Our title, of ‘stating the bleeding obvious’ comes to us from the comedy Fawlty Towers, when Basil Fawlty, in response to something his wife said, announced the next contestant on Mastermind: Mrs Sybil Fawlty from Torquay, specialist subject, the bleeding obvious. What counts as ‘obvious’ in academic writing depends on context of course. And even if it is, in context, ‘bleeding obvious’, there may be good reasons to say it anyway. In anglophone academic writing, for example, having an introduction that explains what is to be said, and a conclusion that repeats what has been said, may seem repetitive and obvious. It is seen as such by German and French scholars. But English-language articles expect such obviousness. We give quite a few examples of ‘good’ obvious things to say.
There are other times when stating the obvious should be avoided. We give plenty of examples of those, too. And sometimes, if our conclusions seem to be obvious, it may be valuable to say what the opposite conclusions would be – as they are often just as obvious. Rutter et al use that technique in their book Fifteen Thousand Hours (1979). Clever.
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