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Australian manual of scientific style Start communicating effectively
Science writing style
Scientific subjects are often complex, with hard-to-understand concepts, or layers of important and detailed information. Thus, readers already face hurdles in understanding scientific documents.
In addition, scientists sometimes do not communicate their ideas as effectively as possible. Many use a style of writing they were taught at school and university. Some of the features typical of this style are:
- unnecessarily complex words and jargon
- long sentences, often with unnecessary words
- passive voice and the use of third person instead of first person
- abstract nouns and verbs
- long strings of modifiers (adjectives) before a noun.
Some scientists, as well as other technical and government writers, believe that ‘scientific style’ needs to be very formal and impersonal. They may believe that writing in plain English means ‘dumbing down’ the science, and that a more casual style will not be accepted by journals or other scientists.
But, given the choice, most scientists prefer a simpler and more direct style of writing:
Traditional and modern scientific writing
A well-known science writer and trainer, John Kirkman, asked members of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, the British Ecological Society and the Biochemical Society to give their views on 6 different versions of a scientific text. The information in the texts sent to each group was the same; only the writing style varied between the versions. The opening passage from 2 of the 6 versions sent to the Biochemical Society are shown below. Version A was written in a ‘traditional’ passive scientific style with heavy use of specialised terminology; version B was expressed in a more modern, active style with a minimum of specialised terminology.
A The purpose of the study reported here was the establishment of an unsophisticated in vitro system, based on measurement of the rate of release of growth hormone from isolated fragments of anterior pituitary from rats, which would provide a suitable technique for further elucidation of the mechanisms by which regulation of the growth hormone secretory process in the cells of the anterior pituitary may be achieved. The choice of rat anterior pituitary for these studies was made by virtue of the ready availability of this gland in the fresh state and its relatively small size which permits fragments being obtained with minimal damage to the tissues involved.
B Our aim was to devise a simple system for further in vitro investigation of ways of controlling secretion of growth hormone. The investigation was to be based on measuring the rate at which growth hormone is released from isolated fragments of anterior pituitary from rats. We chose rat pituitary because it is relatively small, so fragments can be obtained with only slight tissue damage. Also, fresh pituitary is easy to get.
John asked readers: Which is most comfortable to read, easy to grasp and simple to digest? Which style would you use?
A clear majority of readers (70.5%) preferred the simpler, more active styles. Version B was the most popular of all the 6 versions (38%), and version A was the least popular (5%).
Source: Kirkman J (2005). Good style: writing for science and technology, Routledge, London.
Ideally, readers should only need to read a text once to get the meaning. Modern scientific style aims to achieve this by eliminating the undesirable features of traditional scientific writing (see Clear and appropriate language and Moving away from the impersonal for how to do this in your work).