Rescue the Verb!

Getting What You Want from Your Science Writing IV: Rescue the Verb!

computer_keyboard

When I wrote for my courses in college and in graduate school, my target audience was my professor, so I wrote to impress. To sound “smart” I nominalized verbs, used passive voice and as much jargon as possible. This is the kind of writing that complex scientific topics require. Right?

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Accepted Without Revision

computer_keyboardScientists are as likely to feel the smart of rejection as any other kind of writer. You slave over experiments trying to make sure that they have the proper controls to account for every possible artifact. You finally head to the computer keyboard and transcribe months, sometimes years, worth of labor into a few pages of text with some figures: your opus, which you send off on a wave of electrons to some distant editorial figure. And then you wait. Continue reading “Accepted Without Revision”