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

Reduce reading time
The reading toolkit

Reading time is reduced when the writer is concise and to the point. Conciseness is seen by some authors as a mark of respect for the reader, as Pascal’s quote illustrates.

Blaise pascal

The 17th century French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal apologizes to his reader in his book, lettres provinciales. He writes: “This letter is longer, only because I have not had the leisure of making it shorter.” Conciseness seen as politeness! Boileau, a French writer from the same century, has harsh words: “Who knows not how to set limits for himself, never knew how to write.”

Although time is measured in seconds, reading time is much more subjective. Readers experience the passage of time differently for different reasons: familiarity with the topic, linguistic skills, reading motivation, reading habits, or the reader’s tiredness. Using techniques, the writer is able to reduce both objective and subjective time while increasing overall reading pleasure.

Readers are less sensitive to time when they look at visuals. Somehow, the brain is more engaged looking at a visual than reading paragraphs of text. Good visuals are information burgers devoured like fast food. The eyes rapidly scan them, detecting patterns as they go. Their message reaches the brain faster because processing them takes place in the highly developed visual cortex designed to handle high information bandwidth. For text or speech, the brain sequentially processes one word or syllable at a time — a low information bandwidth process. Should you need convincing, conduct the following experiment. Which of the following two representations gives you the largest amount of information in the shortest amount of time: the following text

In our experiment, for an up flow velocity of 0.10 m/h, the observed normalized tracer concentration of the effluent increased rapidly from 0 to 0.4 after 15 hours. The increase slowed after 38 hours when the concentration reached 0.95. It peaked at 1.0 at 90 hours. Following which, the concentration curve decreased steeply down to reach zero asymptotically at 180 hours. The calculated data and the observed data were closely related. However, when compared with the calculated data, the observed data seemed to lag when the concentration dropped.

or figure 1?

When reading is slow, readers become impatient. So examining what makes reading slow is essential if the writer wants to give the reader a pleasurable reading experience.

Reading is slow when the writer creates reading accidents, such as undefined acronyms, ambiguous pronouns, long sentences, missing logical steps, or unfilled knowledge gaps.

Reading is slow when the sentence is too complex or abstract. Pascal wrote that “Memory is essential for the operations of reason”. Complexity makes great demands on anyone’s memory. It considerably slows down reading.

Figure 1

Tracer concentrations (dotted line) for an effluent velocity of 0.10 m/h. Calculated data (solid line) lag experimental data when concentration drops.

Reading is slow when the structure is insufficient. Readers spend more time when they cannot easily find what is of interest to them for lack of a clear structure with enough headings and subheadings.

Make sure you have a detailed, informative structure (more on that later).

Structural elements are quick to read, short and simple in syntax, easily understood by the reader, and easy to locate and identify. For example, the following sentence in bold receives great attention because the indentation creates a white space acting as an eye-trap.

Reading is slow when the reader is not as familiar with the topic as the expert is. For the people new to your field, paradoxically, a longer introduction reduces the overall time required to read your paper simply because it sets the foundations needed to understand the rest of the paper. Veteran writers, after writing their paper to achieve maximum clarity and conciseness to satisfy experts, spend more time on their final drafts to cater for the needs of the nonexperts. Here is what UC Davis Professor Dawn Sumner has to say about her writing process:

“I leave [my latest draft] for a while, and then I think about what my audience already knows, and I give them all the information that they need [so that] the flow follows for someone not as familiar with the topic as I am, and then sort of reiterate that.”

Let me argue that anyone’s writing will never be excellent until, like Professor Sumner, the writer keeps the reader in mind. Thinking about what the reader may not know allows you to identify the knowledge gaps that will slow down reading, because the reader has to work hard to understand how your sentences are logically linked.

Sentences that fill the knowledge gaps, and explanations of gapcreating keywords always speed up reading.

Reading is slow when extra processing time is required because the syntax is complex. For example, readers, experts or non-experts, struggle with long compound nouns. These require extra brain cycles to decode, which slows down reading.

Unpack long compound nouns and clarify them by adding a preposition (of, on, to, with) to speed up reading.

Reading is slow when writing lacks conciseness. As Pascal points out, a lengthy paper takes less time to write than a short one, but it takes more time to read. Identifying the sources of excess length at a global level is the first step towards conciseness, but it is as difficult as determining the causes of a bulging stomach. The need for the diet is clear, but the fat can come from so many sources. Where is the fat in your writing?

· Length is caused by the thousand words that should have been a diagram, a graph, or a table.

· Length grows out of a structure still in the formative stage, where information is needlessly repeated in different sections.

· Length is born out of the slowness of the mind, as it warms up and spreads a fog of platitudes, particularly in the first paragraph following a heading or subheading.

· Length is the fruit of unrealistic writer ambitions, aiming at cramming in a single paper the contribution of several papers.

· Length is the fruit of hurriedness, since it takes time to revise a paper for conciseness.

· Length happens when the reader is given details of the unnecessary kind, details that do not enhance the contribution.

Can your writing be too concise? Yes, it can, and your text would then lose clarity. Here are four good reasons to justify lengthening a paper.

· Lengthen to write a longer introduction that really sets the context and highlights the value of your contribution. Your contribution is like a diamond. To hold and display it, you need a ring (the ring of related works).

· Lengthen to highlight aspects of your contribution in every section of the paper (different angle and level of detail). Each facet of a diamond contributes to its sparkle. Likewise, each part of a paper presents the same contribution at a different angle.

· Lengthen to go beyond stating results in the abstract, and reveal the potential impact of your contribution on science. Would you give an uncut diamond and ask readers to polish it themselves?

· Lengthen to provide the level of detail that enables research colleagues to independently assess your results or at least follow your logic.