Deactivated verbs - The scientific writing style - The reading toolkit

Scientific writing 3.0: A reader and writer's guide - Jean-Luc Lebrun, Justin Lebrun 2021

Deactivated verbs
The scientific writing style
The reading toolkit

[...] intake method for the evaluation of the per capita intake of the monosaccharides.

Have you ever felt a tinge of boredom while reading scientific texts? Sentence meanders and word spikes may both decrease clarity, but they shouldn’t affect reader excitement. So if not them, what does? As humans, we are attracted and interested by change and action. He fires critiques is more exciting to read than he is critical because one excites and raises curiosity while the other is a flat description. He chased and arrested the thief is more exciting than arrest of the thief happened after a chase was initiated because the former focuses on someone doing something, whereas the latter focuses on something that was done. Let’s explore how to raise or lower the reader’s excitement in greater detail by analyzing some examples:

Compound crystallization occurs after the reaction between water and sodium has taken place.

While grammatically correct, this sentence is a bit lengthy and lacks dynamism. Here it is, rewritten:

The compound crystallizes after water reacts with sodium.

Notice that the rewritten sentence is considerably shorter (57 characters vs 92 characters) and more action-driven. What differentiates these two sentences? Their verbs.

Verbs can be broadly classified into two categories in English: action verbs and stative verbs. Crystallizes, like measures, jumps, or calculates, describes an action taking place. Occurs, on the other hand, like remains, takes place, or even the common verb is, does not describe an action but a state of being. When we deactivate the verb crystallizes by turning it into the verb-noun pair crystallization occurs, we are replacing a strong action verb with a weak stative one. This process of turning verbs or adjectives into nouns has a name: nominalization. To remove nominalizations, adopt the following protocol:

Measurements of the hull were taken by the research team

1)Identify the verbs in the sentence. Are there any weak stative verbs?

2)What nouns do they qualify?

3)Can that noun be turned into a verb? (e.g. measurements into the verb to measure)

Not all nominalizations need to be removed to breathe excitement and life into a text. It is not their presence but their abundance that makes scientific writing so challenging to read.

Try to rewrite the following paragraph with fewer nominalizations using the technique described above:

Owing to the lack of information on interactions between VR headsets and users over the long term, scientific uncertainty on the occurrence of adverse effects on users due to prolonged usage remains.

Because we lack information on how VR headsets and users interact over the long term, we cannot ascertain whether users are adversely affected by prolonged use.

The lack (noun) becomes we lack (verb), interactions (noun) becomes interact (verb), uncertainty (noun) becomes to ascertain (verb), and adverse effects (adjective and noun) becomes adversely affect (adverb and verb).