The Science of Scientific Writing

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Citation: George D Gopen, Judith A Swan (1990) The Science of Scientific Writing. American Scientist (RSS)
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): The Science of Scientific Writing
Download: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29774235
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Summary

The article aims to persuade those who write scientific papers to communicate in their publications in a way that reaches the largest audience and leaves no question about what the author is communicating. Writing with the reader in mind Gopen and Swan implore scientific writers to use reader expectation to structure the content within a paper and frame information in a context that comes natural to a reader, for example placing pertinent information from left to write in a table. The authors argue that readers expect certain information in the structure of prose and this should be used to help convey information. It’s suggested subject-verb separation be short in order to keep the focus of the reader and the attention where the author intends. Putting the material at the end of the sentence or the syntactic closure referred to as the “stress position” helps emphasize the importance of the subject to the reader. The authors refer to a topic position as the subject used to link to information forward and backward. This topic position is used to give the reader context for the subject in the stress position. The stress position is reserved for new information. Goben and Swan state that the misuse of these positions is the number one problem in professional scientific writing. Goben and Swan further emphasize the importance of the two position by giving an example showing that the misplacement of the two position can leave logical gaps. Equally important the authors point out is the action verbs used to distinguish what is important. Gopen and Swan review these points in detail and with example for clarity. They close by restating the points made above. Gopen and Swan sum up their position of writing for the reader by arguing that recording scientific data without paying attention to the structure is a hindrance to conveying a thesis.