NEWS
objective: “Earth is the centre of
this Solar System” isn’t any more
objective or factual than “We are
at the centre of our Solar System.”
•
•
•
Choose concrete language and ex-
amples. If you must talk about arbi-
trary colours of an abstract sphere,
it’s more gripping to speak of this
sphere as a red balloon or a blue
billiard ball.
Avoid placing equations in the
middle of sentences. Mathematics
is not the same as English, and we
shouldn’t pretend it is. To separate
equations from text, you can use
line breaks, white space, supple-
mentary sections, intuitive nota-
tion and clear explanations of how
to translate from assumptions to
equations and back to results.
When you think you’re done, read
your work aloud to yourself or a
friend. Find a good editor you can
trust and who will spend real time
and thought on your work. Try to
make life as easy as possible for
your editing friends. Number pag-
es and double space.
•
•
After all this, send your work to
the journal editors. Try not to think
about the paper until the reviewers
and editors come back with their
own perspectives. When this hap-
pens, it’s often useful to heed Rud-
yard Kipling’s advice: “Trust your-
self when all men doubt you, but
make allowance for their doubting
too.” Change text where useful,
and where not, politely explain
why you’re keeping your original
formulation.
And don’t rant to editors about the
Oxford comma, the correct usage
of ‘significantly’ or the choice of
‘that’ versus ‘which’. Journals set
their own rules for style and sec-
tions. You won’t get exceptions.
•
Finally, try to write the best version
of your paper: the one that you like.
You can’t please an anonymous
reader, but you should be able to
please yourself. Your paper — you
hope — is for posterity. Remember
how you first read the papers that
inspired you while you enjoy the
process of writing your own.
When you make your writing more
lively and easier to understand, people
will want to invest their time in reading
your work.
And whether we are junior scientists or
world-famous novelists, that’s what we
all want, isn’t it?
Figure 1: Actor Josh Brolin as Llewelyn Moss in the 2007 film adaptation of No Country for Old Men, based on the
novel by Cormac McCarthy.Credit: Allstar Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo
Grassroots
Vol 19
No 4
November 2019
38