Chapter 2
SCIENTIFIC WORDS, SENTENCES,
AND PARAGRAPHS
1. SCIENTIFIC TEXT NEEDS EXACTNESS
AND CLARITY
1.1. Write with Precision
In science, your goal is to write a paper that is easy to understand. The art of scientific writing is not in the subtle underlying message conveyed by your pro. Instead, scientific pro is judged by how well it defines the details of the obrva-tions that you have made. In a short story, the reader might marvel at the “nsual writing, with hints of the mysteries of space and time.” In a scientific paper, how-ever, your pro style should disappear, and the reader should marvel at the realis-tic, explicit, and cleanly etched picture that you have painted.
Scientific papers have a stereotyped format so that there are no distractions from their contents. Likewi
, scientific pro should be formulaic and plain. Here, the medium is not the message, the message is the message. Therefore, when you write a rearch paper, make your message preci and keep the medium unobtrusive.
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To write precily is to write without adornment. It can be an effort to recognize fluff and imprecision in your own writing, so train yourlf to catch and to remove vagaries, emotion, indirectness, and redundancy. (For examples of the simplifica-tion of wordy phras, e Appendix B below.)
It helps to remember that your goal is to speak plainly, i.e., to write clean straightforward ntences without hedging. Say what you mean directly. For example:
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“It may therefore not be unexpected that …” should be “The results suggest …”
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“An effort was made to …” should be “We tried to …”
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“The sorbitol probably acts to increa …” should be “The sorbitol probably increas …”
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“This gene is of significant interest for understanding commonalities in the evolutionary history of the microorganisms A and B” is clearer, simpler, and more informative when you tell exactly what you have in mind, such as “A sin-gle mutation in this gene of microorganism A has brought about its new u in microorganism B”
M.J. Katz, From Rearch to Manuscript,5© Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2009
6 Chapter 2“It is our considered opinion that other authorities may have misstated the relative • import of such particulate concatenations in the soluble pha of the paradigm” should be written with specifics, such as “In their 1994 paper, Drs. Williams and Wilkins say that the drug’s failures are due entirely to the clumping of suspended drug particles. In contrast, we propo that the viscosity of the solvent caus 40–50% of the failures.”
1.1.1. U Numbers
Numbers have just the right properties for scientific writing: numbers are preci, objective, unambig
uous, and without emotional undertones. Moreover, numbers can be ud to describe many things in the real world; for example, in a variety of ways, numbers can reprent shapes and sizes:
113610
15
4916
25-- square numbers ---- triangular numbers --Becau quantifiable adjectives are ideal descriptors in science, try to redefine all your adjectives as numbers. ‘Tall’ should be defined numerically, for example, ‘greater than 2 m’ or ‘greater than 7 km.’ Likewi, ‘heavy’ should be ‘greater than 10 kg’ or ‘greater than 100 kg’ or, perhaps, ‘greater than 105 kg.’ If you u ‘brief,’ tell us whether it means less than a minute, less than a cond, or less than a millicond.
Even the inherently subjective adjective ‘painful’ should be t as a number on a scale quantifying how
painful, as is done in most hospitals:
12345678910Pain Score worst
none mild moderate
vere
Scientific Words, Sentences, and Paragraphs7 1.1.2. U Objective Words
Of cour, you cannot write with numbers alone. When quantifiable words are not available, you should u as preci and objective a vocabulary as possible.
Whether any particular ntence is preci and objective, depends on the reader’s ability to define all its components. For example, “The needle vibrated continuously” is appropriate in a scientific paper if the reader is told which needle, what type of vibration, and over what time period it vibrated continuously. In sci-ence, the rule is, define all your words.
Beyond this rule, a few writing habits will help to ensure good scientific text. One of the habits is to weed out or replace vague and subjective terms; for instance, remove:
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Expressions with no clear limits, such as
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a lot, fairly, long term, quite, really, short term, slightly, somewhat, sort of,
very文海小学
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Words of personal judgment, such as
assuredly, beautiful, certainly, disappointing, disturbing, exquisite, fortuitous, hopefully, inconvenient, intriguing, luckily, miraculously, nice, obviously, of cour, regrettable, remarkable, sadly, surely, unfortunately
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Words that are only fillers, such as
alright, basically, in a n, indeed, in effect, in fact, in terms of, it goes with-out saying, one of the things, with regard to
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Casual colorful catchwords and phras, such as
agree to disagree, bottom line, brute force, cutting edge, easier said than done, fell through the cracks, few and far between, food for thought, leaps and bounds, no nonn, okay, quibble, at of the pants, sketchy, snafu, tad, tidbit, tip of the iceberg
1.2. Scientific U of Tens
Good scientific pro us a preci vocabulary. Scientific pro also us verb tens in a standardized way. When discussing rearch, the prent ten indicates general knowledge and general principles, while the past ten indicates results of experiments.
1.2.1. Prent Ten Is for Generalities
U the prent ten for general knowledge statements, widely accepted state-ments, and statements for which you could cite textbook references; for example:• Rudbeckia hirta), a member of the Aster family, is a plant “Black-eyed Susan (
native to North America.”
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“Hexos formed by digestion in the intestinal tract are absorbed through the gut wall and reach the various tissues through the blood circulation.”
8 Chapter 2•
“The term ‘nuclide’ indicates a species of atom having a specified number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus.”
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“On a protein-rich diet, the amount of methylhistidine in the urine increas.”1.2.2. Past Ten Is for Specific Obrvations
Your results—the particular obrvations that you made during a rearch study—are bits of history, so u the past ten when you report your experimental results. For example:
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“In photographs of Guatemalan tarantulas, we found that the number of dorsal stripes ranged from six to nine.”
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“During his war-time expedition to Guatemala, Rawski (1943) reported finding tarantulas with 9 stripes.”
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七米等于多少分米“Eighteen percent of the patients in our study developed a mild rash.”
“The diodes were compared at regular time points during the next 75 h.”
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2. THE PARAGRAPH IS THE UNIT OF EXPOSITION 2.1. Each Paragraph Makes One Point
In a rearch paper, each paragraph should contain one main idea, and the space between paragraphs should be like taking a mental breath. Picture the text as, Idea #1, breathe, Idea #2, breathe, …
Most people absorb ideas in small chunks, and scientific paragraphs are tho small absorbable chu
nks. You can asss the absorbability of a paragraph simply by counting its ntences. The ideal size for a paragraph is 3–4 ntences, and five ntences are about the upper limit. If you find that you have written six or more ntences without allowing for a mental breath, then go back and break your writ-ing into smaller chunks.
Consider this paragraph about insulin.
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‘To keep all the cells in the body coordinated and working toward the same meta-bolic goals, the body us hormones. Hormones are chemicals that are carried throughout the bloodstream, giving the same message to all the cells they meet. For sugar metabolism, the hormone mesnger is insulin. Insulin is a protein that is made in the beta cells, which are clustered inside the pancreas. When the level of gluco in the blood becomes too high, the beta cells crete insulin molecules into the bloodstream; thus, after a meal, the pancreas puts a large do of insulin into the blood. The message that insulin then transmits throughout the body is “it’s time to absorb, u, and store gluco.” ’
This paragraph contains six ntences, and its length alone should nd you back to your writing de
sk. Reading the paragraph, you can find two major ideas. First, there are ntences about hormones in general. Second, there are ntences
Scientific Words, Sentences, and Paragraphs9 about one specific hormone, insulin. To emphasize each of the ideas, we should break the paragraph in two: one paragraph concerning hormones in general and the other concerning the nature and the effects of insulin:
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‘The body us hormones to coordinate the metabolism of its many far-flung cells. A hormone is a chemical that is carried in the bloodstream and that gives a message to the cells it contacts. For sugar metabolism, insulin is one of the hormone mesngers, and its message is “take up, u, and store gluco.”
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‘Insulin is a protein that is made in beta cells, which are clustered inside the pancreas. When the level of gluco in the blood becomes too high, the beta cells crete extra insulin molecules into the bloodstream. After a meal, for instance, the pancreas cretes a large do of insulin into the blood.’
In a literary work, where the ebb and flow of words conveys a subconscious emotional message, a page of short paragraphs can be choppy and disruptive. However, a rearch paper has a different goal. Scientific writing must prent a clear unemotional experience. Here, the methodical form, Idea #1, breathe, Idea #2, breathe …, is an effective way to write.
2.2. Inside a Scientific Paragraph
2.2.1. The Lead Sentence
A typical scientific paragraph begins by stating its point, so the lead ntence should tell us the focus of the paragraph. In the two-paragraph example above, the first lead ntence, “The body us hormones to coordinate the metabolism of its many far-flung cells,” tells us that the first paragraph is about hormones as l ong-distance mesngers. The cond lead ntence, “Insulin is a protein that is made in beta cells, which are clustered inside the pancreas,” tells us that the cond paragraph is about a specific hormone, insulin.
2.2.2. The Subquent Sentences
The remaining 2–3 ntences in each paragraph expand on the focal point that was identified in the lead ntence. Inside the paragraph, the ntences may:
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Give examples of the focal point.
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Give more details about the focal point.
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Remind readers that the focal point is a member of a more general class of similar things.
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Highlight an implication of the focal point.
In our example above, the first lead ntence tells us that the focal point of the paragraph is:
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HORMONES = LONG-DISTANCE MESSENGERS
10 Chapter 2
The cond ntence gives details of both sides of this equation:
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HORMONE = CHEMICAL
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HORMONAL MESSENGERS TRA VEL VIA THE BLOODSTREAM
Finally, the third ntence gives specific examples:
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INSULIN = HORMONE
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INSULIN’S MESSAGE = “TAKE UP, USE, AND STORE GLUCOSE”
Flow
2.2.
3. Internal
A scientist should be able to read your paragraphs without pausing. To give your writing this flow, each ntence of a paragraph should t the stage for the following ntence. Each internal ntence should be an extension of its predeces-sor. This can be done by making the subject or object from ntence number one the subject or object of ntence number two. By sharing its predecessor’s subject or object, the cond ntence continues the discussion and connects new ideas to tho that have been established previously.
白羊座配什么星座For example, in the first paragraph of the example above, ‘hormone’ is an object in ntence number one, and it is then ud as the subject of ntence number two:
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• hormones to coordinate the metabolism of its many far-flung “The body us
cells. A hormone is a chemical that is carried in the bloodstream and that gives a message to cells it contacts.”
Likewi, ‘hormone’ and ‘message’ are a subject and an object in ntence number two, and ‘message’ is ud as a subject and ‘hormone mesnger’ is ud as an object in ntence number three:
• hormone is a chemical that is carried in the bloodstream and that gives a mes-‘A
sage to cells it contacts. For sugar metabolism, one of the hormone mesngers is insulin, and its message is “take up, u, and store gluco.” ’
2.3. Connect Succeeding Paragraphs
In the same fashion, you can smooth the travel between paragraphs by making the lead ntence of each paragraph refer to the previous paragraph. The flow between paragraphs is most natural if the subject of the lead ntence is a subject or an object in the last ntence of the preceding paragraph. In our example above, ‘insu-lin’ makes the bridge between the two paragraphs:
‘The body us hormones to coordinate the metabolism of its many far-flung •
cells. A hormone is a chemical that is carried in the bloodstream and that gives a message to cells it contacts. For sugar metabolism, insulin is a hormone mes-nger, and its message is “take up, u,
and store gluco.”
• Insulin is a protein that is made in beta cells, which are clustered inside the ‘
pancreas. When the level of gluco in the blood becomes too high, the beta cells crete extra insulin molecules into the bloodstream. After a meal, for instance, the pancreas puts a large do of insulin into the blood.’
