Your choice of signal verbs often reveals your attitude toward or relationship to your sources. Signal verbs like proves, demonstrates, shows, or establishes suggest that you take a positive view of the information in the source, while signal verbs like fails, lacks, refuses, overlooks, or ignores suggest that you take a critical view. In between are more neutral verbs (argues, indicates, suggests, states, notes) that indicate an objective relationship to the source material.

Research shows that advanced academic writers favor neutral signal verbs, which build the writer’s ethos as fair and evenhanded. Expert writers rarely use verbs associated with opinions or feelings (feels, believes, thinks), while student writers use them a great deal. You can learn from the experts to look very closely at the verbs you choose when you are reporting what your sources say.

Signal verbs