Everyday Scientist

royce makes a funny

January 13, 2011 at 9:16 am | sam | literature, nerd, science community

Prof. Royce Murray’s recent editorial in AC is fun. I actually do find these type of sarcastic instructions for writing a paper helpful. To an extent. These devices are great reminders of the essentials to making a paper readable. I might find even more helpful a template of a paper that tells you what each paragraph and caption should say. Maybe I’ll make that someday for teaching purposes…

My fav line is: “Diagrams are worth a thousand words, so in the interest of writing a concise paper, omit all words that explain the diagram, including labels. Let the reader use his/her fertile imagination.”

Another anti-suggestion from Royce is: “It should be anathema to use any original phrasing or humor in your language, so as to adhere to the principle that scientific writing must be stiff and formal and without personality.” Which reminds me of this line from an old Chem. Rev. paper: “Evans boldly put 50 atm of ethylene (C₂H₄, trans-C₂H₂D₂, or C₂D₄) in a cell with 25 atm of O₂. The apparatus subsequently blew up, but luckily not before he had obtained the spectra shown in Figure 8.”

I think Royce should have added another rule: Make sure your TOC art is unreadable, phallic, or filled with math formulas (or even just “Maths“).

P.S. I see that CBC scooped me on Royce’s editorial!