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

Reasons for no expectations
Detect sentence fluidity problems
The reading toolkit

Step 1:

Choose a paper you wrote, or if you have never written a paper, choose any paper in your field. Take a pencil. You will need it to underline words in each sentence, and to draw one of the smiley faces at the beginning of each sentence.

Step 2:

Select the first eleven sentences from the introduction of the paper.

Step 3:

Set your eyes on the first sentence of the introduction.

Step 4:

Read the sentence and block eye access to the next sentence with a piece of paper. After you understand the sentence, underline the words that clue you on the topic of the next sentence. If you have an expectation, go directly to Step 6 (skip the next step).

Step 5:

You have no expectation for what could come next. Move to the right the paper hiding the next sentence until you get to the first verb of the sentence, and go no further. If you now have an expectation, move to step 6, but if you still have no expectation, draw a at the beginning of the sentence you examined (not the one you partially uncovered). Go directly to Step 7 (skip the next step).

Step 6:

Test your expectation to see if you guessed right. Look at the complete sentence you were hiding. If it fulfills your expectations, draw a at the beginning of the sentence you examined (not the one you just read to check whether your expectation was right), but if it breaks your expectations, draw a instead.

Step 7:

If you have finished you should have a smiley at the beginning of the first 10 sentences; go to Step 8. If not, go back to step 4 and continue with the next sentence.

Step 8:

Compute your score. For each give yourself a pat on the back and add three points to your total score. For each subtract one point, and for each subtract two points. If the score is twenty or more, this writing is brilliant. If the score is less than twelve, consider rewriting the and sentences to better control the expectations of the reader.

Here is an example:

The sky was blue. (No idea, let me look up to the next verb)

The sky was blue. The cat was (still no idea. I’ll put in front of the first sentence)

The sky was blue. The cat was trying to catch a bee on a flower. (I’ll bet the cat will be stung by the bee!)

The sky was blue. The cat was trying to catch a bee on a flower. The bee stung its paw. (Yeah! here is a I was right)

The sky was blue. The cat was trying to catch a bee on a flower. The bee stung its paw. (The cat limped away)

The sky was blue. The cat was trying to catch a bee on a flower. The bee stung its paw. The gardener dug a hole. ( Wrong!)

The sky was blue. The cat was trying to catch a bee on a flower. The bee stung its paw. The gardener dug a hole.

Total score: [−1, +3, −2] = 0!

Now that you are finished with the exercise, wouldn’t you like to find out the cause of these faces — in particular the neutral and sad faces? You could do it by yourself, going over each sentence to determine what created your expectations and how the writer violated them. You would then become aware of the causes of fluidity problems. In fact, why don’t you do it now!

Many scientists did this exercise during the writing class. They identified the common problems. So, when you are done with the exercise, read below to check whether the problems you found are also described here.

Reasons for no expectations

Rear-mirror sentence

“The above framework is compliant with traditional digital signature system structures.”¹

In this sentence, the author adds one final detail that ends a rather complete presentation of the framework. The sentence looks backward, not forward. It sets no expectation.

Descriptive sentence

“The coordinates of each point in a uniform dataset are generated randomly in [0, 10000], whereas, for a Zipf dataset, the coordinates follow a Zipf distribution skewed towards 0 (with a skew coefficient 0.8)”.²

Sentences that state facts or data create little expectation.

Paragraph break

By definition, the paragraph is a unit of text with a single theme or purpose. When the theme or purpose changes, the paragraph changes. But how are these two themes connected? Do you let readers find out by themselves? If you do, is the connection obvious even to a non-expert? It is best to make that connection explicit in one of two ways: use the last sentence of the paragraph to introduce the theme of the next paragraph, or use the first sentence of the new paragraph to introduce the new theme and show how it relates to the previous paragraph.

In this next example, the connection is not explicit. The paragraph states that there are well-known algorithms and others not as well-known (we presume). But we do not know what to expect next.

“Many clustering algorithms are proposed to group co-expressed genes into clusters. Some well-known examples include hierarchical clustering [1, 2], K-mean clustering [3], and self-organizing maps [4, 5]. Bayesian networks [6] and graph theoretic approaches [7—9], model-based methods [10—12], and fuzzy clustering [13] provide additional methods toward clustering.

Various measurements have been employed to score the similarities between pairs of gene expressions.”

Enumeration with no predictable item length

If each item of a numbered enumeration consists of one sentence, the reader very rapidly discovers the pattern and expects the situation to continue. But if each item is covered by a variable number of sentences, the reader does not know what to expect after the end of each sentence: a new item, or the next sentence on the same item.

In science, two factors contribute to long sentences: precision and intellectual honesty. Adding precision to a noun through a modifier lengthens the sentence. For example “an R400-7 fiber optic reflection probe with 6 illumination fibers and one read fiber” is significantly more precise than “a fiber optic probe”. Such precision may be necessary to convince the reader of the quality of the fluorescence measurement. Intellectual honesty lengthens a sentence through the addition of detailed qualifiers and provisos.

In this example, the reader expected the writer to move to the “intellectual honesty” factor, right after the “for example” sentence. But instead, the writer adds a sentence on the probable need for precision. The reader, whose expectations are now broken, resets expectations, but no longer knows what to expect after the comment. This situation could have been avoided by removing the sentence. It is weak (’may be’ expresses uncertainty), and non-essential.

Vortex of chained explanatory details creating an expectation void

It is a case of “one thing leads to another”, but with no end in sight. The reader follows but does not know what to expect next. A good example has already been given. It is repeated here.

For the next three days, the thirty embryonic cells proliferate in the culture dish. The dish, made of plastic, has its inner surface coated with mouse cells that through treatment have lost the ability to divide, but not their ability to provide nutrients. The reason for such a special coating is to provide an adhesive surface for the embryonic cells. After proliferation, the embryonic cells are collected and put into new culture dishes, a process called “replating”.

The first sentence establishes cell proliferation as the paragraph topic. The next two sentences take us down a series of chained details: from embryonic cells to culture dish, from culture dish to dish coating, and from dish coating to adhesive surface. The reader does not know what to expect next. The return to the proliferation topic is not surprising, but it is not expected.

Vague, general statement

With the rapid development of computer communication and Internet, the distribution of digital images is pervasive.

The next sentence is about watermarking. Who would have guessed! The statement is general and typical of the first vacuous sentences of an introduction. From such a vague statement, no expectations can be derived.

Long sentence diluting expectations across many topics

“In this paper, we focus on extending the implementation of the Run Time Infrastructure (RTI) to relax the time synchronization among federates, particularly focusing on RTIs that support the conservative simulation protocol for their time management service, for example the DMSO’s RTI.”³

What is the next sentence to be about: RTI, federates, relaxing time synchronization, the conservative simulation protocol, the time management service of the DMSO’s RTI? The reader has no clue what to expect because there are too many options in this long sentence filled with details. The next sentence is about the method used by each federate to regulate time. Who would have guessed? I thought that the writer would explain why there was a need to relax time synchronization. I would have given that sentence a but the experts in the field have given it a (Expectations vary from one reader to the next, depending on their background knowledge.)