WRT333
Style in Scientific Journal Articles
Although our focus here is on writing in the natural sciences, the problems extend into the social sciences as well. See, for example, historian Gordon Wood's comments on writing history both within the discourse community and for the public, in "THE WRITING LIFE: Defending the academicians".
In their analysis of style in 20th century scientific journals, Gross et al. (2002) look for indicators that
"style has been adapted from a natural language where people are the central characters occupying the subject position to a specialized discourse where things and abstractions have become the foci of attention. Somewhat to our surprise...our principal indexes of this "objective" style—passive voice and dummy subjects—have reached a point of evolutionary stability, as reflected by the data in table 8.1.
Here is a fairly typical example of English scientific prose dominated by the passive voice, with one instance of the dummy-subject construction (bold type used for emphasis):
"This finding contradicts the conclusions of Klein et al. [1987] based on Voyager observations. How can this discrepancy be explained? Is it caused by differences in the measurements, one set of measurements presumably being in error? The question is not easily answered because of the different ways in which the data are analyzed by the Pioneer and Voyager investigators. Thus it is not possible to compare figure 5 with the corresponding Voyager Measurements."
Even though the authors are trying to explain two sets of data in apparent conflict, they keep the prose objective and impersonal by relying upon the passive voice and keeping the key players out of the important subject position. It is thus not a matter of us versus them, but abstract entities in contention, This neutered style leaves the impression that the authors wish only objectively to evaluate and explain the available facts, not participate in an intellectual donnybrook."
Table 8.1 Averages Measures of Objective Style in 20th-Century English Passages (n-486): Occurrences per 100 Words
Here is a fairly typical example of English scientific prose dominated by the passive voice, with one instance of the dummy-subject construction (bold type used for emphasis):
"This finding contradicts the conclusions of Klein et al. [1987] based on Voyager observations. How can this discrepancy be explained? Is it caused by differences in the measurements, one set of measurements presumably being in error? The question is not easily answered because of the different ways in which the data are analyzed by the Pioneer and Voyager investigators. Thus it is not possible to compare figure 5 with the corresponding Voyager Measurements."
Even though the authors are trying to explain two sets of data in apparent conflict, they keep the prose objective and impersonal by relying upon the passive voice and keeping the key players out of the important subject position. It is thus not a matter of us versus them, but abstract entities in contention, This neutered style leaves the impression that the authors wish only objectively to evaluate and explain the available facts, not participate in an intellectual donnybrook."
Table 8.1 Averages Measures of Objective Style in 20th-Century English Passages (n-486): Occurrences per 100 Words
| 1901-1925 | 1926-1950 | 1951-1975 | 1976-1995 | 1901-1995 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Suppressed passive | 2.0 | 1.9 | 2.2 | 1.8 | 2.0 |
| Objective passive | 0.6 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.6 | 0.5 |
| Dummy subject | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.4 |
| Hedges | 2.1 | 2.2 | 2.3 | 2.2 | 2.2 |
Suppressed passive refers to suppression of person; I do not know the difference between the two passives. Gross et al. merely point out that objectification through use of passive voice seems to have stabilized as a style in the last century.
Other styles discussed by Gross et al.:
- Hedging: This presents an impression that "is not one of invincibility or impersonal authority or absolute truth ("This is so" or "They are wrong") but of tentativeness ("This is probably so" or "They might be wrong")." Hedging communicates doubt. Here is an illustrative passage:
It seems obvious that experiments with large continuous cage populations may suggest the nature of the influence of certain environmental agents on the genetic factors of natural populations, beginning with some of the genetic factors already under investigation. At the same time it should perhaps be emphasized that in a natural population the combination of important variables and effective agents is probably so complex that only very general applications can be made of the findings of studies of artificial cage populations.
- Shunning the personal: "This style is purposely designed so that the author's individual voice remains subservient to the presentation of a new knowledge claim and its accompanying evidence, sometimes to the point of cold-bloodedness: "The undisturbed animal with extended tentacles is quickly grasped back of the tentacles before it has time to retract. The oral end is then immediately dipped into a solution of nitric acid and paralyzed." (*shudder*) Measures of personal style—pronouns/names, evaluative expressions, poetic metaphors/similes—slowly declined in frequency over the last century.
- Managing Cognitive Complexity: "As science has
grown more theoretically and methodologically complex, its grammar has adapted
by adding substantially to the complexity in its noun phrases and by deployment
of specialized literary devices (such as fused noun strings and abbreviations)
aimed at compactly conveying technical messages to small groups of highly
trained readers in a specialized research field."
Table 8.3 summarized our English noun-phrase results for the entire 20th century and compares them with those acquired for the preceding three centuries. A dramatic shift in use of noun phrases is readily apparent. From the 17th through the 19th century, simple noun phrases outnumber complex ones in the subject position by about two to one, while for the 20th century, the reverse holds. In the nonsubject position, complex noun phrases greatly outnumber simple ones in all four centuries, but the ratio is between two and three to one in the 17th through 19th centuries and almost eight to one in the 20th.
Table 8.3 Percentages of Noun Phrases of Various Types, across Centuries, in English Passages
Noun-phrase Types 17th Century 18th Century 19th Century 20th Century Subject Simple 30% 22% 26% 14% Complex 12 19 17 33 Pronouns/names 14 17 19 9 Multiple modifiers 4 13 9 24 Nonsubject Simple 19 15 13 6 Complex 39 44 44 47 Pronouns/names 3 5 5 1 Multiple modifiers 19 29 28 35
"In practice, the complex noun phrases of 20th-century science tend to demand serious decoding abilities on the part of readers, as illustrated in this fairly typical passage on the molecular biology of plants:
"Degreened y-1 cells contain the
same level of translatable LHCP mRNA in the light or dark at 38oC.
Thus, the disparate kinetics of accumulation of LHCPs shown in figure
2a could result from selective inhibition of translation of
LHCP mRNA or subsequent rapid degradation of most of the newly synthesized
polypeptides."
- Complexity: Readability indices indicate a measure of sentence complexity by counting words and clauses, and complex (3+syllable) words. In general, sentence lengths are shrinking, clauses remain steady, facilitated by the use of information-packed noun clusters.
We will look at other measures later (see style and readability exercises).
Reference
- Gross, Alan. G., J. E. Harmon, and M. Reidy. 2002. Communicating Science: The Scientific Article from the 17th Century to the Present. Oxford. 267 p.