Scientific Writing

In Cronin, B. (ed) Annual Review of Information Science and Technology. Vol 42: 297-338, 2008

This review article seeks to offer an analytic and critical overview of research on scientific writing from a largely linguistic perspective. This perspective, we believe, complements the interests of those working in Information Science, with its central concern with the literatures involved in scholarly communication through bibliometrics, citation analysis and information retrieval. Such studies have long drawn upon insights from linguistic theory and analysis as a means of understanding knowledge, and our discussion is an attempt to systematize the sources of these insights.

1990

Science is often hard to read. Most people assume that its difficulties are born out of necessity, out of the extreme complexity of scientific concepts, data and analysis. We argue here that complexity of thought need not lead to impenetrability of expression; we demonstrate a number of rhetorical principles that can produce clarity in communication without oversimplifying scientific issues. The results are substantive, not merely cosmetic: Improving the quality of writing actually improves the quality of thought.

Proceedings of ‏The 2nd International Conference on Research in Social Sciences and Humanities, 2020

The quality of language of a scholarly paper determines its acceptability for academic publication. Different academic publications have house styles that include language, referencing and citation. Whether books, editorials or journals, there are distinguished styles of expressions, sentence construction, lexicon and mode of writing or reporting within the academic domain. Given that authors are expected to communicate the organized thoughts and research findings with accuracy and sensitivity, challenges abound in conformity to house style or grammar. Sometimes, the authors encounter the interference of structural construction or the interference of the mother tongue for a non-native speaker, writing in a second language. Through a review of the literature and guidelines laid by some academic house styles like APA 6th Edition, this paper examines the specific features of language that an author writing in any language for publication need to consider for acceptability. The paper posits that scholarly research is a specialty, thus the language is within the unique set of rules governing academic writing. The nature of some scholarly research disposes the report to an exclusive audience which might demand language conceptualized within the boundaries of the discipline. Language barrier between thoughts and written words constitute hindrance for non-native speakers. Academic writing needs special tutoring in the language both for native and non-native speakers. Academic brokerage should be encouraged.

Education 3-13, 2013

The essay deals with sentence structure, style, and logical flow when writing scientific text. Ten suggestions for optimizing sentences are presented followed by ten published examp les of stylistic variations. Although the emphasis is on chemistry, the reco mmendations are applicable to all areas of non-fiction writ ing.

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 2012

The third edition of _Writing in the Sciences: Exploring Conventions of Scientific Discourse_ by Ann M. Penrose and Steven B. Katz, is reviewed by Jolynne Berrett.

1990

Science is often hard to read. Most people assume that its difficulties are born out of necessity, out of the extreme complexity of scientific concepts, data and analysis. We argue here that complexity of thought need not lead to impenetrability of expression; we demonstrate a number of rhetorical principles that can produce clarity in communication without oversimplifying scientific issues. The results are substantive, not merely cosmetic: Improving the quality of writing actually improves the quality of thought.

Technical Communication, 2005

_Writing in the Sciences_ by Penrose and Katz, reviewed by Candie McKee.

Indian Journal of Medical and Paediatric Oncology, 2019

Scientific writing in English started in the 14th century. Human beings have been able to communicate for thousands of years. Yet scientific communication as it is today is relatively new. It was only 300 years ago that the first journals were published. Writing is the most vital means for communicating scientific work. It helps document and communicate ideas, activities and findings to others. Good writing can be beneficial to scientists in a number of ways. In this article we have discussed the basic overview and principles of scientific writing.

2010

explores the interaction between two traditions of investigating academic writing that might broadly be called 'discourse analysis' and 'corpus linguistics'. All the contributors in this volume acknowledge the common ground of these two traditions and hold that future research will profit from combining both approaches.