I had a lot of fun reading about everyone's technical writing pet peeves in the comments to last week's post Written Off.
I have also realized that I am a petty, petty person: I get upset about more than 80% of all the peeves that different people have cumulatively listed! And I must have been separated at birth from at least two of my anonymous commenters..!
I wanted to follow up on a couple of specific comments. Anon on March 10 wrote:
I'm curious: do you have a couple of examples of particularly well-written papers? I'd like to see what you consider the pinnacle of scientific writing.
Well, I like my own technical writing, but perhaps I am a little biased there. :) I have a few favorite writers, one of them my frequent collaborator, but I am afraid that revealing their names would convey a bit too much about what I do. So I will refer you to Editor's Choice articles in Physical Review Letters (PRL for short). All PRL articles should be accessible to an audience broader than just the narrow specialists, and those papers marked as Editor's Choice should be particularly successful in this regard and promote reading across disciplines. Here are two papers that are fairly far removed from my research field, but I was able to enjoy and appreciate them, and that says something. One is
a single-author PRL by Sabine Hossenfelder, who also happens to blog on Backreaction (thanks Alex for recommending it!)
Bounds on an Energy-Dependent and Observer-Independent Speed of Light from Violations of Locality.
Another one I remember from longer ago is Andread Karch and Lisa Randall's
Relaxing to Three Dimensions. Lisa Randall is well known for writing popular science books.
A comment that struck a chord was that of Anon on March 15:
Pet-peeve: when a professor (who is a non-native English speaker) attempts to correct my English.
News flash to the professor: you may have a PhD and know more about science, but your English is not your forte.
When it comes to writing technical manuscripts, it's not just about one's command of English: it's about the proper structure of the manuscript, using the proper jargon, and most importantly conveying the message clearly. I find that students who are native English speakers can sometimes be particularly difficult to educate in this regard, because no matter what the comment is, they automatically assume they know better.
I am a faculty and a non-native speaker of English. I think that most faculty who are not native English speakers are aware of the fact that their English may not be perfect. However, most often what the student may view as an issue of language is actually something much different and much more critical: either something is wrong with the paper structure (e.g., you must actually motivate why you are doing what you are doing, you must also state clearly what is new in your paper and why), the style is inappropriate (e.g., adjective diarrhea has no place in technical writing), or perhaps the paper is simply unclear or bursting with redundancies. Often it can be a matter of the student not really understanding what it is that it new and important, or missing the big picture of how our work fits in the grand scheme of things; this issue comes up equally often with native and non-native English speaker students, and this is where the advisor's technical expertise is key.
If you are a native English speaker being advised by a non-native English speaker faculty, next time when your advisor tries to correct your manuscript, please ask yourself honestly whether he/she has a point. I bet you dollars to donuts that, more often than not, the advisor is primarily trying to correct the structural faults of the manuscript, improve the presentation (make it clearer or more succinct), and explain better what the motivation is or what your results mean. I suppose it is possible the advisor simply has control/micromanagement issues or is overestimating the quality of his/her English... However, if you dismiss your advisor's comments a priori because you consider yourself infallible by virtue of being a native English speaker, you are (a) coming across as disrespectful and needlessly irritating your advisor, and (b) most likely passing up a very good opportunity to improve your technical writing.
11 comments:
With respect to non-English faculty (being one of them) and English-speaking students I would say that sometimes it *can* also be grammar that is problematic. In my experience, it is much more common that English students can't tell the difference between it's and its or between their, they're and there. And I, English speaking or not, do correct that or similar errors. Another one that comes to mind is not knowing when to put 's or s at the end of the word. Non-English students don't seem to have this type of problems (but have others, related to sentence structure, etc.).
Just sayin'...
And yes, I agree about the adjective diahrroea of native speaker students, which, while I can point it out every single time, I find it difficult to "cure" the writer of. Any suggestions?
"struck a cord"
You mean "struck a chord"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry's_law
Ahaha! Thanks Andrew, nice catch!
I'd say that good command of English and knowing what sort of points need to be made in a manuscript are pretty much orthogonal.
Even if you take just the command over English, it's not always the case that the native speaker is better. It depends quite a bit on the country of origin and how much that person reads etc.
I think too many people get hung up on the grammar before the structure and content of the paper is properly considered. I am not saying that spelling and grammar are not important, but the polishing can come later. In a first draft I expect feedback on the outline, and the PI should be the best person to give guidance on content and structure. Help with English can be outsourced if need be, and bickering about English at an early stage distracts from the job of establishing a strong structural framework.
Not running a spell checker and expecting someone to read your draft is disrespectful. I don't mind grammar mistakes if I can see that the writer has done his or her best. But if the grammar significantly deteriorates and spelling mistakes become abundant towards the end of the draft, I get pissed off.
@Anon 6:44, I couldn't agree more.
Imagine my level of rage when I opened the paper I was just asked to review and there's a major typo *in the first sentence.*
Imagine my level of rage when I opened the paper I was just asked to review and there's a major typo *in the first sentence.*
This reminds me of an observation on reviewing: I have reviewed papers that described good science despite a few consistent grammatical errors (especially from non-native English speakers struggling with "the" and prepositions). However, any time the grammar is just consistently awful, i.e. significant errors in at least 50% of the sentences, the science is invariably awful. Yes, I realize that there are smart scientists out there who are horrible at English. However, professionals who care about doing a good job know that they need to compensate for weaknesses. So they find colleagues who can copy-edit, or they hire professionals to help. Sloppy people, OTOH, can't be bothered to do things the right way. And it shows in their science.
There is difference between sending something for review (formally or informally) and writing something as a team. In the former it should of course be a polished copy. However, in the case of the later it is better to get feedback on an outline (even bullet format) prior to attempting to write full paragraphs. It is not just a language thing, and dyslexics struggle here too. In the student-PI relationship the student should take the lead, but time can be lost all-round by writing a first draft that needs completely rewriting. I cannot emphasise enough the importance of writing an outline before attempting a paper of any sort. And I recommend getting feedback from the PI and co-author at this stage.
Alex, you are spot on. I can and will forgive misuse of articles/prepositions/etc if the science is good. And when the science is good, I applaud the writing effort regardless of these minor mistakes, because I know that *I'd* fail miserably at writing even the most elementary text in any other language outside English. The science in this paper with the typo in the first sentence, however, is absolutely terrible.
I agree with the comment of anonymous, the first one. I have found that even native English speaker can't tell when they have to use 's or its/it's and some many others and I think it's because most of us just speak our English language, we should study more our native language.
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