Why Vague Language Is a More Common Problem Than You Realise
Vague language in academic writing is one of those things that is easy to overlook when you are the person who wrote the thesis. You know what you meant, so the sentence feels clear to you. But when an examiner reads it without your background knowledge and assumptions, a sentence full of vague language raises more questions than it answers. Avoiding vague language in academic writing is not just a stylistic preference — it directly affects how credible and rigorous your research appears.
For Malaysian postgraduate students, vague language often creeps in for a few reasons. Some students are cautious about making strong claims and overcompensate by keeping everything general. Others are translating concepts from Bahasa Malaysia and end up using approximate English equivalents that are less precise than intended. And some simply have not been taught to recognise which phrases count as vague in the context of formal academic writing.
What Counts as Vague Language in a Thesis
Vague language in academic writing includes several categories. Imprecise quantifiers are one of the most common types — phrases like “many students”, “a number of studies”, “some researchers”, or “most participants” that give no actual numbers or proportions. In academic writing, if you have the data, use it. “Seventy-two percent of respondents” is precise. “Most respondents” is not.
Undefined comparative terms are another category. Words like “better”, “higher”, “more effective”, or “significant improvement” carry very little meaning unless you specify what the comparison involves and how the difference was measured. “Students in the intervention group performed significantly better” needs to specify: better on what measure, compared to whom, and what “significantly” means in statistical terms.
Vague temporal references also appear often in Malaysian thesis drafts. Phrases like “in recent years”, “nowadays”, “in the past”, or “over time” give no meaningful information. If you are discussing a trend, specify the time period. “Between 2018 and 2024, enrolment in postgraduate programmes at Malaysian public universities increased by approximately 23 percent” is useful. “In recent years, enrolment has gone up” tells the reader almost nothing.
Vague Language in Literature Reviews
Literature reviews are particularly prone to vague language in academic writing because writers are summarising many studies quickly and tend to reach for general phrases. “Researchers have found that motivation is important” is an example. Which researchers? Which contexts? What kind of motivation? What evidence supports the claim that it is “important”? A tighter version might read: “Studies in Malaysian secondary school contexts consistently report intrinsic motivation as a stronger predictor of academic performance than access to resources (Ali, 2020; Bala, 2021; Chen, 2019).”
The revision process is where vague language in literature reviews gets addressed. Each time you write a summary sentence, ask yourself whether a reader unfamiliar with your topic would understand exactly what claim you are making and what evidence supports it. If not, the sentence needs more specificity.
Replacing Vague Phrases With Precise Alternatives
Avoiding vague language in academic writing requires building a habit of replacing common vague expressions with precise ones. “A lot of” becomes “the majority of participants (n=142)” or “63 percent of respondents”. “Very important” becomes “a critical determinant of” or “a statistically significant predictor”. “There are many problems with” becomes “three methodological limitations are evident in this approach”.
This does not mean removing all hedging. Academic hedging is appropriate when you are acknowledging genuine uncertainty about your findings or the limits of your data. The difference is between intentional hedging (“the data suggests a possible association between…”) and accidental vagueness (“there seems to be some kind of relationship”).
Vague Subject References That Confuse Readers
Another form of vague language in academic writing is unclear pronoun reference. When writers use “it”, “this”, “they”, or “these” without making clear what noun is being referred to, sentences become harder to follow. “The study showed that the programme improved outcomes. It was well-received by participants. This was reflected in their survey responses.” By the third sentence, “this” could refer to the improvement in outcomes, the programme being well-received, or the overall study findings. Each of these is different.
Replacing vague pronouns with specific nouns solves this instantly. “This positive reception was reflected in survey responses” is clearer than “this was reflected in their responses”. The extra words are worth it for the gain in clarity.
Checking for Vague Language During Proofreading
One practical method for avoiding vague language in academic writing is to do a dedicated proofreading pass that focuses specifically on quantifiers, comparatives, and temporal references. Every time you see a word like “many”, “some”, “recent”, “better”, or “several”, pause and ask whether you can replace it with something more specific. You will not always be able to — sometimes the imprecision reflects genuine uncertainty, and that is fine. But in most cases, you have the data to be more specific and have simply defaulted to a vague expression out of habit.
Sharing a chapter with a peer from a different discipline is also a useful test. If they ask “what do you mean by X?” after reading a sentence, that sentence contains vague language. Their unfamiliarity with your topic means they notice ambiguity that you have learned to read past. Addressing those questions before submission improves the clarity of your writing in ways that genuinely matter to examiners.
