4 ms·

> Considering how many papers I read that still are easily misunderstood even by smart readers... I think "defensive writing" is better understood as "good writ

> Considering how many papers I read that still are easily misunderstood even by smart readers... I think "defensive writing" is better understood as "good writing". I agree 100%. One thing I HATE HATE HATE is when research articles use unnecessary synonyms. Ie, plasma membrane in one sentence and then phospholipid membrane in another and then cell membrane in another. For someone just trying to get a grasp on a topic, it is REALLY fucking confusing. And even if you're an expert on the topic, it's still annoying. Just pick one and stick with it. OR uses stupidly complex words just to appear smart. Ie, ameliorates, a term I've ONLY ever seen in biology research articles and yet is a completely unscientific/unnecessary word. This isn't your creative writing class. Just fucking say that you found that your drug decreases lipid synthesis, NOT that it ameliorates it you big dunce. ALSO one more thing that annoys me - when people only use a term 3 or 4 times in a paper, but still INSIST on using the acronym. Ok, I get it - if it's something WAY more commonly referred to by its acronym like DNA or COPD, it's acceptable and probably preferable. But if it's central pontine myelinolysis, just fucking type it out instead of writing CPM so I don't have to waste mental energy trying to decipher what it means. If anything, scientific writing should be dumbed down more. PS. While I'm on my biomed-academia soapbox, I'd like to point out that the correct pronunciation of constitutive is just as it's written - similar to constitution. It's TUTIVE not TUITIVE.

alextheparrot 6y ago
> This isn't your creative writing class I think it is less this and more just code-usage to facilitate showing that they're part of the in-group. If I use the appropriate words ("Elucidate", "Ameliorate", "in situ"), I'm showing that I have learned the subject from a similar heritage. Partially an aside, but an interesting talk on academic writing, which I've enjoyed [0]. [0] https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM
- yhoneycomb 6y ago
  But in situ actually MEANS something. Elucidate is unnecessary but not terrible - at least it's used in everyday writing. If I had my druthers, I would ask for a less cumbersome word to be used. Still, I think most reasonably educated people would know what it means without missing a beat. Words like ameliorate are just wrong. Just absolutely wrong.
  - alextheparrot 6y ago
    I guess I'm having a hard time understanding the distinction you're working to draw between the three words. All three mean something, and could be argued to have value because of their pithiness [0]. If you're inclined, I'd be interested in a bit more of you're framing. Especially in terms of bio-medical texts, I'm a bit confused which characteristics make 'ameliorate' worse than 'in situ'. [0] Like this word. I could have said "Because of their precise meaning", but I picked a word that encapsulates that directly.
    - yhoneycomb 6y ago
      I mean, the point of writing a paper is to educate - and if you're using obscure words, you are also probably succeeding in obscuring your message. Take this example: > Chemical and/or biological therapeutic strategies to ameliorate protein misfolding diseases. Why not just "to target protein misfolding diseases"?
      - alextheparrot 6y ago
        The target audience for most academic papers is not the general public and these words or phrases are known to the target audience. If the idea is that academic papers should have a more general audience, then I feel that’s a different statement, because I agree that academic papers are often less accessible to non-target audience members due to word choice. In the case you mentioned there is a bit of redundancy which makes the word “ameliorate” easy to substitute. Terms like “therapeutic” and “misfolding” make it easy to derive that we’re going from a bad to good state. “Activated protein X ameliorates biofilm formation” has more content than if we swapped to “target” in this case, because it has the added effect of indicating that the interaction was “good”. As a continued aside, I think you’d enjoy the talk I originally posted. It dives into the difference between using writing to think vs persuade or educate, and how not recognizing that difference can cause poor scientific communication.
        yhoneycomb 6y ago
        > As a continued aside, I think you’d enjoy the talk I originally posted. It dives into the difference between using writing to think vs persuade or educate, and how not recognizing that difference can cause poor scientific communication. Thanks, I'll check it out!
- watwut 6y ago
  You all assume some grand reasoning and evil intent behind the word. Simply, most people writing scientific articles are bad at writing and generally are happy or is somewhat English. They don't obsess offer single word, because their focus is elsewhere and they have no clue about writing anyway.
  - alextheparrot 6y ago
    It is exactly because no one obsesses over single words in practice that these words gain usage, though. Academic writing is taught and word choice is a part of what is taught. I started using those words in my academic writing because that’s how I was taught to write from lab courses to journal contributions. Early in my studies professors and teaching assistants did correct single words where a more normative word was possible, so you just start writing like that to avoid any trouble. There isn’t anything intrinsically evil about norms and signaling, I feel that assuming someone recognizing a structure means that structure is inherently evil is a bit presumptive. In-group jargon usage is common and useful for some, and a hurdle to overcome for entrants, that’s it, absent any moral judgement.
- mattkrause 6y ago
  In situ has an actual meaning--and it would look decidedly weird if you called it (say) "in-place hybridization." `Elucidate` is an basically a fancy weasel word: I read it as "I don't actually have a strong prediction about what will happen--but I expect something obviously cool will happen when I do this experiment."
  - alextheparrot 6y ago
    It is a synonym for “in-place”, though. If academic writing was optimizing for reach, the more commonplace word instead of the latin variant would likely be used. To your point, though, if someone submitted a paper using “in-place” someone would probably point it out [0]. I think that’s the original point, that a lot of the word-level complexity is just how the writing is taught and subsequent reinforcement by mentors and peers to use the appropriate language. Yeah, elucidate is just a fancy word for “figure out” - but I think it is part of the dialect because of the connotation you mention (Even if a casual reader might not use it). [0] Not because it is strictly wrong, but because it violates how the in-group expects converse. I think this holds even if we go outside of phrases (One could argue in-situ hybridization is one item), as if I discover something new I’ll likely use the term “in-situ” if it involves similar locality properties
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  It's funny that so much of what we do as humans is signalling.
kilburn 6y ago
As someone who has written academic papers and sometimes used such "fancy" words: consider that not everyone is a native english speaker. As a native catalan and spanish speaker, there are times where that "fancy" word is easier to come up with than the "standard" one (because "fancy" english words tend to be those that come from latin). Your "ameliorate" example is a good one. In catalan, "millorar" is an extremely common verb meaning "to improve". Hence, I can easily see myself using it at some point, as rare as it may sound to you. I'm not saying it is better to do it this way, what I'm saying is that instead of being so annoyed at the author trying to seem smart, maybe you can shrug it off as a quirk of those who are writing in a foreign language.
watwut 6y ago
Those fancy words don't look fancy if everybody is using them. Especially if you are not native speaker, the fancy word is equally new word then the supposedly common word. Because both are new to you and you learned both from other papers. So you just use the one you remember better and ameliorate sound like common French word. Or maybe it is from Latin, but if you deel with Latin often it sound common. It is like using POJO in tech. You kind of forget the word is not normal after a while.
zajio1am 6y ago
> One thing I HATE HATE HATE is when research articles use unnecessary synonyms. Ie, plasma membrane in one sentence and then phospholipid membrane in another and then cell membrane in another. For someone just trying to get a grasp on a topic, it is REALLY fucking confusing I think that this is generally frowned upon in any technical writing, including scientific. So it is not an expected convention in scientific writing.

alextheparrot 6y ago

> This isn't your creative writing class I think it is less this and more just code-usage to facilitate showing that they're part of the in-group. If I use the appropriate words ("Elucidate", "Ameliorate", "in situ"), I'm showing that I have learned the subject from a similar heritage. Partially an aside, but an interesting talk on academic writing, which I've enjoyed [0]. [0] https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM

yhoneycomb 6y ago
But in situ actually MEANS something. Elucidate is unnecessary but not terrible - at least it's used in everyday writing. If I had my druthers, I would ask for a less cumbersome word to be used. Still, I think most reasonably educated people would know what it means without missing a beat. Words like ameliorate are just wrong. Just absolutely wrong.
- alextheparrot 6y ago
  I guess I'm having a hard time understanding the distinction you're working to draw between the three words. All three mean something, and could be argued to have value because of their pithiness [0]. If you're inclined, I'd be interested in a bit more of you're framing. Especially in terms of bio-medical texts, I'm a bit confused which characteristics make 'ameliorate' worse than 'in situ'. [0] Like this word. I could have said "Because of their precise meaning", but I picked a word that encapsulates that directly.
  - yhoneycomb 6y ago
    I mean, the point of writing a paper is to educate - and if you're using obscure words, you are also probably succeeding in obscuring your message. Take this example: > Chemical and/or biological therapeutic strategies to ameliorate protein misfolding diseases. Why not just "to target protein misfolding diseases"?
    - alextheparrot 6y ago
      The target audience for most academic papers is not the general public and these words or phrases are known to the target audience. If the idea is that academic papers should have a more general audience, then I feel that’s a different statement, because I agree that academic papers are often less accessible to non-target audience members due to word choice. In the case you mentioned there is a bit of redundancy which makes the word “ameliorate” easy to substitute. Terms like “therapeutic” and “misfolding” make it easy to derive that we’re going from a bad to good state. “Activated protein X ameliorates biofilm formation” has more content than if we swapped to “target” in this case, because it has the added effect of indicating that the interaction was “good”. As a continued aside, I think you’d enjoy the talk I originally posted. It dives into the difference between using writing to think vs persuade or educate, and how not recognizing that difference can cause poor scientific communication.
      - yhoneycomb 6y ago
        > As a continued aside, I think you’d enjoy the talk I originally posted. It dives into the difference between using writing to think vs persuade or educate, and how not recognizing that difference can cause poor scientific communication. Thanks, I'll check it out!
watwut 6y ago
You all assume some grand reasoning and evil intent behind the word. Simply, most people writing scientific articles are bad at writing and generally are happy or is somewhat English. They don't obsess offer single word, because their focus is elsewhere and they have no clue about writing anyway.
- alextheparrot 6y ago
  It is exactly because no one obsesses over single words in practice that these words gain usage, though. Academic writing is taught and word choice is a part of what is taught. I started using those words in my academic writing because that’s how I was taught to write from lab courses to journal contributions. Early in my studies professors and teaching assistants did correct single words where a more normative word was possible, so you just start writing like that to avoid any trouble. There isn’t anything intrinsically evil about norms and signaling, I feel that assuming someone recognizing a structure means that structure is inherently evil is a bit presumptive. In-group jargon usage is common and useful for some, and a hurdle to overcome for entrants, that’s it, absent any moral judgement.
mattkrause 6y ago
In situ has an actual meaning--and it would look decidedly weird if you called it (say) "in-place hybridization." `Elucidate` is an basically a fancy weasel word: I read it as "I don't actually have a strong prediction about what will happen--but I expect something obviously cool will happen when I do this experiment."
- alextheparrot 6y ago
  It is a synonym for “in-place”, though. If academic writing was optimizing for reach, the more commonplace word instead of the latin variant would likely be used. To your point, though, if someone submitted a paper using “in-place” someone would probably point it out [0]. I think that’s the original point, that a lot of the word-level complexity is just how the writing is taught and subsequent reinforcement by mentors and peers to use the appropriate language. Yeah, elucidate is just a fancy word for “figure out” - but I think it is part of the dialect because of the connotation you mention (Even if a casual reader might not use it). [0] Not because it is strictly wrong, but because it violates how the in-group expects converse. I think this holds even if we go outside of phrases (One could argue in-situ hybridization is one item), as if I discover something new I’ll likely use the term “in-situ” if it involves similar locality properties
ZephyrBlu 6y ago
It's funny that so much of what we do as humans is signalling.

kilburn 6y ago

As someone who has written academic papers and sometimes used such "fancy" words: consider that not everyone is a native english speaker. As a native catalan and spanish speaker, there are times where that "fancy" word is easier to come up with than the "standard" one (because "fancy" english words tend to be those that come from latin). Your "ameliorate" example is a good one. In catalan, "millorar" is an extremely common verb meaning "to improve". Hence, I can easily see myself using it at some point, as rare as it may sound to you. I'm not saying it is better to do it this way, what I'm saying is that instead of being so annoyed at the author trying to seem smart, maybe you can shrug it off as a quirk of those who are writing in a foreign language.

watwut 6y ago

Those fancy words don't look fancy if everybody is using them. Especially if you are not native speaker, the fancy word is equally new word then the supposedly common word. Because both are new to you and you learned both from other papers. So you just use the one you remember better and ameliorate sound like common French word. Or maybe it is from Latin, but if you deel with Latin often it sound common. It is like using POJO in tech. You kind of forget the word is not normal after a while.

zajio1am 6y ago

> One thing I HATE HATE HATE is when research articles use unnecessary synonyms. Ie, plasma membrane in one sentence and then phospholipid membrane in another and then cell membrane in another. For someone just trying to get a grasp on a topic, it is REALLY fucking confusing I think that this is generally frowned upon in any technical writing, including scientific. So it is not an expected convention in scientific writing.