Science writing

I read this piece recently about good science writing. It distinguishes "good" prose from "clear" prose and advocates for the latter. Why? Because some good writing is good because it is stylish and being stylish can involve opacity and indirectness, and hence make reading more demanding than it should be if effective communication is the aim.

I think that there is something here. One of the things I have noted is that many people like to write papers that are sort of like a good mystery. The problem is outlined and several false paths are traversed to raise the suspense and then at the end all the clues that have been sprinkled throughout the paper are collected and a big bushy rabbit is pulled out of the hat to the delight of all. This can involve really good writing, but it probably does not make for a good science paper. Better to make things less a mystery. Say up front what the point is, what the argument will be, what the data will be and then show how the data supports the conclusion and illuminates the point. In fact, if you have written the paper correctly, after the problem has been presented and the data and argument form outlined, the reader can write the rest of the paper him/herself. So, I agree that forgoing the mystery format is a good idea.

However, I think that this can go too far. Lots of science writing is flat and uninteresting. In fact it is "morphemic" in the 'morpheus' sense of sleep inducing. There is no reason why science writing cannot be clear and not flat.  There is no reason why all one's personality need be wrung from the body of the paper. It's nice to hear a writer's voice.

But even more important, it's nice to know why the author thinks that the paper is worth reading.  Lots of the time, papers skip this part perhaps because it is thought of as too subjective. But it's not. A reader is dedicating time (possibly better spent otherwise) to read the piece. The writer owes it to the reader to explain why this investment is worthwhile, at least in the author's opinion.

Much of this applies to linguistic papers too, I believe. So, clarity yes. But, please tell me why I should care and please tell me where I am going to go and how I am going to go there before I start the journey.

And, if at all possible, one more thing. Don't self-congratulate. There is a bad tendency in linguistic writing to applaud one's own arguments. We see things like "this surprising conclusion…" or "this provides strong evidence for…" These are fine things to say about some other proposal. But it is unseemly (and tendentious) to say it about one's own proposal. It's a little like Turing calling his device a "Turing machine." He didn't. Church did. And what's ok for Church to do would not have been ok for Turing to do. He would have sounded like a putz.