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I went on a little bit of a mini-rant a while ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4680626 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4680626), which, while not so
by Xcelerate 14y ago
I went on a little bit of a mini-rant a while ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4680626 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4680626), which, while not so eloquently worded, attempted to share my frustrations about scientific writing that this article makes much clearer.
I think it's easy for technical people to write something and think "well, this is clear to me", so they don't put much additional thought into thinking about how their writing will come across to others. Someone that writes journals or articles for a living realizes how important clear communication of ideas is, and it would be nice to see this carry over into more technical domains.
- keithpeter 14y agoThe original article suggests ways of writing that will aid reading, and they give reasons why the texts they quote are poorly expressed. The article is useful because of that. Observation: In the child comments in the post you link to is a comment from xanmas. This user points out the space constraints on much academic publishing. I remember papers in experimental physics where the list of authors took up more space than the text of the paper - however some re-writing always helps.