Article Citation
Gopen, George D., and Judith A. Swan. 1990. “The Science of Scientific Writing.” American Scientist. 78: 550-558.
Summary of Article
In this article, Gopen and Swan suggest several tips for science writers to ensure clear communication of scientific concepts. Their suggestions, listed below, increase the level of both text coherence and text cohesion:
1.Avoid separating the verb from the subject. When verbs do not closely follow their subject in a sentence, readers have to expend extra energy to search for or re-read the document to find the action of the subject. Readers should not have to work that hard to comprehend what the writer is trying to say.
2.Make only one point in each part of prose (sentence, paragraph, and chapter).
3.Important or new information belongs in the “stress position” of the sentence. The “stress position” is the position, at the end of a sentence or an independent clause that is emphasized by readers (552). Writers should not put unimportant information at the point of emphasis or put important information at the beginning of the sentence where it might be overlooked.
4.“Save the Best for Last” and “First Things First” (554). In other words, put old information in the beginning of a sentence or a paragraph, and put new information at the end of a sentence or a paragraph. This follows the recommendation by Isakson and Spyridakis (1999) and Carolyn Rude (2006) who emphasize starting with the familiar and then introducing new information. Gopen and Swan (1990) refer to this as “linkage (looking backward) and context (looking forward)” (554).
Analysis and Reflection
Dr. George D. Gopen is a professor in the English Department at Duke University. He has written several books on writing with the reader in mind. Dr. Judith A. Swan is a professor at Princeton University where she teaches scientific writing. Her background is in biochemistry and she received her PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This article doesn't have much of a literature review, and the 4 articles in its bibliography are not cited in the text. However, it includes general information on how to improve scientific writing by looking at text through the eyes of a reader. One interesting aspect of this article is that it includes examples of text excerpts that are rewritten throughout the article to illustrate how changing the syntax or semantics of a text can affect what the reader understands. This article will be extremely useful for my literature review.
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