence within your sentence rather than as the subject of it.

    By debate. The strongest option where your field genuinely disagrees. Each section states a contested question, sets out the positions and the evidence for each, and explains what would settle it. This structure is naturally hospitable to a gap, because unresolved debates are gaps.

    The practical difference is visible at sentence level. “Brennan (2021) found that supervisory contact predicted completion” is organised by source. “Supervisory contact predicts completion in several settings (Brennan, 2021; Chowdhury, 2023), though both studies aggregate across disciplines that differ sharply in independence norms” is organised by claim — it states what is known, cites who established it, and begins the move toward what is not known.

    The six moves

    A sequence that works whether you have 60 sources or 400.

    1. Write the gap sentence first. Before drafting a word of the chapter, write down what your thesis will establish that is not currently established. It will change; write it anyway. It is the destination, and a review written without one wanders.
    2. Sort your sources into claims, not piles. Go through the library and, for each source, record the one thing it establishes that matters to your question — not what it is about, what it shows. Sources that resist this are usually sources you do not need.
    3. Cluster the claims. Group them until you have somewhere between four and eight clusters. Fewer than four usually means the clusters are too coarse to say anything; more than eight usually means you are still organised by topic rather than by argument. These clusters are your sections.
    4. Order the clusters so each one earns the next. Section two should be a question raised by section one. If the sections could be shuffled without loss, you have a list rather than an argument, and the fix is at this stage rather than in the writing.
    5. Draft each section to a fixed shape. What the field holds, on what evidence, with what limitation, and what that leaves open. Four moves per section, in that order, every time. It feels mechanical while drafting and reads as authoritative afterwards.
    6. Write the closing synthesis last. Two or three pages that collect the “left open” sentences from every section and converge them on your research question. This is the passage your upgrade panel and your examiners will read most carefully, and it should make your question feel inevitable rather than merely reasonable.
    Sources being sorted into thematic clusters rather than listed one after another
    Step three is the whole job. Once the clusters are right, the drafting is transcription; while they are wrong, no amount of rewriting helps.

    Five failures examiners name

    The review that never comes back. The commonest structural criticism of a thesis: a competent literature chapter that is then never used again, so the findings are discussed against nothing. Every cluster you build should reappear in the discussion chapter. If a section has no counterpart there, ask what it is doing in the thesis.

    The gap that is merely an absence. “No one has studied this in Wales” is an absence, not a gap. A gap requires a reason the missing knowledge matters: something about the Welsh context that should make the established relationship behave differently. Absences are infinite and uninteresting; gaps are arguments.

    Uncritical coverage. Reporting what studies found without ever assessing how well they found it. You are being examined on judgement, so a review in which no study has a weakness reads as one where none was read closely.

    Straw-manning the field. Overstating what is missing in order to make your contribution look larger. Examiners know this literature better than you do, and an overstated gap is the easiest thing in a thesis to puncture. Claim precisely what you can defend.

    Staleness. A review completed in year two and never revisited. Re-run your searches before submission, and check that nothing load-bearing has been withdrawn in the meantime — a step covered in our guide to auditing a bibliography against the retraction record.

    How long, and how many sources?

    There is no rule, and the honest answer is that both follow from the clusters. In a monograph-shaped thesis a single literature chapter commonly runs somewhere around 8,000 to 12,000 words, in line with other substantive chapters; where two genuinely distinct bodies of work are in play, two chapters are normal rather than indulgent. What decides it is your argument rather than a target, and the reasoning behind splitting or merging chapters at all is set out in our answer to how many chapters a PhD thesis has.

    On source count, the useful test is not a number but coverage of the clusters: every claim you make should rest on enough evidence that an examiner in the field would not immediately name something you have missed. That is a far more demanding standard than “300 references”, and a far more achievable one than “everything”.

    The mechanical layer, which is not optional

    Two infrastructure decisions determine whether this chapter is difficult or merely long.

    Your references must be in a manager, with DOIs, before you draft. A literature chapter is reordered more than any other part of a thesis — clusters merge, sections swap, whole passages move to the discussion — and every one of those moves is a citation operation. Doing it by hand is how bibliographies drift out of step with the text, which is the single most avoidable examiner criticism there is. Which manager to use, and what it costs at doctoral scale, is covered in our comparison of Zotero, Mendeley and EndNote.

    Finding is a different job from synthesising. If the clusters keep revealing holes, that is a discovery problem rather than a writing problem, and the tools for it are compared in our roundup of AI research assistants for doctoral work. Do not try to solve it inside the drafting session; you will produce neither a search nor a chapter.

    What remains after that is the actual work: holding four to eight clusters, several hundred sources and one argument in view at once across a chapter you will draft over weeks. Tesify holds that structure section by section and formats your references as you cite them, so the chapter stays coherent while it is being reordered and the bibliography never falls behind the text. The reading, the clustering and every sentence of the argument stay 100% written by you — which is the only version you can defend when a panel asks why your question follows from this literature. It is free to start.

    When to write it

    Draft it early for the upgrade, then rewrite it late. These are genuinely two different chapters wearing the same title. The upgrade version argues that a viable question exists; the final version argues that your completed work answers it, and it is written with the knowledge of what you actually found.

    Candidates who treat the upgrade draft as finished spend the final year fighting a chapter that no longer matches the thesis. Expect to rewrite the closing synthesis completely, and expect at least one cluster to turn out to matter far more than you thought. Rewrite it before the introduction, since the introduction has to promise what this chapter sets up.

    Frequently asked questions

    What is the difference between a literature review and a summary of the literature?

    Organisation. A summary is arranged by source and reports what each study said. A review is arranged by claim and reports what the field collectively knows, citing studies as evidence inside the sentence rather than as its subject. If your paragraphs begin with authors’ names, you have written the first.

    How should I structure a PhD literature review?

    By theme or construct in most cases, by debate where your field genuinely disagrees, and chronologically only when the development of the idea is itself your argument. Never by source. Aim for four to eight sections, ordered so that each raises the question the next answers.

    How long should a doctoral literature review chapter be?

    Commonly around 8,000 to 12,000 words in a monograph-shaped thesis, in line with other substantive chapters. Two chapters are normal where two distinct bodies of literature are in play. The clusters should decide the length rather than the reverse.

    How many sources does a PhD literature review need?

    Enough that each claim you make is properly supported and an examiner in your field would not immediately name something obvious you have missed. That is a coverage test, not a count, and it is both stricter and more achievable than any number.

    Is the literature review required for my upgrade?

    Frequently, yes. UCL’s upgrade criteria explicitly include “completion of such tasks as a review of relevant literature and a bibliography” alongside the ability to formulate a viable research question. Check your own criteria, since the requirement and its form are institutional.

    What counts as a research gap?

    A missing piece of knowledge plus a reason it matters. “Nobody has studied this population” is an absence; “this population differs in a way that should change the established relationship, and nobody has tested it” is a gap. Examiners can tell the two apart instantly.

    Should I criticise the studies I review?

    Yes, proportionately and specifically. You are examined on judgement, and a review where no study has a limitation reads as one where nothing was read closely. Criticise the design and the inference, not the researcher.

    Do I have to include everything I have read?

    No, and trying to is the main cause of overlong, shapeless chapters. Include what your argument needs. The rest of your reading is not wasted; it is what allows you to judge which sources matter.

    Should the literature review come before or after the methodology?

    Before, in the conventional monograph shape, because the method is justified by the gap the review establishes. In some by-publication and humanities theses the literature is woven through instead, which is a disciplinary convention worth checking against recent theses from your own department.

    When should I update my literature review?

    At minimum once between the upgrade draft and submission, and again shortly before you submit. Re-run your searches, add anything significant, and check that nothing you rely on has been retracted while you were writing.

    Can I reuse my upgrade literature review in the final thesis?

    As a foundation, yes; as a finished chapter, rarely. The upgrade version argues that a good question exists, while the final version argues that your completed work answers it, so the closing synthesis in particular usually needs rewriting from scratch.

    What is the most common examiner criticism of a literature review?

    That it is never used again. A strong review whose themes do not reappear in the discussion leaves the findings interpreted against nothing, and it is the structural fault examiners raise most often.