Writing a scientific paper

We needed to do this¶

This one applies to both scientific writing and presentations.

Description: the solution to a problem is presented as necessary.

• Oral: "And so, to do this, we needed to measure..."
• Written: "To achieve this, one needs to update..."

Necessity has a precise meaning: a solution is necessary when there is no other way. While it is reassuring to think that your method emerged as "the" logical response to your problem, truth is, it bundles a natural chain of contingencies, and there are most likely other ways to solve the same problem. Doubt is a crucial practice in science. The mistake that appears in this anti-pattern is to shun it out.

Remedy: cut to the point.

• Oral:" And so, to do this, we measured..."
• Written: "To achieve this, we updated..."

Laundry list¶

This one applies to related work sections. It is discussed in the short presentation How to Write Papers So People Can Read Them by Derek Dreyer.

Description: the paper merely enumerates other works on the topic without comparing them to its own solution: "A et al. did this. B et al. did that. C et al. did that. etc."

Remedy: explain in detail how your work addresses your problem in a way that related work doesn't.

Flow¶

Keep in mind that reading, like watching a movie, is not a fully conscious process. To be receptive to the ideas conveyed by your writing, you want to keep your reader in a state of flow. Linear storytelling is a common strategy to realize this, using temporal or logical connectives to stitch paragraphs one after the other. This point is well explained in the short talk How to Write Papers So People Can Read Them by Derek Dreyer.

Active or passive voice¶

There is a bit of debate surrounding this question, as it certainly boils down to a personal choice of writing style. Some scientists argue that, the objective of scientific papers being the communication of facts and observations, scientists themselves should be grammatically excluded as subjects. Neither "we" as in "we developed...", nor "our" as in "our method...". This line of thought yields to an intensive use of the passive voice.

Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house. (Henri Poincaré)

However, passive-voice sentences are a slippery path: they use more words, and have a tendency to produce more complex and vague sentence structures. Vagueness is the main matter of concern here, the nemesis of scientific writers. For this reason, unless there is a clear motivation to use the passive voice (to emphasize the action over its actor, to describe actions from anonymous actors, ...), try to use the active voice whenever possible.

Thesaurus and dictionary¶

Two advices especially targetted to non-native speakers like me:

• Beware of false friends: whenever unsure, check the definition in a dictionary.
• Use a thesaurus to avoid repetitions, and to improve your phrasing by selecting words that express best what you want to say.