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Module 3.7: A few more tips

Unit 3 reviews how to vary sentence structure and write strong paragraphs. You will practice using the dash, colon, semi-colon, and parentheses, as well as writing well-organized and concise paragraphs.

This course teaches scientists to become more effective writers, using practical examples and exercises. Topics include: principles of good writing, tricks for writing faster and with less anxiety, the format of a scientific manuscript, peer review, grant writing, ethical issues in scientific publication, and writing for general audiences.

Destrezas que aprenderás

Grammar, Medical Writing, Science Communication, Writing

Impartido por:

Dr. Kristin Sainani
Associate Professor

Transcripción

In this next module, I'm going to give you some more tips about repetition, keywords,

and acronyms.

Have a lute to some of this points already.

But I think they worth highlighting in their own module.

I mentioned several times that when you find yourself for

the thesaurus to avoid repeating a word, this may be a case where you simply don't

need the second instance of that words at all.

You're being unnecessarily repetitive.

We saw a sentence in unit one that had both illustrate and demonstrate.

As well as challenges and difficulties in the same sentence, and

we only needed one of the word from each of these pairs.

This week, I gave you an example where the authors had teaches clinicians and

guides clinicians.

But we only needed one of these.

So a lot of times, you can just delete the second use of the word altogether.

But of course, there are some times when you do need to repeat.

In those cases you're again going to be tempted to reach for

your thesaurus to find a synonym.

But ask yourself the question,

is this synonym really better than just repeating the word?

In many cases it's preferable to just repeat the word.

Despite what you may have been taught along the way,

repeating a word is not a cardinal sin.

In fact when people try too hard to avoid repeating a word,

that can lead to some amusing sentences, as I'm going to show you in a minute.

In scientific writing, it's actually essential that you repeat a word.

You need to repeat keywords.

Any words that are keywords in your paper, like the names of groups,

the names of variables, the names of instruments, the names of a disease,

you absolutely must repeat these terms throughout the manuscript.

You need to be consistent, do not substitute synonyms for

this keywords as this will lead to great confusion.

I see this all the time with my students they change the keywords through out

the manuscript, because they are worried about repeating themselves but

this leads to all through trouble.

I've had students come in and they're working on a particular disease and

they call the disease one thing and one place in the manuscript.

And then they call is something different in other places in the manuscript.

And I'm left thinking that they are talking about two different diseases.

Or imagine if you're comparing groups and

in one case you call those groups the obese group and the lean group.

But then elsewhere, because you're afraid to repeat yourself

you call them the heavier group and the lighter group.

That's problematic,

because now as the reader I'm asking myself, are these new groups?

Have you redefined the groups?

Have you rejiggered the categories?

It's absolute essential in scientific writing that you be consistent in

how you name those keywords.

So I'm going to repeat to you that it's okay to repeat a word.

Sometimes it's necessary to repeat a word, and sometimes it's actually

better to repeat that word than to reach for an awkward synonym.

I'm going to share with you now some fun examples of needless synonyms.

These are all examples from professional writers from newspapers and

magazine articles.

Many professional writers also have this belief drilled

into them that they shouldn't repeat a word.

So in some cases they get very creative.

These are real examples that were compiled in an article in Time Magazine and

I've listed the reference at the bottom there in case you want to read

the whole article.

Probably the most famous example of this is,

there was an article that somebody was writing about a fruit company.

And they used the word banana several times,

because it was an article about fruit.

And they felt like, I've used the word banana too many times.

So at one point, they started referring to the banana as the elongated yellow fruit.

And you could say that that's just kind of ridiculous.

It's probably better just to say banana.

I've got several other cute examples.

There was a piece in the newspaper where the author was talking about a beaver, and

the author replaced beaver with the furry, pedal-tailed mammal.

Another article, mustache was replaced with under nose hair crops.

In another one, milk from a cow was referred to as,

the vitamin laden liquid from a bovine milk factory.

And finally, there was an example where somebody replaced the word skis with

the beatified barrel staves.

You can see how amusing it is when you're trying too hard to come up with synonyms.

It would have been better in all those cases to stick with a simple word.

And Henry Fowler actually coined the term Elegant Variation For

these kind of needless synonyms.

And here's a link to his article for those of you who are curious.

And I just want to emphasize again, that in scientific writing it's not just

amusing if you replace a keyword with a synonym, it's actually disastrous.

Because the reader thinks you're talking about something different.

And this leads me to a final thought on acronyms.

I think one of the reasons that acronyms have become so wide spread in

the scientific literature, is that in scientific manuscripts it's inevitable

that you're going to find yourself writing the same keyword over and over again.

And I think scientists start to feel this angst about the fact that

they're repeating this keyword so much, so they decide to make up an acronym instead.

I do want to point out that sometimes people will make a distinction between

acronyms and initialisms.

Acronyms actually make a new word, like the word NASA whereas

initialisms just read off the initials, like CPU or RNA.

I'm just going to call these all acronyms for simplicity, but

I wanted to point out this fine distinction.

My advice is to only use standard, well known acronyms

that most scientists across many disciplines are going to know, like RNA.

Don't make up acronyms and

don't use acronyms that only people in your immediate field are going to know.

Otherwise, the reader has to stop reading each time they encounter the acronym and

look it up, like translating a foreign word.

This puts a terrible burden on the reader.

If there were a few acronyms, that you can't let go off,

at least make sure that you define them within each section of the paper.

Because remember readers are not necessarily reading your paper from start

to finish.

So defining the acronym once at the beginning is not enough.

Another suggestion l make to students is, if you want to create an acronym to save

yourself some typing, to save yourself having to type that keyword over and

over again when you're drafting your manuscript, that's fine.

But when you're done, go back and do a replace all and

replace that made up acronym with the original words.

Your reader will appreciate it.

Here's an example I pulled from a paper I was recently reviewing.

It says, spinal muscle fatigue is common in people with LLA,

because decreased spinal muscle endurance and

strength has been been reported in persons with TFA and TTA with LBP.

You can just see how annoying it is when your sentences are all alphabet like this.

So avoid the use of acronyms other than the most standard ones.

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