Mechanism of deanimation of zombies by burning: Academic writing and how not to start a paper

Since the earliest known zombie attacks (Max and Roberson 2010), researchers have been aware that penetrating head injury is universally successful in deanimating zombies.

Comment: Zipf, don’t begin a paper by talking about what researchers know.  Nobody gives a shit about researchers.

Since the earliest known zombie attacks (Max and Roberson 2010), it has been known that penetrating head injury is universally successful in deanimating zombies.

Comment: Zipf, there is a time–and there are excellent places–for the passive.  The first sentence of your paper is not it.

Max and Roberson (2010) describe a zombie attack dated to no later than 140,000 years before the Common Era. It is the earliest known outbreak of The Plague–and the first time that hominids are known to have deanimated them via penetrating head injury.

Comment: Zipf, this is a TERRIBLE context in which to use the passive.  You have hominids fighting for their lives against relentless protoanthropophages (unfortunate terminology–so ambiguous…). Keep that alive for the reader–with the active voice.

Max and Roberson (2010) describe a zombie attack dated to no later than 140,000 years before the Common Era. It is the earliest known outbreak of The Plague–and the first time that hominids deanimated them via penetrating head injury.

Comment: Zipf, this is a shitty context for anaphoric reference.  Why did you use it?

Well, it’s frame-licensed, right?  When there is a zombie attack, there are zombies, and what else could be the antecedent of “them” here?

Comment: (1) to your second point: a zombie attack only requires a single zombie, and in fact your text as given provides only the slightest support for the notion that there were more than one. (2) to your first point: “bridging anaphora” is a much more constrained analysis of this than “frame-licensed.” (3) Don’t be ambiguous.  Say “zombies,” not “them.”

What’s a bridging reference

Zipf, what did you find when you looked up “bridging reference” before asking me that question?

By the way: in work-related emails, punctuation is not optional.  These are not text messages, and I am not your friend.

[no response…]

[no reponse…]

[no response…]

Zipf, we need to talk about your continued funding in this graduate program.

Bibliography:

Brooks, Max, and Ibraim Roberson. The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks. Broadway Books, 2010.

Note to the reader: do not search Google Images for zombie penetrating head wound unless you have an even stronger stomach than I do.  For context: I brought home the bacon as a medic for many years, and I could not begin to count how many dead bodies I have seen.  Nonetheless: I hit the “back” button on that page as fast as I possibly could.

Picture source: https://open-shelf.ca/161001-phd/