Content

The English Language of Science

• Language features related to publishing in English (and why?) • Paragraphs • Sentences • Words • Punctuation • Using professional help and becoming a professional

We suggest that you evaluate these topics in your own text systematically. For example, to take one topic at a time and check parts of your text or published text or the text of your peers. Remember, these topics serve as guidelines and as with all our topics, they are by no means exclusive. The beauty of writing is that we can apply rules to our advantage, but there are many more roads that lead to Rome. However, from our experience, and from evidence, being aware of how things can be done, should be done, will make your justification of your choices that much more clear. Sometimes we need to question the rules that school books, teachers, and our native languages have implanted on our value system of the language we need to use for writing.

For example, the assumption that science writing needs to be formal or that we need to write in passives or that we can never use “I” when writing science. All three of these assumptions are not only wrong, but they are also right. Wrong because science writing is not informal writing. Right because science writing in some journals will actually not allow you to write in “I”.

In all cases, the goal is to increase the breadth of your writing skills, which include the breadth of your language application skills. Writing in passive is not wrong, writing in active tense is not wrong, writing long sentences is not wrong, but, question whether when we do so, does it achieve the ultimate aim of our text: clarity!

Let clarity be the driving force of all your science writing, which is rooted in rhetorical structures, but also in language structures.

When writing your science articles, we’re very much bound to the rules of communication and the tools our language provides us to convey that message as clearly as possible. Clarity is the main indicator for effective science writing, specifically because we are writing about topics which can contain immense complexity. The aim is to convey that complex topic as clearly as possible. Thus, making it even more complex will only deter the reader, but more importantly, challenge the reviewer of your paper.

The reviewing process and how this relates to language

As part of the final process of getting your paper published, the main obstacle is the journal reviewing process which in most cases consists of 3 steps.

Step 1: you submit your manuscript to the journal and it will end up in the hands of the editor of the journal who will usually conduct the first assessment. The first assessment usually consists of checking whether the topic of the manuscript matches that of the journal’s scope, whether the text meets the journal guidelines (technical aspects such as length, reference formatting, etc.).

Step 2: the editor of the journal will either a) send back the journal to you with a “reject”. In this case, your manuscript will most likely not have received a review from a reviewer and therefore not receive any suggestions on how the article can be improved. Reasons for a rejection are listed in step 1. Therefore, selecting a journal is essential and should be done early on. The editor might also b) forward the manuscript to 2 blind reviewers for review.

Step 3: If you received a rejection, find another journal and make sure it meets the journal requirements and submit and go through the steps again. If the manuscript has been forwarded to reviewers, you can expect a reply from the editor within a month (if lucky) or 3 months or half a year (this very much depends on the journal, and we suggest you check regularly what the turnaround period is of journals. You do not want to be stuck waiting for half a year to receive any review (positive or negative) — of course positive is way better than negative. A reply usually will result in 4 decisions: publish without major changes; accept with minor changes, accept with major changes, or reject, but suggest to resubmit to the same journal if re-written. The latter means that they like the topic but see major changes are needed (which might not be realistic) to make it publishable in their journal. An accept and resubmit with changes (minor or major) is great news! Few submissions receive a publish without major changes (ask your supervisor).

To achieve clarity in our writing, we need to be aware that our text requires organisation (rhetorical structures) and our language needs organising (the language rules that work in our favour). We also need to be aware that the English language we use for publishing our manuscripts are in competition for meaning. This competition takes place at the level of: 1. The whole text 2. Paragraphs 3. Sentences 4. Words The next sections give an overview of these 4 levels and the last section (punctuation) gives a good overview how we can use punctuation markings to favour the outcome of certain players in the competition.