From "Novelist Cormac McCarthy's tips on how to write a great science paper" in Nature (2019-09-26), abridged from their presentation by Van Savage and Pamela Yeh:
- Use minimalism to achieve clarity. ... Remove extra words or commas whenever you can.
- Decide on your paper's theme and two or three points you want every reader to remember. This theme and these points form the single thread that runs through your piece. ...
- Limit each paragraph to a single message. ... Each paragraph should explore that message by first asking a question and then progressing to an idea, and sometimes to an answer. ...
- Keep sentences short, simply constructed and direct. ...
- Don't slow the reader down. Avoid footnotes ... jargon, buzzwords or overly technical language. ...
- Don't over-elaborate. ...
- And don't worry too much about readers who want to find a way to argue about every tangential point and list all possible qualifications for every statement. Just enjoy writing.
- With regard to grammar, spoken language and common sense are generally better guides for a first draft than rule books. ...
- Commas denote a pause in speaking. ... Speak the sentence aloud to find pauses.
- Dashes should emphasize the clauses you consider most important — without using bold or italics — and not only for defining terms. (Parentheses can present clauses more quietly and gently than commas.) ...
- Inject questions and less-formal language to break up tone and maintain a friendly feeling. ...
- Choose concrete language and examples. ...
- Avoid placing equations in the middle of sentences. ...
- When you think you're done, read your work aloud to yourself or a friend. ...
- After all this, send your work to the journal editors. ... Change text where useful, and where not, politely explain why you're keeping your original formulation.
- And don't rant to editors about the Oxford comma, the correct usage of 'significantly' or the choice of 'that' versus 'which'. ...
- Finally, try to write the best version of your paper: the one that you like. ...
(cf Syntactic Sugar (2006-05-02), Pulp Fiction Rules (2008-10-20), Rules for Writing (2010-03-07), Tips for Aspiring Op-Ed Writers (2017-11-18), ...) - ^z - 2019-09-27
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