When I taught science classes regularly at Minnesota State University Moorhead, I often assigned writing exercises, particularly my “One-Page Science Paper” which engaged students in multiple writes, reviews, and rewrites. My own experience with writing assignments in college had often involved producing twenty or more pages, as though making it longer encouraged better writing. I thought that the opposite might be the case; by limiting the length of the article, as is typical in real science writing for publication abstracts and papers, students could focus on good writing rather than ‘filling up the space,’ which rather encourages a failure to prune, and even invites repetitive or unnecessary material. Writing short is often harder than writing long. I had a student one year who felt so unable to prune his essay that he chose to remove all margins and literally overlap the lines of text in order to fit it on a single page (embarrassingly, I had done a similar thing in writing a two-page abstract for the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference one year as a graduate student)!
Good science writing involves the three Cs: Correct, Clear, Concise (For a while in the early days of my teaching, I called it the four Cs, including “complete” in the list, but eventually realized that nothing is ever complete in science, especially in a one-page paper!). This contrasted, of course, with the three Fs of writing: Feely, Flowing, and Flowery which students often gravitated toward, thinking that ideas presented concisely and clearly need to be doctored up to make them more interesting. For my One-Page writing assignments, I gave students a guideline offering ways to meet the three Cs—I reproduce a version below, including real student writings with suggested corrections.
I would argue that “concise and clear” often proves a better goal than “flowing and flowery” in science fiction writing as well. Science fiction writing and science writing are both like gardening. They can both sometimes benefit from proper pruning, making room for air movement and flowering, and preventing too much humidity and fungal growth.
Think about it!
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The One-page science paper
Writing Correctly, Clearly, and Concisely
By Russ Colson
With editorial comments on real student examples
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Say what you mean, use the correct words, and be precise
Ecologists have found that hot water in the creek had killed off over 50 acres.
An acre is a dimensional quantity, not a living thing. How can it be “killed off”?
Plants in a 50 acre area around the creek died, apparently because of the high temperature of the water.
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Text should be Concise
Say what you want to say with as few words as possible and in the most straight-forward manner.
The experiments we did progressed through three different types.
can be simplified with little or no loss of information to:
We did three types of experiments.
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Omit unnecessary text:
Don’t overuse adjectives. “Wonderful”, “awesome”, and “tremendous” may be fine in a travel brochure but are of minimal value in a scientific description.
The amazingly tremendous power of a volcano is truly awesome, the highlight of natures spectacular fireworks.
The energy of a volcanic eruption, which can produce a tower of dust 50 miles high and destroy life over 1000s of square miles, could, if harnessed, supply power to Moorhead, MN for more than a month.
Don’t tell us that the volcano is impressive. Rather, convince us it is impressive! The latter takes more work. The first sentence above can be written in about 23 seconds with minimal effort. The second sentence requires at least an hour of library research, computations, and thought.
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Avoid the empty introduction:
Studies done over the past several years have done several things. One is that there is…
This sentence introduces nothing. We don’t know what studies were done, how they were done, who did them, or what their goal was. We don’t know any accomplishments or conclusions of the studies. We don’t know when they were done, how long they took, or the span of years from which they will be cited. We don’t know the topic of the ensuing paragraph. The only bit of information in the sentence is that we will be considering past studies. It is indeed reassuring that we will not be evaluating the results of studies yet to be completed!
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Text should be correct, meaningful, and to the point.
It has been found by scientists who have devoted their lives to carefully studying these things, that in order to melt a rock it has to be really hot such that the temperatures of molten rock are really incredible.
That scientists devote their lives to their work presents a nice sentiment. And I suppose (if you don’t want to research your topic) you can infer that “the temperatures of molten rock are really incredible” by seeing Anakin Skywalker burned by lava in Revenge of the Sith. But the sentence above really tells us nothing at all about the temperature at which rock melts.
The temperature required to melt rock is generally 1000 to 1300 degrees Celsius.
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Not just the facts please, give us some reasoning.
The Mid-Ocean Ridge is very young. We know this because of rocks and minerals found along the ridge.
This paragraph purports to give us the reasons and evidence for the belief that the Mid-Ocean Ridge is young. However, does it convince you that it is young? It doesn’t convince me because it offers no explanation of how the rocks and minerals reveal the age. What do the rocks and minerals have to do with it? What aspect of the rocks and minerals suggests the ridge is young? How is it measured? What is the reasoning process that connects the facts to the hypothesis that the ridge is young?
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Be specific and exact in describing and explaining your subject.
Most people are jolted by a bolt of lightning and not directly hit by it.
Since when have most people been jolted by a bolt of lightning? Have you been jolted by a bolt? How many of your friends have been jolted by a bolt? I maintain that most people are not jolted by a bolt of lightning.
Most injuries from lightning result when people are jolted by a nearby lightning strike but are not directly hit by it.
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For humans, when inhaled into the lungs, high concentrations can have effects that include respiratory problems.
Solution to respiratory problems: Stop inhaling humans!
The subject of this report was particulates in the air. However, the word “particulates” doesn’t appear in this sentence. The noun of the sentence is “humans”, which introduces a problem in the meaning!
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It is believed today that our ancestry was separated from us nearly 8 million years ago.
We may misunderstand our lineage, or we may be very different from our ancestors, but we cannot become separated from our ancestry! Also, “today” is implied by “is believed” and can be omitted.
Most anthropologists believe that the human lineage branched from closely related primates nearly 8 million years ago.
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Avoid “anthropomorphizing” nature
Ground to cloud lightning was not believed until 1939.
What opinion did the lightning have that nobody believed?
Remember, theories do not try to explain anything (people explain and construct theories).
Science does not “discover”, “develop”, “imagine”, or “go out to Jupiter on the Voyager mission”.
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We must protect our rain forests from growing industrial bureaucrats.
Use of the words “must” and “industrial” suggest a political agenda (which is fine in itself, just don’t confuse it with science). In addition, a bureaucrat is a person (just how big has he or she grown!); “bureaucracies” is the term implied by the context of the sentence. As discussed above, it is important to use exactly the word you need.
Based on the known importance of rain forests as a carbon dioxide sink, and considering that increased carbon dioxide concentrations have the potential to increase world temperatures, many people believe that it is prudent to avoid destroying large tracts of rain forest.
Note that more careful statements may require more words, as in the example above. Correctness should not be compromised for the sake of conciseness.
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Don’t tell us what scientists say, tell us why they say it.
(Don’t write a paper as though you are a journalist reporting the statements of scientists. Write it as though you are a thinker reviewing the reasons for believing something.)
Argument-by-authority is ultimately unsatisfying because you can always locate some “authority” with a different view. Therefore, science writing should present evidence bearing on a particular question, allowing the reader to make a judgement based on data and reasoning, rather than some arbitrary balancing of the views of “experts”. By focusing on data, you also avoid the prospect of your report becoming incorrect and outdated. As new data lead to new interpretations, old interpretations may be discarded, but the data and reasoning remain as important foundations for new understanding.
Scientists have determined that the dark areas of the Moon are made primarily of basalt.
Chemical analyses of samples returned from the Moon indicate that the dark areas of the Moon are made mostly of basalt.
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Some scientists assert that the dark areas of the Moon are made primarily of basalt. However, other scientists still claim that the Moon is made of green cheese. And so, the matter remains unresolved. (Ok, I made this one up—not student work! But I’ve seen plenty of conceptually-similar writing where student reports ‘give up on understanding’ if agreement on a topic is not absolute.)
Clearly, if the reasoning and data behind each view are not reported (chemical analyses of returned samples vs “golly, don’t those big dark spots look like holes in cheese?”) or if who is making the various claims is not considered (99.9% of all geologists at research institutions and universities all over the world vs one political scientist who also predicted that 1990 would be the year that Kansas sank into the sea) no conclusion can be drawn. However, most people, given the data and reasoning, will draw the same conclusion about the composition of the dark areas of the Moon, even if agreement is not absolute.