Scientific Journal Editors Say Polished Prose Clarifies Research

Sidebar: 10 Expressions to Avoid Seven Steps to More Stylish Prose Recommended Reading It wasn't an easy job. As a senior editor at JAMA-the Journal of the American Medical Association-in the 1960s, Lester King found himself constantly rewriting submitted manuscripts. He cut vague words. He snipped long sentences. He organized whole sections. TOO MANY WORDS: Scientific journals are plagued by needlessly verbose writing, contends English professor Robert Day. Finally, King had had enough. He decided to vent his frustrations-and share advice for improving scientific writing style-in a book: Why Not Say It Clearly: A Guide to Expository Writing (Boston, Little, Brown and Co., 1978). "The [journal] writing was so bad," says King, now retired, with a groan. "I couldn't believe the amount of correction I had to do." He's not alone. The first scientific journals emerged in the 17th century. Ever since, editors and authors-not to mention English professors-have complained that readers must trudge through needlessly wordy journal writing. "Academics seldom use one word when they can use three," remarks Robert Day, a professor of English at the University of Delaware in Newark. "They seldom use a short word if they can find a nice long one." The former editor of Nature, John Maddox, adds: "The obscurity of the literature now is so marked that one can only believe it to be deliberate." What is it about journal writing that makes for pages of painfully dense prose? Some researchers blame the pressure to publish new results quickly. Others say authors simply mimic existing journal style. Either way, redundant, jargon-filled articles written in passive voice often become the norm. SHORTCOMINGS OF SHORTHAND: CBE's Peggy Robinson believes that abbreviations are overused in scientific writing. The good news: No matter what causes sluggish style, writing teachers and editors say a few simple rules can help scientists organize paragraphs and polish sentences. Authors might do well to consider the advice. When an article is poorly written, many readers barely pause before flipping the page, asserts Peggy Robinson, chairwoman of the style manual committee at the Council of Biology Editors Inc. (CBE) in Bethesda, Md.: "It's true that people who really need the data will persevere through something that's dense and difficult to read. But it's harder to get people who are peripherally interested." And in this age of interdisciplinary research, she adds, scientists often read in subjects peripheral to their own. FUZZY LOGIC: Readers and editors are easily lost when writers don’t outline ideas clearly, contends Edward Huth. In rare cases, writing style may even push a peer reviewer to reject an article, says Edward Huth, former editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine: "If it's really stumbling English, it can't help sounding as though authors don't know what they're talking about." Beyond attracting readers and peer reviewers, a clean article style may help authors themselves. Scientists who write clearly about a research problem better understand that problem, argues Tobias Baskin, a biologist at the University of Missouri in Columbia. By revising and improving an article, a scientist is forced to logically think through ideas. "It's an arbitrary distinction between style and content," Baskin says. Clarify your style, and you clarify your ideas as well. Sprawling, poorly defined articles often begin in haste. Today, much of biology-particularly genetics-happens quickly. Competing camps of scientists race to uncover a gene, keeping research strategy a secret. The pace is relentless; the rush to publish, intense. Questions over writing style get lost in the frenzy, suggests Stephen Lock, former editor of the British Medical Journal. "If people weren't so paranoid to be the first out with a new finding, the writing might be better," he maintains. "As it is, people have so much science to report that they sometimes don't care a damn about the language it's written in." Researchers who do care about language can get trapped in tradition, Lock adds. When first submitting a manuscript to a scientific journal, authors often copy that journal's style to boost their odds of publication. In this way, existing writing style-often wooden and wordy-tends to perpetuate itself. What's more, those authors who try to buck the trend-for example, choosing active, short sentences and punchy verbs-may face criticism from peers. Leon Avery, a biochemist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, was discouraged to find one manuscript returned by peer reviewers who changed the words "get" to "obtain," "use" to "utilize," and "method" to "methodology." Reviewers also criticized his use of the first person "I" in talking about research. "Reviewers object to [words] they see as colloquial," Avery says. As a result, researchers-particularly young professors who need publications to win tenure-often stop trying to write journal articles in clear, original style. "It's risk avoidance." OBJECTIVE AND COLORFUL: Bioscience editor Rebecca Chasan disagrees that using an active voice encourages biased research. For years, most scientists did not personalize articles with use of the pronoun "I" (called active voice) or colorful words because they wanted to appear detached and objective about their work, notes Rebecca Chasan, editor of BioScience, a Washington, D.C.-based journal. Indeed, in a recent letter to Nature, one British biologist argued that "using the active voice encourages possessiveness in the results and/or work," leading a scientist to become less professional, more biased, and unwilling to see results contradicted (S.R. Leather, Nature, 381:467, 1996). This is the classic argument against active voice, says Chasan, who disagrees with that premise. "I understand why scientists use the passive voice, but too much of it just makes an article too hard to read." During the last decade, she says, many journals have begun to publish articles in which authors use the words "we" or "I" to describe results. In a recent editorial, Nature announced its intent to "inject increased effort into the readability of its papers" (Nature, 384:497, 1996). One goal behind good writing is to bring a reader effortlessly along from an article's beginning to its end. King's book notes that passive voice may force a reader to stop and think about who is doing the action. If, during the description of an experiment, an author writes, "The problem of blood flow was investigated," readers must decide whether the author was the one doing the investigating. It would be far more helpful, King argues, for the author to simply write, "We investigated the problem of blood flow." In addition to passive voice, writing specialists question several other journal style issues. One is subject/verb separation: sentences in which the subject sits miles away from its verb. George Gopen, director of writing programs at Duke University, and Judith Swan, a biochemist who teaches scientific writing at Princeton University, have studied this problem (G.D. Gopen, J.A. Swan, American Scientist, 78:550-8, 1990). In their paper, they analyzed the following sentence, taken from a research report: "The smallest of the URF's (URFA6L), a 207-nucleotide (nt) reading frame overlapping out of phase the NH2-terminal portion of the adenosinetriphosphatase (ATPase) subunit 6 gene has been identified as the animal equivalent of the recently discovered yeast H+-ATPase subunit 8 gene." This 41-word sentence's main problem is that a whopping 23 words separate the subject ("the smallest") from its verb ("has been identified"), Gopen and Swan point out. Readers expect a verb to follow its subject immediately. Gopen and Swan suggest rewriting the sentence this way: "The smallest of the URF's (URFA6L) has been identified as the animal equivalent of the recently discovered yeast H+- ATPase subunit 8 gene." A second sentence could then fill in the missing information. Another common style error is using too many abbreviations. Most journals sport a standard list of this cryptic shorthand. "Somehow, scientists have gotten the idea that it's good to abbreviate," Baskin says. "I work on microtubules, which automatically gets abbreviated as 'MT.' That makes me think of mountains. And when I write 'chlorophyll'-a perfectly fine word-it always ends up 'Chl.'" Robinson at CBE agrees that abbreviations have gotten out of hand-and into titles, captions, and so forth. "Scientists have gotten this tendency to use abbreviations for anything that has two words in it," she says. "You end up with paragraphs that are quite ugly to look at and can be difficult for the reader [to follow]." But the most serious snafus in journal writing go beyond the level of the sentence to the organization of whole paragraphs, editors complain. One common mistake is a simple failure to outline ideas clearly, from past research to the hypothesis at hand. When this organizational gap occurs in an introduction, readers get hopelessly lost from the start, according to Huth. "An editor picks up a report and gets to the end of the introduction, and he's still really not sure of the main question the research wants to tackle. You begin to get a sinking feeling." Chasan and others emphasize that despite widespread criticism, scientists can indeed write colorfully-even movingly-about their research. Some well-known scientists-for example, Charles Darwin-are remembered for both their research and their writing. Teachers say James Watson and Francis Crick's 1953 Nature paper on DNA's helical structure was wonderfully organized and persuasive (R. Moore, Journal of College Science Teaching, 24[2]:114-21, 1994). Albert Einstein wrote articles full of colorful words and humor. JargonPreferred a majority of most at the present time now due to the fact that because in the event that if it is clear that clearly it is suggested that I think prior to before subsequent to after take into consideration consider with respect to about Adapted from R.A. Day, How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, 4th ed., Phoenix, Ariz., Oryx Press, 1994. Divide paragraphs that are too long. Make sure each paragraph moves along a line of thought. Check links between paragraphs. Does the last sentence of one paragraph lead to the first sentence of the next? Look at each sentence in a paragraph. Some should be short; others long. Create a variety of rhythm. Delete slang words and empty phrases. Choose active verbs. Check the accuracy of word choice and spelling. Adapted from E.J. Huth, How to Write and Publish Papers in the Medical Sciences, 2d ed., Baltimore, Williams and Wilkins, 1990. R.A. Day, How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, 4th ed., Phoenix, Ariz., Oryx Press, 1994. E.J. Huth, How to Write and Publish Papers in the Medical Sciences, 2d ed., Baltimore, Williams and Wilkins, 1990. L.S. King, Why Not Say It Clearly: A Guide to Expository Writing, 2d ed., Boston, Little, Brown and Co., 1991. J.R. Matthews, J.M. Bowen, R.W. Matthews, Successful Scientific Writing: A Step-by-Step Guide for the Biological and Medical Sciences, Cambridge University Press, 1996. W. Strunk, Jr., E.B. White, The Elements of Style, 3d ed., New York, Macmillan Publishers Inc., 1979. Style Manual Committee, Council of Biology Editors, Scientific Style and Format: The CBE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, 6th ed., Chicago, Council of Biology Editors Inc., 1994. J. M. Williams, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, University of Chicago Press, 1990. "Go back and read the papers that were most influential," suggests Chasan. "You'll find that many of them were written with a lot of style." Editors and writing teachers offer tried-and-true tips to writing clear and colorful articles. First, they say, authors benefit from focusing on their main statements. What research question are you asking? What is your response to that question? And how does your response fit within the context, or history, of similar research? "I like an article that sets out the problem in advance, with context and explanation," Chasan comments. "Lay it out for the reader." Baskin agrees, noting that writing style "is about how you organize ideas into paragraphs." He advises trying to link paragraphs together with natural transitions. Baskin recommends a book titled Style: Toward Clarity and Grace (J.M. Williams, University of Chicago Press, 1990), which he has used to teach writing to biology students. The book explores the qualities that make a sentence, paragraph, or entire article readable. WRITING IN THE FAST LANE: Language and style are far from the first considerations in the rush to publish, notes Stephen Lock. At the sentence level, writing specialists offer some easy rules. First, avoid excess jargon and abbreviations. Technical papers, of course, require technical terms. But use these terms only when needed-and define them if possible. Also, keep sentences short. Keep subjects and verbs together. Choose simple verbs. Use the passive voice sparingly. And cut redundant words or phrases. According to editors, there's one thing every scientist can do to improve prose: Revise it. "The important thing is not writing, but rewriting," King says. "Nothing should be sent off for publication that has not been rewritten at least two or three times." He and others suggest putting an article aside for at least a day-better yet, a week-and then rereading it. Did you say what you meant to say? And did you say it clearly and accurately? Before submitting an article, an author should also ask colleagues to review the piece. "Ask for the harshest criticism you can get," advises Huth. Lock agrees. Some of his colleagues belong to a journal club. Each club member gets a chance to pass around a manuscript ready for submission, collecting comments on content and style. As scientists weave these rules into their writing style, they increase their chances of attracting readers as well as editors. In the end, though, King asserts that a good article is a reward in itself. "You could spend a great deal of time working hard [on an article], and maybe nobody has read it," he says. "All you have is a sense of your own conscience. Still, you can say to yourself, 'This is a well-written article.'" Kathryn S. Brown is a freelance science writer based in Columbia, Mo.

Scientific Journal Editors Say Polished Prose Clarifies Research

The Scientist Staff

Jan 19, 1997

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