Good news about good papers!
Eva Amsen
Tuesday, 28 October 2008 13:59 UTC
I’m currently TA-ing (marking) a course in scientific communication (how to write abstracts, give presentations, write grant applications, etc.) for 3rd year biology students.
Without giving away too much of what students are writing, I have to say I’m pleasantly surprised by some of the assignments I’m seeing. Some mimic the style they see in the papers they read, but there is also a lot of actual good, original writing. It’s weird, because my initial reaction is that some are in the “wrong style”, and it takes a mental twist to get around the fact that they have the info they need, and the detail they need, but they just did away with the extravagant passive sentence constructions that I’m so used to.
I hope they keep doing that once they’re in grad school and beyond.
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Replies
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Very good news! Glad the passive has been consigned to the bin.
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Of the many adjustments one has to make in the transition from writing for scientists to writing for the general public, I think shaking the passive voice is among the toughest. I still struggle to get rid of it! It’s such a part of scientific writing that most researchers don’t even think there is anything wrong with it!
It’s nice to hear that passive voice is a learned trait, and not one inherent in all those with scientific tendencies! It should be eradicated early on in the education process. ‘Should’ being my favorite of all useless words, of course. I do hope that your students hold on to their good writing style!
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It’s weird, because my initial reaction is that some are in the “wrong style”…
Eva, I think that your initial reaction is actually quit common. Many papers try to copy a certain “style”, and unfortunately also copy the bad writing. Passive voice, complicated sentences, and avoidance of simple language are often not seen as bad writing, because they are so common.
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I guess the problem is that for many young scientists, the only way to write own paper is to copy a certain “style”. They have no courses available, no experience and often no advisor who can help. And sometimes the advisor is the reason of bad writing;) I’m happy to have great advisor, but there are many students left alone with writing. I think the best is to teach good medical writing or just show good paper (so we could copy good writing;))
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Some theses in my lab have been subjected to editing. A green pen was utilized to indicate where possibly inappropriate grammatical and syntactical constructions were employed.
Yeah. Funny, innit? An Hons Student here wrote a marvellous thesis, but the chapter from a PhD made me want to cry.
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TA’s at my university still deduct marks from lab reports when students use the active voice. Such a pity because in addition to draining the life out of a sentence, the passive construction encourages writers to overuse weak linking verbs (variations on the verb “to be”), nominalizations (noun forms of verbs), prepositional phrases, and imprecise terms. While the passive voice is useful in making transitions between sentences, scientific articles written largely in the passive voice are often boring to read (and to write, i imagine!). My guess is that many researchers have difficulty transforming passive sentences into active ones – one more good reason for them to take science writing courses!
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That’s not a ‘pity’, Linda; it’s a bloody outrage.
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Cut to the chase, I say! Avoid the style (whoever introduced it) of ‘State what you are going to say, say it, then restate in the conclusion what you just said’. This is all very redundant! Rather state what hypothesis you are testing, why this should be of interest to a broad interest of researchers or others in the community, and provide sufficient detail to the experimental rationale. State the results of these experiments (not in the fashion ‘Fig. x shows this…’ ) Then place the findings in context on how they have advanced the field beyond the previous work and what new areas might open up as a result.
Remember, time is what one is competing for – if you can distill the main message into a form that is easily digested, all the better. This simple rule – clear consise expression of what is new and why it is important and how it advances the field- will make it more likely that others will appreciate your work and be more likely to cite it in the future.
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Already published papers are often taken as examples when writing a paper. That is why it is important to have a collection of well-written papers as positive examples. This was the original intention with the Good Paper Journal Club, but we haven’t come up with a well-written paper in a while.
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