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A friend submitted a paper to a journal in humanities. The reviewer said "his English is informal". In other words, these reviewers are asking for stilted Engli
by raincom 5y ago
A friend submitted a paper to a journal in humanities. The reviewer said "his English is informal". In other words, these reviewers are asking for stilted English.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoThis makes me think of people smelling bad, in dark robes, wearing white powdered wigs, frantically using their https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_fan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_fan
- Strilanc 5y agoI also get this feedback on my papers. E.g. saying that it's written "more like a blog post". Of course, they're not wrong. It is written more like a blog post. Because the writing style used in blog posts is hands down better than the writing style used in scientific papers. Blogs talk about the real reasons you worked on something, they go through simple examples, and they mention where you struggled and what you found confusing and what you tried that didn't work. All of these things are very useful for understanding, and in my experience almost entirely lacking from papers. Or at least, in my experience they're lacking from modern papers. I think in papers from 100 years ago the authors tended to talk more about their worries and their excitement e.g. [1]. [1]: https://youtu.be/RZfCqWZ8EAY?t=630 https://youtu.be/RZfCqWZ8EAY?t=630