What’s the difference between studying a subject extensively and studying it intensively, between doing extensive research and intensive research? It seems like a simple enough question, one that could easily be answered by consulting a dictionary. I consulted four: Merriam-Webster Unabridged (3rd ed), The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Webster’s New World College Dictionary (4th ed), and The American Heritage Dictionary (5th ed) .* Here’s what I found:
Category: Writing Tips
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Top five posts of 2012
Is improving your scientific writing among your goals for the new year? If so, you might start by revisiting the five most-read posts on The Scientist’s English for 2012:
3. Shortening your paper or abstract
5. Implied antecedents for “those” and that”
I look forward to providing more tips in 2013. In the meantime, I’d like to direct you to a wonderful series of articles on scientific writing, published in 2010 in the journal Clinical Chemistry: “The Clinical Chemistry Guide to Scientific Writing.” The great thing for ESL authors is that these articles—which cover all the components of a typical scientific paper, including figures and tables—have been translated into Chinese, Spanish, and Portuguese. For additional online information about scientific writing, visit the links in the sidebar on the right, under “Scientific Writing Advice.”
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Served as
It’s difficult to find a book on scientific writing that doesn’t inveigh against weak verbs and nominalizations, and in previous posts, I’ve suggested ways to find them in your papers and eliminate them (here, here, and here). In this post, I want to point out another one: “served as,” as in
Metallic nickel served as a catalyst for the growth of carbon nanotubes.
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Appositional “or”
The conjunction “or” can be used not only to indicate two or more alternatives but also to indicate synonymous or equivalent expressions. When used for the latter purpose, “or” can be translated as “also referred to as,” “defined as,” or “in other words,” and sentences containing such an appositional “or” are punctuated differently than sentences in which “or” separates alternatives. Let’s look at some examples.
Infrared spectroscopy or electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy can be used to follow the kinetics of radical decay.
Here “or” is used to indicate two alternative techniques—infrared spectroscopy and electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy—either of which can be used to follow the decay kinetics. In this type of sentence, “or” separates the two parts of a compound subject, and no additional punctuation is required. What about the following, apparently similar sentence?
In the scientific manuscripts I edit, certain deviations from the generally accepted typographical conventions for mathematical text crop up frequently enough that I thought I would discuss a few of them in this post. First, let’s look at some of the basic conventions: