Writing readable prose

T he purpose of a scientific paper is to communicate results and analysis to the wider scientific community. The better a paper is written, the more readers it will attract and the more citations it is likely to receive. This alone should be sufficient to convince any scientist to put significant effort into his or her writing; unfortunately, this is rarely the case. More than a decade ago, Martin Gregory observed in Nature that " There are two kinds of scientific writing: that which is intended to be read, and that which is intended merely to be cited. The latter tends to be infected by an overblown and pompous style. The disease is ubiquitous, but often undiag-nosed, with the result that infection spreads to writing of the first type " (Gregory, 1992). It seems that little has changed. The bulk of scientific literature is still almost unreadable, and is usually only read by scientists with a vested interest in the subject. Those who want to read about science for pleasure are advised to pick up the science pages of a newspaper or a popular-science magazine instead. Scientists cannot complain that they lack guidance: there is an abundance of literature on how to write clearly and understandably to attract the interest of the readers. Many journalists and professional authors will have read two standard books on writing good prose: On Writing Well (Zinsser, 1976) and The Elements of Style (Strunk & White, 1959). But these—and other books like them—are unknown to, or ignored by, most scientists. Although such books might not cater explicitly for scientific writing, they are nevertheless valuable as they explain how to organize material in a coherent way, and how to write a manuscript that is both informative and readable. More importantly, such books convey an important message: authors should write not for themselves but for their readers. Many scientists would do well to heed this advice, as a clear and understandable manuscript is more likely not only to draw citations but also to be accepted for publication in the first place. Unfortunately, the scientific and medical literature is still abundant with lengthy, unclear prose that is likely to confuse readers, even those who are familiar with the subject material. Take, for example, this sentence , chosen at random: " There was a strong correlation between the sexual orientation of those sharing a strain, with 71% of the …