Content area
Full Text
Writing Professionally
Introduction
In "writing up" their research findings for publication, scientists naturally most present their findings as clearly, concisely, and rigorously as possible. Readers will expect the emphasis to be on understandability and evaluation of the information rather than on the "elegance" of the words themselves. Clear, concise, and rigorous research writing relies on language that favors simplicity, precision, and directness. Such writing must be, in short, measured and "plain." Or, as the Council of Biology Editors (1994) puts it: "Effective scientific prose is accurate, clear, economical, fluent, and graceful." It should not be surprising that the effectiveness of scientific writing is a direct function the writer's thinking: In agronomist Martha Davis's words, "You think well; you write well" (1997). For Davis, the best set of rules for scientific writing is that proposed by Nora Ransom, who teaches that subject at Kansas State University; Ransom's rules are as follows:
1. If it can be interpreted in more than one way, its wrong.
2. Know your audience; know your subject; know your purpose.
3. If you can't think of a reason to put a comma in, leave it out.
4. Keep your writing clear, concise, and correct.
5. If it works, do it.
Here I will focus on Ransom's fourth rule. Among the many issues raised by this rule, I have picked, rather arbitrarily, the following three: choosing words for their precise and correct meaning; revising wordy constructions; and avoiding some of the pitfalls that await second-language authors (non-anglo-- phone authors). Close attention to these three aspects will enhance substantially the rigor and clarity of how one communicates scientific information.
Precision in Word Choice
Even scientists will on occasion use words or terminology imprecisely or incorrectly. Out of any number of possibilities, here are two sets of commonly used and misused terms to illustrate this point (Council of Biology Editors, 1994):
(A) Demonstrate, exhibit, reveal, show: The first two words often are used inappropriately as stilted words for show. Demonstrate should be reserved for a deliberate action intended to illustrate an action or procedure: "The technician demonstrated how to operate the spectrophotometer." Exhibit is best used to mean a deliberate action whose purpose is to make something visible: "She exhibited the mineral specimens at the...