Poor writing is the main cause for the illegibility of referreed science and engineering articles too. Historically this was partly due to publishers' demand t

Poor writing is the main cause for the illegibility of referreed science and engineering articles too. Historically this was partly due to publishers' demand that the article be quite short (often < 8-10 pages). Of course, this constraint is obsolete now that pubs are electronic. In addition to a format guide, every journal should specify a style guide (like the NY Times does), so the reader can expect a highly structured layout AND argument. (Explanatory content can go in 1+ supplement docs.) I'd even like to see standards for the use of emphasis (like bold, italics, colored text), especially for first mention of term/names that occur repeatedly. The sooner we can make all professional writing trivial to skim, the better.