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The Craft of Scientific Writing Third Edition The Craft of Scientific Writing Third Edition Michael Alley Inc1udes 28 Illustrations ~ Springer Michael Alley Mechanical Engineering Electrical and Computer Engineering Virginia rech Blacksburg, VA 24061-0238 alley®vt.edu Cover illustration: Parachute system designed for the crew escape module of the F-111 fighter jet. Peterson and Johnson, 1987. This illustration also appears on p. 162 of the text. Anci11ary information for the book can be found through the publisher' s website: http:j jwww.springer.ny.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Alley, Michael. The craft of scientific writingjMichael Alley. -3M ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Technical writing. I. Title Tll.A37 1996 808' .0666 - dc20 96-15207 ISBN 978-0-387-94766-2 ISBN 978-1-4757-2482-0 (eBook) Printed on acid-free paper. DOI 10.1007/978-1-4757-2482-0 First edition published by Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1987. Second edition published by Michael Alley, 1995. (1:) 1996 Springer Scienee+Business Media New York Originally published by Springer Seienee+Business Media, Ine. in 1996 All rights reserved. This work may not be transiated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Scienee+Business Media, LLC), exeept for brief exeerpts in connectiOlI with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in eonnection with any form of information storage and retrieval. electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar metho dology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be laken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. 9 springeronline.com For Karen Foreword We are all apprentices 01 a craft where no one ever becomes a master. -Emest Hemingway In October 1984, the weak writing in a scientific report made national news. The report, which outlined safety procedures during a nuclear attack, advised industrial workers "to don heavy clothes and immerse themselves in a large body of water." The logic behind this advice was sound: Water is a good absorber of heat, neutrons, and gamma rays. Unfortunately, the way the advice was worded was unclear. Was everyone supposed to be com pletely submerged? Was it safe to come up for air? Be sides being unclear, the writing conveyed the wrong im pression to the public. The report came across as saying "go jump in a lake"-not the impression you want to give someone spending thousands of dollars to fund your re search. Chances are that Dan Rather will not quote sentences from your documents on national television, no matter how weak the writing iso Still, your writing is important. On a personal level, your writing is the principal way in which people learn about your work. When you commu nicate weIl, you receive credit for that work. When you do not communicate weIl or are too slow to communi cate, the credit often go es to someone else. On a larger level, your writing and the writing of other scientists and vii viii Foreword engineers influenees publie poliey about scienee and en gineering. When the scientific eommunity eommunicates weIl, its opinions shape this publie poliey. When the sci entific eommunity does not eommunicate weIl, other groups dictate this publie poliey. Although scientific writing is important, many sci entists and engineers have never sat down and thought out exaet1y why they write or what they want their writ ing to aeeomplish. Instead, these authors rely on a set of vague eoneeptions that they have developed over the years. Often these eoneeptions arise from two untmst worthy sourees: simplistic rules and weak examples. The simplistic mIes that scientists and engineers re member originate in freshman eomposition classes taken years ago, late night eonversations with eoIleagues, Dos and DON'TS articles eut out of eompany newsletters. Use synonyms Jor variety. Never use the first person. Always write in the active voice. These rules contain absolutes such as "always" and "never." Worse yet, many of these mIes are untrue. When applied to the wide range of writing situations in scienee and engineering, these rules fail. Faee it: Writing scien tific doeuments is difficult, mueh too difficult to be solved by a list of one-liners. An even bigger influenee on how scientists and en gineers write eomes from examples that they read. Just as hearing a spoken dialeet influenees the way you speak, reading a eertain writing style influenees the way you write. Word ehoices, sentenee rhythms, even the ways that papers are organized are absorbed by readers. Unfortu nately, many writing examples in scientific literature are weak. In many doeuments, the results are not emphasized weIl, the language is needlessly eomplex, and the illus trations do not mesh with what is written. Foreword ix Because of simplistic mIes and weak examples in scientific writing, many conceptions that scientists and engineers have about scientific writing are really miscon ceptions. For instance, many authors think of scientific writing as a mystical aspect of science. Scientific writing is not that at all. For one thing, scientific writing is not a science. It does not contain la ws obtained through deri vations or experiments. Scientific writing is a craft. It con sists of skills that are developed through study and prac tice. Moreover, scientific writing is not mystical. In fact, scientific writing is straightforward. Unlike other forms of writing, such as fiction, where the goals are difficult if not impossible to define, scientific writing has two spe cific goals: to inform readers and to persuade readers. How do you achieve these goals? When the pur pose of the writing is to inform, you write in a style that communicates the most amount of information in the least amount of reading time. When the purpose of the writ ing is to persuade, you write in a style that presents logi cal arguments in the most convincing manner. You should understand, though, that there are no cookbook recipes for these styles-the writing situations in science and engineering are just too diverse for recipes to apply. If this book doesn't give recipes, what does it do? First, this book dispels the common misconceptions that prevent scientists and engineers from improving their writing. Second, this book uses examples from actual documents to show the differences between strong sci entific writing and weak scientific writing. Third, this book discusses the style of scientific writing by going beyond the surface question of how things are written to the deeper question of why things are written as they are. In essence, what thi8 book does is make you a critical reader of scientific writing so that you can craft a style for your own writing situations. x Foreword In addition to discussing the style of scientific writ ing, this book discusses the act of sitting down at the com puter to write: getting in the mood, writing first drafts, revising, and finishing. I wish that I could tell you that this book will make your scientific writing easy. Unfortu nately, that's not the way scientific writing iso Scientific writing is hard work. The best scientific writers struggle with every paragraph, every sentence, every phrase. They must write, then rewrite, then rewrite again. Scientific writing is a craft, a craft you continually hone. Michael Alley Madison, Wisconsin May 1995 Acknowledgments In preparing this edition, I owe much to my colleagues, especially Leslie Crowley at the University of Illinois, Laura Grossenbacher at the University of Wisconsin, Christene Moore at the University of Texas, and Harry Robertshaw at Virginia Tech. To my students I owe even more, especially those at Virginia Tech, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Texas, Sandia National Labo ratories, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. They have challenged my advice, revised it, made it more precise.