Hi.
This is Karen McKee, retired scientist and author, with another video about scientific
writing.
An important lesson I learned about scientific writing was to always keep the reader in mind.
When someone considers a piece of information, their comprehension depends not only on the
content, but how that content is structured.
Because the reader must expend energy taking in your information, how you structure your
material determines how much effort is required to comprehend it.
You can make it easy for the reader to understand your point or you can make it difficult.
Some scientific writers think that using more complicated prose and multisyllabic words
will make their writing sound more authoritative and important.
However, if the reader has difficulty understanding your point because of your word choice, then
you've got a problem.
Some scientific writing is so dense that it takes several readings to comprehend what
is being said.
My writing improved enormously when I began paying more attention to the language I used.
I found that I could express myself more clearly and unambiguously by using simpler language.
Now by simple, I don't mean simplistic.
Simple means easy to understand or uncomplicated.
I'm talking specifically about diction, that is, choice of words, and syntax, how those
words are strung together in a sentence.
But how do you learn to write clearly and simply?
An excellent resource that helped me is the paper by Gopen and Swan: The Science of Scientific
Writing.
Gopen and Swan essentially break down sentence and paragraph structure to reveal basic rules
of clear scientific discourse.
Let's look at just one example of abstruse scientific prose, which is used in their paper
to make a point about comprehension:
The smallest of the URFs (URFA6L), a 207-nucleotide (nt) reading frame overlapping out of
phase the NH2-terminal portion of the adenosinetriphosphatase (ATPase) subunit 6m gene has
been identified as the animal equivalent of the recently discovered yeast proton ATPase
subunit 8 gene.
You might think that the main problem with this sentence is the unfamiliar terminology.
But no, you would still have difficulties even if you know the terminology.
Perhaps it's the length?
42 words.
That's not it either.
Instead, Gopen and Swan argue that one of the main problems is subject-verb separation.
There are 21 words between the subject smallest and the verb has been identified.
A lot of intervening words between a sentence's subject and its verb greatly reduces comprehension.
By moving the subject and verb closer together, you can enhance comprehension.
This was accomplished by omitting the 19 word phrase describing URFA6L.
Now we have,
The smallest of the URFs (URFA6L) has been identified as the animal equivalent of the
recently discovered yeast proton ATPase subunit 8 gene.
This version is easier to understand.
The researchers have discovered the smallest unit in animal DNA analogous to a previously
described gene in yeast that codes for an important enzyme in energy metabolism.
Here's one more example from my own files.
Coastal wetlands in Louisiana (which aid in reducing flooding and erosion; provide essential
habitat for fish, shellfish, and wildlife; and protect important shipping ports and other
infrastructure against hurricanes) are disappearing due to a combination of natural causes and
human activities.
There are twenty five words between the subject wetlands and the verb are disappearing.
Although this sentence is not as difficult to follow as the previous example, the reader
must still work to follow the syntax.
Here is another way to convey the information using the same number of words and that requires
less effort by the reader.
Louisiana's coastal wetlands aid in reducing flooding and erosion; provide essential habitat
for
fish, shellfish, and wildlife; and protect important shipping ports and other infrastructure
against hurricanes.
Unfortunately, they are disappearing due to a combination of natural causes and human
activities.
Just by paying attention to subject-verb placement, you can improve the clarity of your writing.
Now, some would question whether all this emphasis on pleasing the reader is really
necessary.
My response to such a question would be:
Do you really want to make your readers struggle to understand your writing?
In particular, reviewers and editors.
They are the first people who will read your scientific paper and will decide if it's worth
publishing.
Why make it harder for them to grasp the importance of your findings with tortuous syntax?
Personally, I think it's worth the effort to make it easy for the reader to understand
what I am saying.
By using better word choice and clearer syntax, you can make your scientific papers a pleasure
to read.
Thanks for watching and please like my video if you found the information helpful.