Is Your Writing Readable?

Some novice writers think that the more abstruse their writing is (and filled with technical jargon), the more knowledgeable they will appear.

If you’ve read my other posts on the topic, you know that I think the opposite is true.  The mark of a skilled author is the ability to write simple, concise narratives that provide clear, unambiguous interpretations of their work.  This characteristic is true of both the technical writer (e.g., of scientific papers) and the writer of non-technical articles.  However, if your target audience is the non-specialist, you need to strive for even clearer, jargon-free writing.

In previous posts, I’ve talked at length about various writing topics (you can do a search on “writing” to find them on this blog).  In this post, I’d like to mention a useful tool that can be used to assess and improve the readability of your writing, whether for technical or popular outlets.

The tool I’m talking about is the “readability statistics” found in some word-processing programs, including Word.  This function is found within the Grammar and Spell-Checking option.  The readability statistics function is not turned on by default, but you can activate it by selecting Options under the Tools menu (or Preferences for the Mac).  You then select the Grammar and Spelling tab and check the box “show readability statistics”.  Then all you do is select Spelling and Grammar under the Tools menu in Word, and you will automatically get readability statistics for any text you select.  

The two readability indices are the Flesch Reading Ease Score and the Flesch-Kincaid Score.  The Flesch Reading Ease Score rates text on a 100 point scale; the higher the score, the easier it is to understand the document; and for most non-technical documents, you want to aim for a score around 60 or 70.  The Flesch-Kincaid Score rates text on a US school grade level.  For example, a score of 8 means that an eighth grader can understand the document.  Note that earlier Microsoft Word versions artificially capped this at grade 12; the original formula extended the scoring to grade 17.  Later PC versions go above 12, but the Mac version has not been fixed to my knowledge. 

 Let’s give it a try with an example from the government website, Plain Language (for some hilarious reading, check this site out).  This is the “before” version of a government regulation: 

 “Under 25 CFR §1.4(b), the Secretary of the Interior may in specific cases or in specific geographic areas, adopt or make applicable to off-reservation Indian lands all or any part of such laws, ordinances, codes, resolutions, rules or other regulations of the State and political subdivisions in which the land is located as the Secretary shall determine to be in the best interest of the Indian owner or owners in achieving the highest and best use of such property.” 

 If we examine the readability statistics (left), we are not surprised to find that it gets a zero score for Flesch Reading Ease and a 12 for the Flesch-Kincaid score.    

 Here is how it was improved:

“Section 1.4(b) of 25 CFR allows us to make State or local laws or regulations apply to your off-reservation lands. We will do this only if we find that it will help you to achieve the highest and best use of your lands.” 

 I think this version is more readable than the original, and the readability statistics confirm this.  The Flesch Reading Ease Score has been increased to 67.2 and a 9^th grader should be able to understand it.

Let’s try a science example.  Here is a sentence from Margaret Mead’s “Coming of Age in Samoa” (which I’ve analyzed in a previous post): 

 "For it must be realised by any student of civilisation that we pay heavily for our heterogeneous, rapidly changing civilisation; we pay in high proportions of crime and delinquency, we pay in the conflicts of youth, we pay in an ever-increasing number of neuroses, we pay in the lack of a coherent tradition without which the development of art is sadly handicapped." 

Its Flesch Reading Ease Score is 29.3, and someone would need a 12^th grade education (or higher) to understand it.  Part of the reason it gets a low score is that the sentence is long and convoluted.  If we change it a bit, we can raise the score:

 “Any student should realize that our complex and changing civilization costs us in terms of greater crime and more neuroses.  This situation leads to a lack of coherent traditions, which hampers the development of art”.

This revision raises the Flesch Reading Ease Score to 51.2 and a 10^th grader should understand it.

Now, let me hasten to add that I’m just using this as an example of how these readability indices work.  I’m not suggesting that Mead’s sentence was poorly written and needed revision.  In fact, in my previous post, I used this example to illustrate the additive style of sentence construction….one that usually adds to the emotion or “atmosphere” of a piece.  

The point here is that you can use such readability indices to see how much mental effort a reader needs to exert to understand a statement you’ve written.  There are certainly limitations to the use of such indices, and there are critics (see this paper for a more detailed description of these indices and the main criticisms).  You definitely don’t want to write solely to meet these or other readability statistics, which have their limitations; you should always write to your audience and use common-sense in constructing your narratives.  However, I’ve found such statistics to be useful especially in taking a description and seeing if it would be understandable by a non-specialist.  

And there are other statistics given along with the two scores discussed above. 

Another useful bit of information that comes with the readability statistics is the number of passive sentences (see screenshots above).  Technical writing tends to use this type of construction, but should strive to use an active construction whenever feasible.  Word’s readability statistics includes an estimate of the proportion of passive sentences in a passage.

Many people are confused, however, about what is meant by active versus passive construction (see this post for more discussion).  People often think that an active construction involves the use of first-person pronouns: “We reviewed the data in multiple studies.” As opposed to : “The data in multiple studies were reviewed.”  Yes, these are examples of active versus passive constructions, respectively, but not because of the personal pronoun.  The distinction is whether or not the action of the subject is expressed in the verb.   

To illustrate, here’s another example of a passive construction: “Increased salinity was found to cause a shift in species composition.” Here, the subject of the sentence receives the action expressed in the verb.  

 Here is the active construction of that sentence: “Increased salinity caused a shift in species composition. “ In this version, the subject of the sentence performs the action expressed in the verb.  No first-person pronouns are involved.

Unfortunately, the calculation of passive sentences in Word sometimes underestimates the percentage (for a longer discussion, see the reference above).  However, it’s still useful, especially if it encourages the writer to be aware of passive versus active sentence construction.  Overall, the active construction tends to be shorter and easier to understand.  It also leads to more dynamic writing that is more enjoyable to read.  Technical writing typically must fit into a word limit set by a journal.  By reducing the proportion of passive sentences, you can often reduce the word count of your document and at the same time increase its readability.  The total words in a passage, as well as number of words per sentence, are also given in the readability statistics.  These statistics can be very helpful when you need to reduce the length of your narrative.

If you’ve never tried the readability statistics offered in Word or other programs, give it a try, especially if you frequently get the criticism that your writing is difficult to understand. 

Final Sentences

In this series on writing sentences, I've covered a lot of territory.  As I explained in the first post, I was prompted to write this series after reading Stanley Fish's book, How to Write a Sentence, and How to Read One.  To recap a bit, Fish postulates that it's the sentence that should be the focus of writing skill development. Sentences, not words, are the building blocks of writing.  A student must learn how to organize components of a sentence in a coherent manner to become a good writer. I would agree with that, although it's not all one needs.

Furthermore, Fish suggests that by studying good sentences from literature and understanding their form, a student can learn to construct similar sentences.  By providing examples of sentences (first sentences, last sentences, satirical sentences), by analyzing how they were constructed, and by suggesting exercises to replicate them, Fish gets his point across.  Another point he argues is that we should forget content initially, and focus on form. There is some merit to this idea, but eventually the writer must provide content. The writer must also put together sentences in a logical manner to produce a cogent narrative.  Just because we can mimic a sentence written by Hemingway or Woolf, doesn't mean we are ready (or ever will be ready) to turn out something as good as The Old Man and the Sea or A Room of One's Own.

Nevertheless, one must start somewhere to develop writing skills, and the sentence seems to be a key starting point.  As scientists, we must eventually write up our findings and explain our work to others.  We may have important knowledge about a topic, but without writing skills, we will not be able to explain it in a logical, convincing, or entertaining way.  Scientific writing is highly specialized and for some, difficult to master.  Most can learn the basic rules of grammar and punctuation, but style is something that is often overlooked or downplayed in favor of content and reliance on the fairly rigid format of scientific papers (as a substitute for style).  Yet style is what sets us apart from other authors and breaths life into otherwise dull and pedestrian treatises.  By focusing on the sentence we've learned some things about writing styles that perhaps we've overlooked previously, especially those of us who are technical writers and for whom content and logical narrative have been emphasized. I can say that after reading this book, examining examples of sentences from different literary sources, and practicing some of the exercises, I have a new appreciation for the sentence.

I've gone through similar exercises that focused more specifically on scientific writing and how to improve clarity.  Those were quite different from the ones proposed by Fish but were similarly based on an analysis of sentence construction (as well as linkages among sentences in a narrative) (see posts about Gopen and Swan's The Science of Scientific Writing).  The common thread is the identification of basic sentence constructions that characterize "good writing".  What I've learned from all such approaches is a keener awareness of what styles of writing work and why.  It's also clear that to really absorb these lessons, one must practice them....not only analyzing how other writers construct sentences but imitating different styles of writing.  Even if you never have need of certain styles of writing for your own work, being aware of them may enhance your understanding and appreciation of writing in general.  I've learned quite a lot in the process of researching and writing this series.  I've revisited some classic science and nature writing, which I viewed with a new eye toward style rather than content and gained a renewed appreciation for those essays.

Some reviews of Stanley Fish's book, How to Write a Sentence:

http://ken-braiterman.suite101.com/stanley-fish-sentences-not-words-are-the-basis-of-writing-a357026
Sentences that take your breath away
Writing Styles
The Afterword
Fiction Writers Review

What It Means When a Benga Spits on Your Hand

We are discussing sentence construction and have been considering the additive style (see previous posts for background).  In the last post, I gave some examples of the additive style using fictional examples.  In the additive sentence, components are not arranged in relationship to each other (as in the subordinating style), but instead are provided in a seemingly haphazard manner, giving the appearance of spontaneity. Their purpose (often) is to infuse the sentence with a mood, emotion, or impression.

Can the additive style be used in science writing?  Yes, I would think for nature writing that it is likely quite useful, but probably not so much for purely technical writing, which depends on logic, clarity, and absence of emotions, moods, feelings, or impressions.

But perhaps there are sentences from earlier scientific works that come close. Here's Darwin again:

"In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that each species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species."

Darwin lists items that a naturalist might reflect upon in no particular order of precedence: mutual affinities, embryological relations, geographical distribution, geological succession. However, the sentence contains subordinating elements and a logical structure: the contemplation of the naturalist on various aspects of organic beings leads to a conclusion about how they had descended from other species. So, perhaps this sentence is does not quite fit the additive style.

How about nature or popular science writing?

When I say nature writers, I immediately think of Stephen Jay Gould, Oliver Sacks, Jared Diamond, and John McPhee, to name a few favorites.  Are there any sentences in their writing that fit the bill? (this is my excuse to reread some of their works)

...I'm back...I failed to find many really good examples of sentences in the additive style–as defined by Fish–in the works by these authors.  Perhaps the reason is that nature essayists mostly report on facts and relationships and, although they may wax poetic at times, typically do not string together sentence elements without articulating their relationship to each other.

Here are a few lines from John McPhee's essay, 'Atchafalaya', in his book, The Control of Nature (1989):

"This was a countryside of corn and soybeans, of grain-fed-catfish ponds, of feed stores and Kingdom Halls in crossroad towns."

"Among navigable rivers, the Atchafalaya is widely described as one of the most treacherous in the world, but it just lies there quiet and smooth. It lies there like a big alligator in a low slough, with time on its side, waiting–waiting to outwit the Corps of Engineers–and hunkering down ever lower in its bed and presenting a sort of maw to the Mississippi, into which the river could fall."

And from Jared Diamond's essay, 'The Maya Collapses' in the book, Collapse (2005):

Like Easter Island chiefs erecting ever larger statues, eventually crowned by pukao, and like Anasazi elite treating themselves to necklaces of 2,000 turquoise beads, Maya kings sought to outdo each other with more and more impressive temples, covered with thicker and thicker plaster–reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by modern American CEOs."

The foregoing sentences have subordinating elements, so are not totally in the additive style.  In Diamond's sentence, for example, the Maya kings are being compared to Easter Island chiefs, Anasazi elite, and American CEOs.

However, I knew Oliver Sacks would not disappoint. Here are a few sentences from his book, The Island of the Colorblind (1997):

"Knut enjoys the visual world quite as much as the rest of us; he was delighted by a picturesque market in a side street of Honolulu, by the palms and tropical vegetation all around us, by the shapes of clouds–he has a clear and prompt eye for the range of human beauty too (He has a beautiful wife in Norway, a fellow psychologist, he told us–but it was only after they married, when a friend said, "I guess you go for redheads," that he learned for the first time of her flamboyant red hair.)"

And another one: 

"I could not help thinking of the horror stories from the 1950s: the strange white ash that had rained down on a Japanese tuna fishing vessel, the Lucky Dragon, bringing acute radiation sickness to the entire crew; the "pink snow" that had fallen on Rongelap after one blast–the children had never sen anything like it, and they played with it delightedly."

One more: 

"The nurse, the Spam baron, the self-righteous missionary, had so occupied me that I had scarcely noticed the passage of time, the monotonous sweep of the ocean beneath us, until suddenly I felt the plane descending toward the huge, boomerang-shaped lagoon of Kwajalein."

These wonderful sentences all occur within the first 25 pages of the book.  The first sentence lists disparate visual elements (picturesque market, tropical vegetation, clouds, and beautiful wife with red hair) that Knut was delighted by....but they are listed in no particular order or described in relationship to each other.  The words seem to flow out in a spontaneous way, including a digression about the wife.  Yet the sentence makes sense; it gets across the point that Knut, although colorblind, is not blind to beauty.  Sacks had a specific point to make, and listed several elements that illustrate beauty, but he did not present them in relation (subordinate) to each other.


What about nature writing by a literary giant? The best one I know is The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951) by John Steinbeck about a trip with the marine biologist, Edward Ricketts.  Here are a few lines from that book:

[observing boats] "If the stays were rusting and the deck unwashed, paint scraped off and the lines piled carelessly, there was no need to see the master; we knew him. And if the lines were coiled and the cables greased and the little luxury of deer horns nailed to the crow’s-nest, there was no need to see that owner either."

[talking about adventurers] "In reputedly rough water, he will go in a canoe; he will invade deserts without adequate food and he will expose his tolerant and uninoculated blood to strange viruses."

These seem to be clearer examples of additive sentences.  The first two sentences describe features of boats that reveal what type of skipper they belong to.  The third sentence is a description of an adventurer and lists three different examples of actions unrelated to each other.  The examples are listed in no particular order or precedence but together convey the message that the adventurer is someone with an underlying motivation to expose himself to danger.

You may be thinking at this point, "What about women nature or science writers?" I naturally think of Mary Kingsley (Travels in West Africa) and Margaret Mead (Coming of Age in Samoa, Blackberry Winter).

Here is an example from Coming of Age in Samoa (1928): 


"For it must be realised by any student of civilisation that we pay heavily for our heterogeneous, rapidly changing civilisation; we pay in high proportions of crime and delinquency, we pay in the conflicts of youth, we pay in an ever-increasing number of neuroses, we pay in the lack of a coherent tradition without which the development of art is sadly handicapped."

Here, Mead is talking about the burden of choice that young members of a modern civilization face; that some civilizations have few or only one choice of life. She is arguing that with the greater choices come payments in the various forms of cultural ills she lists.

I searched all over for my copy of Travels in West Africa (1897), but finally had to locate a copy online.

....sorry.  I'm back.  I got distracted reading Kingsley's mesmerizing descriptions.  Here is a line extracted at random:

"The moonlit sea, shimmering and breaking on the darkened shore, the black forest and the hills silhouetted against the star-powdered purple sky, and, at my feet, the engine-room stoke-hole, lit with the rose-coloured glow from its furnace, showing by the great wood fire the two nearly naked Krumen stokers, shining like polished bronze in their perspiration, as they throw in on to the fire the billets of red wood that look like freshly-cut chunks of flesh."

Here's another sentence:

"On each side are deep forested dells and ravines, and rocks show up through the ground in every direction, and things in general are slippery, and I wonder now and again, as I assume with unnecessary violence a recumbent position, why I came to Africa; but patches of satin-leaved begonias and clumps of lovely tree-ferns reconcile me to my lot."

And a final one:


"When you have found the easy key that opens the reason underlying a series of facts, as for example, these: a Benga spits on your hand as a greeting; you see a man who has been marching regardless through the broiling sun all the forenoon, with a heavy load, on entering a village and having put down his load, elaborately steal round in the shelter of the houses, instead of crossing the street; you come across a tribe that cuts its dead up into small pieces and scatters them broadcast, and another tribe that thinks a white man’s eye-ball is a most desirable thing to be possessed of - do not, when you have found this key, drop your collecting work, and go home with a shriek of “I know all about Fetish,” because you don’t, for the key to the above facts will not open the reason why it is regarded advisable to kill a person who is making Ikung; or why you should avoid at night a cotton tree that has red earth at its roots; or why combings of hair and paring of nails should be taken care of; or why a speck of blood that may fall from your flesh should be cut out of wood - if it has fallen on that - and destroyed, and if it has fallen on the ground stamped and rubbed into the soil with great care."

Kingsley clearly had a talent for writing wonderfully detailed descriptions of nature and people's behavior.  She also employed the additive style of sentence construction.  This last sentence illustrates how the nature writer can use the additive style to convey different examples of or variations on a theme. Kingsley explains in this long sentence why finding the key to identifying a fetish (fetishes are ideas governing or underlying people's actions) does not give you a guide for how to respond to that behavior.  She lists a series of behaviors illustrating fetishes without explicitly describing their relationships to each other, then lists another series of actions one might do in response. The latter set, Kingsley advises, requires "another key entirely." The examples convey a sense of mystery or intrigue with definite hints of danger (steal round, cuts its dead up, white man's eye-ball) but at the same time seem to be offered with an air of irony. 

There may be some other examples of sentences from science or nature writing that are in the additive style, but these few serve to illustrate the idea.  I found such sentences to occur infrequently, however, which is not surprising considering that such writers are trying to explain things in a logical, coherent fashion most of the time.  But there seems to be a use for this style in nature writing and may be partly why these particular works are so enjoyable to read.

In the next post, I'll wrap up this series on sentences and attempt to summarize and provide a few concluding thoughts.

"If You Really Want to Hear about It...."

....is the beginning of the first line in J.D. Salinger's novel, Catcher in the Rye. This sentence (more below) is written in a particular style and is used to illustrate how it works to breath life into writing.

In an earlier post, I described two basic sentence styles: subordinating and additive.  I've already covered the subordinating style, in which components of the sentence are ordered in a logical way, i.e., have a relationship to each other:  "Before opening the door, he cautiously peered out through the peephole." A subordinate (dependent) phrase adds meaning to another part of the sentence.

In this post, I will talk a bit more about the additive style in which components are listed in sequence but not necessarily in a subordinate relationship to each other.  This style has been described as being more "organic" versus the subordinate style as being "linear".  Consider the following sentence from Tana French's thriller, In the Woods:

"This summer explodes on your tongue tasting of chewed blades of long grass, your own clean sweat, Marie biscuits with butter squirting through the holes and shaken bottles of red lemonade picnicked in tree houses."

No one element listed in this sentence is subordinate (less important) than another.  Instead, they set a mood and stimulate the reader's imagination.  As we read each item, we envision or remember tasting a blade of grass, sweating, eating biscuits (cookies), and drinking lemonade during the summer.  In literature, the additive style has been used to convey spontaneity rather than a logical order.  It can be a list of experiences that have no relationship to each other, other than being, for example, fond memories of summers past, as in the sentence above.  The elements are listed in no particular order according to time or importance.  Chewed blades of grass are no more important than red lemonade in terms of fondness or occurrence in time (at least not as expressed in this sentence). 

Stanley Fish, in his book, How to Write a Sentence, goes into much detail over the additive style, providing many examples from literature to illustrate.  He provides more complex examples of additive style from the works of Hemingway, Woolf, and Salinger.  Salinger, for example, uses this style in the opening sentence of Catcher in the Rye:

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

Fish interprets this sentence for us saying that it conveys two voices: that of a callow young man and simultaneously that of the cynical author.  The apparent randomness of the thoughts sound spontaneous and how an immature teenager might talk.  The reference to David Copperfield, however, is suggestive of someone who is not your everyday teenager.  The elements of the sentence are offered in no particular priority or according to a timeline (birth, childhood, pre-conception, present day). They are strung together in a seemingly haphazard fashion.  They are not, of course. The sentence is well crafted to convey the mood and specific emotional aspects of the narrator that the author wanted to introduce right at the beginning of the novel.

Ernest Hemingway was a master of the additive style, but in the form of superficially simple sentences.  Many people find his style very appealing.  Here is an example from A Farewell to Arms:

"In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels."

Even though the words are spare and lean, the sentence structure is not simple.  There are two different groups of objects, rocks and the water, which are described in spare terms, but there is no explicit relationship between them articulated in the sentence.  The pebbles and boulders are sitting there in the bed of the river but presumably not in the water (dry and white in the sun); the water is moving nearby in the channels. This sentence describes a scene one might see standing on a river bank looking at the view–a vivid snapshot with the two main elements (rocks and water) juxtaposed in the mind's eye.

I think you get the idea.  In contrast to the subordinating style, which follows a logical framework, the additive style sets the mood, expresses the emotional feelings of the narrator, or paints a scene in a natural, spontaneous manner. Whereas subordinating sentences in a composition provide a coherent structure, the additive sentences add atmosphere. They express the human aspect of the narrative.

Although this style appears to be easy to replicate, Fish warns that it is not.  He suggests that the subordinating style is easier to accomplish because of its logic: you can ask yourself if a sentence's components make sense in relation to each other.  The additive style appears to be uncontrolled, spontaneous, organic, with no apparent logic....just writing down one thing after another in no particular order.  There is no recipe or format that one can follow, as was the case with the subordinating style.  Although the sentence elements appear to be randomly positioned, the sentence still conveys something understandable.  It's not just a jumble of words without meaning or intent.

Fish warns that a writer must learn how to construct the subordinating, controlled sentence before taking on the free-wheeling, additive style...and making it work.  He does suggest that this style can be imitated (and practiced) by starting with examples from less experimental writers.

Fish suggests an exercise to practice writing in the additive style.  Start with a scene, say one in which someone is standing looking out at a view:

She thought, gazing at the expansive vista of high desert and distant peaks tinged pink by the setting sun.

Then add a few participial phrases: "The air smelling of pine resin, the breeze cooling her face, the horse snorting gently,"

Perhaps add another phrase at the end: "would she find the child in time, living?"

Put all together:

"The air smelling of pine resin, the breeze cooling her face, the horse snorting gently, she thought, gazing at the expansive vista of high desert and distant peaks tinged pink by the setting sun, would she find the child in time, living?"

The various elements are listed in no particular order according to occurrence or importance. They set a mood, however, by describing different elements of the environment, which are calm and majestic, and putting these adjacent to an emotional question involving life and death.  The effect is to perhaps convey the impression that the person (a woman) being described is somewhat removed emotionally from the action.  If she's looking for a lost child, why is she so calmly standing and savoring her surroundings?  Is she a professional tracker or detective?  One could easily change this mood, however, by modifying the participial phrases:

"The air reeking of smoke, the wind whipping at her hair, the horse stamping nervously, she thought, peering at the expansive vista of high desert and distant peaks tinged pink by the setting sun, would she find the child in time, living?"

Now we have a completely different impression of the action taking place and the emotional state of the woman.  We perceive more desperation or sense of urgency, but not because of any specific feelings described for the woman.  Instead, it's the phrases (air reeking of smoke--is there a fire? wind whipping, horse stamping nervously) that lend a different mood.  When we reach the part of the sentence describing what previously sounded like a majestic vista, we now interpret the high desert, distant peaks, and setting sun as being ominous portents of the outcome of her search for the child.  We simultaneously have the impression that the searcher has an emotional investment in the action, although this is not explicitly stated.  The subtle change in the word "gazing" to "peering" adds to the impression that the searcher is not calmly admiring the view, but gauging the challenges suggested by the view.

Well, I went on a bit longer about the additive style than I had originally planned.  I will finish up the discussion of the additive style in the next post by considering if this style can be used in science writing.

Image Credit: View of Death Valley, California-Nevada, USA; DrDoyenne

Delayed Gratification

In this series of posts, I'm discussing sentence construction. Stanley Fish, author of How to Write a Sentence, is the inspiration for these posts. In the last post, we talked about the subordinating style of sentence, in which the components are arranged according to relationships such as causality or time:

While preparing for a field trip, I packed duplicates of all key pieces of equipment.

In this post, I'll talk about a subordinating sentence structure that does not immediately jump to the pay-off as the sentence above does, but instead builds through several beats before arriving at the key point.  Taking the sentence above, I'll try to delay the reader a bit by adding an intervening phrase:

While preparing for a field trip and remembering previous disastrous excursions in which a critical instrument was smashed by a careless student, I packed duplicates of all key pieces of equipment.

What this construction has done is to provide more context to the sentence–a personal history, which explains the narrator's current behavior when preparing for field trips. As well as being more informative, it's a far more interesting sentence.  Can we extend this exercise further and add more to this sentence?

While preparing for a field trip and remembering previous disastrous excursions in which a critical instrument was smashed by a careless student and Murphy's Law that "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong", I packed duplicates of all key pieces of equipment.

Now as the reader progresses through the sentence, she is taken on a short trip into the past (previous disastrous excursions) and then reminded of an aphorism (Murphy's Law), which is well known to field biologists. The reader pauses at that point, reflecting on this apropos saying and perhaps her own experiences along these lines. Next, the reader arrives at the subject of the sentence (I) and finally the narrator's solution to the problem.

My example is not precisely like the examples Fish uses; he interposes the delaying phrases between the subject and verb.  Here is an example of mine that does just that:

As she reached the top of the rise and looked at the vista–high desert surrounded by distant peaks tinged pink by the setting sun–her horse, having steadfastly borne her across raging rivers and down steep embankments, stumbled.

What this sentence style accomplishes is to provide a much richer and more complex reading experience for the reader.  Imagine if this sentence were instead written as a series of simpler statements:

She reached the top of the rise and looked at the vista.
She saw high desert surrounded by distant peaks tinged pink by the setting sun.
Her horse had borne her across raging rivers and down steep embankments.
It stumbled.

Or one that describes only the basic action:

As she reached the top of the rise, her horse stumbled.

Not at all the same reading experience.  The more complex sentence first lulls the reader into a sense of complacency by describing a majestic scene (the high desert and distant peaks), then curiously introduces another subject (her horse). Then there is a phrase describing the horse's past performance (taking the reader back in time).  And finally we get to the key action (stumbled), which suddenly changes everything–the rider is now in danger.  Once you understand the structure and how it's accomplished, starting with a basic, simple phrase or short sentence, it's relatively easy to duplicate.  I found this exercise to be one of the more useful bits of insight I gleaned from Fish's book.  

Such sentences, however, violate the advice of technical writing experts, which is to avoid interrupting the subject-verb or verb-object relationship with intervening words or phrases.  The technical writer is aiming for clarity and succinctness, and by putting words and phrases between these sentence elements, the writer muddies the water, so to speak. The reader of a technical paper is wanting information to be provided in a clear and unambiguous manner–not to be entertained. 

As I write about this exercise, however, I realize that scientists and students of science are masters at writing such sentences:


"A broad treatment of optical bistability, including all the steady-state and transient characteristics of nonlinear optical systems which exhibit bistability under some operating conditions, is presented."

That's not the worst example, but illustrates my point.  Such sentences are common in scientific papers; it took me all of 3 seconds to find this one on Google Scholar.  I've written previously about how to improve the comprehension of scientific writing.  In those posts, I provide exercises to take such convoluted sentences and rewrite them in a more understandable fashion.  

To summarize, using the subordinating phrase to delay the reader from getting to the sentence's payoff can greatly enrich one's writing style.  Although this style may not work well in the purely technical paper, it might be useful in nature writing or other semi-technical writing where the author is trying to both inform and entertain.

The Subordinating Style

I've been talking about sentence structure and how to develop skills in writing better sentences.  I've been using examples from a book called How to Write a Sentence by Stanley Fish and applying them to scientific writing.  In the last post, I mused about sentence style versus content.  In this post, I will describe two basic categories of style: subordinating and additive.

The subordinating style refers to sentences in which the components are arranged according to relationships of causality, temporalness, or priority.

For example:

"It was the older, classic papers in science I was assigned during college rather than the more recent, specialized articles I read in graduate school that influenced the choices I later made in my career."

In this sentence, there are two actions that each occur at different times in relation to each other (temporalness: college and graduate school) and that also have different influences (causality), one more important than the other (priority) on events occurring at a later time (career).

An additive style would not link components in terms of their relationship to each other:

"I read 'On the Origin of Species', and I passed all my courses and began dating Mark."

We don't get any hint of how or whether these different actions relate to each other or when they occurred in the writer's life.  These are constructions that teachers commonly encounter in student writing. The problem with this one is that the writer is just stringing together different actions without establishing their relationships. They may have some relationship, but the writer is unable to structure the sentence so that this relationship is clear.

There is nothing inferior, necessarily, with the additive style.  Here's another example that is less scatterbrained than the one above:

"I read ancient texts, studied classic treatises, and perused modern articles to achieve a broad view of science and its history."

This example also strings together a sequence of actions without explicitly showing when they were carried out or which were more important.  In contrast to the previous example, this sentence works because it delivers a coherent message.  It conveys a time sequence, but one based on the historical context of the sources: ancient, classic, modern and in that sense there is a temporal relationship among the sentence components.

Fish offers an example of a subordinating sentence in which an assertion is made in such a way as to dismiss any other opinion on the topic.  This sentence by Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice) is also one of the examples I gave earlier of famous first lines in novels:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

Here we have a very short sentence, which conveys a complex social conundrum, but does so with a clear tone of authority.  It begins with a claim that what is going to be stated is irrefutable, preempting any effort on the reader's part to challenge the revelation.  The sentence also shows parallel structure: "in possession of" and "in want of".  The authoritative tone is again emphasized by the use of "must be" later in the sentence.  This is a technique that can be used to communicate confidence in any sentence making an assertion.

Darwin did something similar in the opening line of On the Origin of Species, except that his intent was to simultaneously convey a sense of humility:

"When on board H.M.S. Beagle as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South American and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent."

I've already dissected this sentence in an earlier post, but use it again here to illustrate the subordinating style and specifically its usefulness in making scientific assertions.  Darwin begins his opening sentence with a phrase that establishes his credentials as a naturalist, preempting any assumption by the reader that he's just an armchair theorist.  I have no way of knowing if Darwin deliberately used this sentence structure, but it works beautifully to establish his authority without sounding pompous. In this sense, it is more palatable than Jane Austin's assertion about a "universal truth".  He uses the term "facts" to refer to the observations upon which his conclusions are based, terminology that further anticipates and preempts any criticism of the basis of the theoretical musings to come.

What's impressive about Darwin's sentence is that his assertions are tempered by a tone of humility and sense of discovery ("I was much struck").  Darwin's humility was not faked; by all accounts he was a humble person who constantly questioned whether he was the best person to put forth this theory and additionally was quick to acknowledge other authorities who had similar ideas or had made contributions to his thinking.  This point is an important one to understand. If you choose to structure your sentences to convey authority or any other tone, it must reflect reality.  If it's faked, the reader will know.  And as Fish points out, you are more likely to persuade a reader of a "universal truth" if you do not actually use the phrase "it is a truth universally acknowledged".

In the next post, I'll try to describe a sentence structure that, using subordination, delays the "payoff", the kernel of truth that the writer is trying to convey and by doing so, promotes a sense of satisfaction in the reader who has patiently waited for it.

Sentence Content vs. Style

In this series, I've been talking about how to construct sentences that convey your ideas clearly and in a manner that readers find interesting.  I've been providing examples of exercises suggested by Stanley Fish in his book How to Write a Sentence.

In this post, I continue with a discussion of how to develop your writing skills using simple ideas or sentences as starting points. Fish emphasizes that to develop your skill at writing well-constructed sentences, it doesn't matter what the content is. In fact, he argues that the less interesting the content, the more useful they are in getting you to focus on developing form and style.  Once you master the techniques, then content becomes important. For scientists writing about their research, the general content is already specified by the topic of the study and the results of the experiments.  If I used science examples, those of you who are in science would be focusing on the content and whether it is accurate or contains factual errors, whether you are familiar or not with the topic, and whether it is sufficiently detailed or is missing key elements. For this reason, I've been using sentences taken from literature and non-science topics.  In some cases, however, I've provided examples from the scientific literature to examine how these ideas can be applied to science writing.  But these have been introduced after the technique has been explained and illustrated with a non-science example.

One sentence form that can be useful in scientific writing relates to the art of argument.  In their book, They Say/I Say, authors Graff and Birkenstein describe a sentence structure in which conventional wisdom is stated followed by a statement of disagreement:

"They say that women are equal to men, but I say women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition." 

Graff and Birkenstein offer a number templates for different forms of argument, such as the one above, which not only provide structure but can also suggest ideas for arguments that might not otherwise occur. You can take almost any commonly-held belief and write a sentence like the one above. I selected an example that relates to this blog (gender equality) and wrote not only a contradictory statement, but added a little twist to it....one that had not occurred to me until I forced myself to come up with an opposing argument.  This effect is what Fish argues arises from a focus on sentence structures, especially very restrictive structures. The more restrictive, the more creative you tend to be to fulfill the exercise.

The point is that by considering specific structures of sentences, you can discover new insights.  The example I gave previously of time-traveling sentences is another template that can stimulate creativity and discovery of relationships one might not otherwise uncover.  In that exercise, we had the task of writing a sentence that linked actions across different time zones: past, present, future. We might further restrict the exercise by requiring that the sentence begin with the word "having".  An example might be:

"Having traveled a tiring distance, he slumped to the ground where passersby later would glance quickly then avert their gaze not wishing to become entangled in whatever troubles had felled him."

Another example:

"Having awakened in a strange room, she gingerly arose from the bed not wanting to make any noises that might alert others in the house to her renewed consciousness."

We can do this all day...create good sentences that start with a specific word.  The task is much more difficult without restrictions, partly because of more choices from which one can choose.  An analogy might be a dinner menu. In some restaurants, especially ethnic establishments, there are many pages to the menu with tens of dozens of items.  There are so many choices that the customer has trouble choosing among, not only food groups (fish, poultry, beef), but how they are prepared (baked, broiled, fried) and with what ingredients (myriad choices).  Similarly, when we are faced with an exercise to "write a good sentence", our minds are overwhelmed with the possibilities, and we may have difficulty deciding what the topic should be or in what style we should structure a "good sentence".  At the other extreme, are restaurants that offer perhaps five entrees each evening.  With the latter, one can focus and more easily decide between a fish entree and a beef entree (there being only one dish of each prepared in a specific way).  Similarly, with a restriction to write a sentence that reduces our choices, we are able to decide more easily.

The other reason that restrictions are helpful in writing exercises is that they encourage us to be creative.  We have to be creative to design a good sentence that meets the criteria imposed on the exercise. If there are no restrictions, we are more likely to write a less interesting sentence.  I mention restrictions and their impact on writing because it might be helpful when you find yourself having difficulties writing about a particular topic or to make a specific point.  You may know generally what you want to say, but can't think of an interesting or compelling way to write it. Or you may have written a long, rambling narrative that must be shortened considerably to fit within a required word limit (an abstract, for example).  This is where imposing a restriction might jump-start your creative juices.  

For example, you may want to convey the idea that your experimental approach was critical to uncovering an important insight...that a different approach, perhaps one that has been routinely used, would have failed.  You are having difficulty coming up with a good sentence to capture this idea.  You can't even think of how to begin such a sentence.  Let's say that we set a restriction on the sentence so that it must begin with the phrase, "had we".  Now we have not only the first two words of the sentence, but they impose a structure that fits the contrasting ideas or outcomes that you wish to convey: 

"Had we only compared the growth responses of Species A and B grown separately, without also examining their growth in mixture, we would have incorrectly concluded that the treatment favored the growth of Species A and failed to recognize that competition from Species B could prevent Species A from benefiting from the treatment."   

Now you have a fairly good, although complex, sentence that describes your approach and simultaneously explains why your choice was the superior one in this study (and hints at why previous work perhaps has failed).  You may want to further revise this sentence or even change it completely, but the exercise has forced you to get the basic points written out and structured so that they are coordinated and positioned in relation to each other within the sentence.  

Obviously, you cannot afford to apply this restriction method to every sentence you write.  What I'm suggesting is that it is a way to stimulate creativity at points where you have drawn a blank in your writing.  The next time you find yourself staring at the page and thinking you can't imagine how to write about some idea, try this method and see if it helps.  

Back to the Future

We are discussing sentences and how to write better ones (see previous posts).

An interesting and useful type of sentence is one that covers several time zones: past, present, and future.  The quote from the movie, Back to the Future, is written in this form.  It takes the listener from the past (last night's visit from Darth Vader) to future consequences (date with Lorraine vs. brain melting).  Here are a few more fictional examples I made up to illustrate how this sentence form can work to connect thoughts or events happening at different points in time:

 -Having spent all of her life surrounded by modern comforts, she gazed in despair at the rickety outhouse at the end of a gap-toothed pier anticipating the noxious odors within and the indignities awaiting her when she finally would be forced to make use of the facility.

 -He thought about last night and what happened as he drove his car, now slightly dented and stained, to his office where he would pretend to be his usual carefree self, laughing at the boss’s jokes and flirting with the female staff.

 -I was already halfway out the door to get the mail when I spotted the rock, a chunk of gneiss by the looks of it, sitting forlornly in the middle of the living room floor and only belatedly noted the broken window.

 -After struggling to reach the top of the rise, she paused to take in the expansive vista of high desert and distant peaks tinged pink by the setting sun and then again wondered if she would find the child in time.

 In each case, the sentence takes us from a point in the past, through the present, and into the future.  They generate curiosity and anticipation in the reader.  As first sentences in a story, they would stimulate the desire to read on and discover what happens next.  Can we use this form in scientific writing?  Yes.  In fact, I think most of us have used it at one time or another, but never really contemplated what we were doing.  Here’s a typical example:

 After preconditioning the seedlings for two weeks to ambient conditions in the growth facility, we applied the flooding treatments, which were designed to simulate future sea-level rise scenarios predicted for the end of the 21^st century.

Here’s another fictional example that might appear in an abstract or as an opening statement in the introduction:

 To resolve the longstanding controversy surrounding [an important topic], we conducted a meta-analysis of 56 key studies and discovered a methodological pattern explaining 84 % of the conflicting data, an insight that led us to develop a new experimental protocol for future studies.

If I read the above sentence referring to my primary topic of research, wild horses couldn’t tear me away from that paper.

In the last post, I pointed out that the first line in Darwin's treatise, On the Origin of Species, was written in this time-traveling form:

"When on board H.M.S. ‘Beagle,’ as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent.”  

This sentence starts the reader in Darwin's past (his journey on the Beagle) and then makes reference to the distant past (geological) and how it relates to the present situation. 

This sentence type is clearly useful, but requires some practice to be able to implement successfully (in both fiction and in technical writing).  You can practice writing such sentences by making up a few lines, using a fictional or real situation. It's easiest if you restrict yourself to a specific opening word or phrase to begin, such as "after observing" or "had we".  For example: "After observing the response under control conditions for one hour, we then proceeded to apply the experimental treatments."  Another example: "Had we not included soil controls, our conclusions would have been different." Later, you can try a more complicated sentence that spans past, present, and future.  The point of such an exercise is that when you sit down to write your next paper, this form will be in your repertoire.  Practicing sentence forms is comparable to practicing scales as a musician.  If you practice writing different sentence forms, you will be able to automatically apply those forms to your writing with little effort.  An advantage of this sentence form is that it forces you to connect several events (separated in time) in a single sentence instead of a long paragraph.  If done well, it can not only save space, but can lead to an elegant and concise summary.

Photo Credit: Still image from Back to the Future, Universal Pictures. 

Sentences and Origins

We've been discussing first sentences in works of literature and science.  In the last post, I looked at some recent articles in the journal, Nature.  How about first lines in some famous scientific works?  Here’s the first sentence in Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species:

“When on board H.M.S. ‘Beagle,’ as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent.” 

I think this is an interesting opening sentence that not only tells us something about what is to come, but also manages to convey a sense of humility by the author in venturing his insights about the topic, while at the same time subtly establishes his credentials.  He doesn’t start off by making some pompous declaration about the importance of his work or boldly stating that he’s an expert about to expound a new theory.  Instead, he basically says that during his travels he noticed unique patterns that intrigued him and led to an important insight. Notice that, in describing the process whereby he acquired his insight, he says he was “much struck”.  That phrase says a lot and conveys the impression that these patterns were so compelling that he could not help but notice them (and that the reader may also become "struck" by them).  Then Darwin uses the term “facts” to describe his observations about the “distribution” of the organisms he observed.  That terminology subtly interjects the idea that what he’s about to describe is not mere speculation, but a conclusive truth. He also provides some history about how he came by the knowledge he’s about to describe (serving as a naturalist onboard the Beagle), which tells the reader that he’s no armchair theorist without field experience.  He goes on in the rest of the introduction to establish his credentials as a naturalist and author, but this beginning sentence does all that quite succinctly.  

Darwin is a bit vague, perhaps deliberately so, in the use of the term, “inhabitants” in the opening sentence.  Victorian reviewer, Sir Richard Owen, wonders if Darwin means human inhabitants: “we suppose he means aboriginal inhabitants, of South America, or in their distribution on that continent, to have suggested to any mind that man might be a transmuted ape, or to throw any light on the origin of the human or other species?” As one reads on, it is clear that Darwin meant plant and animal inhabitants of South America.  He uses the term “organic beings” and “innumerable species” a few paragraphs later and ultimately explains that he was referring to the distribution of certain animal species (rheas, Galapagos tortoises).  I’ve not found anything that explains why Darwin might have used the term inhabitant without being more specific, but then he may have thought it would soon be obvious which inhabitants he was talking about.  Owen, who was one of the main reviewers of this work, was a critic of the mechanism of evolution espoused by Darwin and seemed to be looking for points to criticize, particularly in relation to human origins. 

Here’s the second sentence:

“These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species –that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers.”

Darwin continues his tone of humility, saying that the facts “seemed” to him to reveal something about a “mystery of mysteries” and then acknowledges someone else as the source of that terminology.  This sentence announces that what he’s writing about is a deeply important topic.  Using the term, “mystery of mysteries” tells the reader that what she’s about to learn is a secret of nature, perhaps a truth that heretofore has been unknowable except by divine revelation.  Certainly a puzzle requiring detailed investigation and discovery to unravel.  Darwin names this mystery: the origin of species, which reflects back on the title of the work.

He repeats the term “facts”, which again drives home the point that the observations he’s about to describe are concrete and unassailable.  

Darwin’s lead sentence has an interesting structure, one that traverses time zones both in describing his personal history as well as the observations upon which his work is based.  He refers to his time on the Beagle, a past event.  He explicitly links past and present in the sentence (present to the past inhabitants) and then refers to "geological relations", further suggesting that his “facts” cover a huge time span in history, foreshadowing the concept of evolution.  

 In the next post, I will explore this "time traveling" type of sentence a bit more.

First Impressions

We are talking about sentences and how to write good ones, especially first sentences.  In the last post, I gave several examples of famous first lines in literature and promised to examine examples from the scientific literature.

I looked up a few papers in the journal Nature to see how their opening sentences were constructed.  Here are a few at random from the most recent issue (first line of abstract with citations removed):

 “Most known extrasolar planets (exoplanets) have been discovered using the radial velocity or transit methods.”

 “Angelman syndrome is a severe neurodevelopmental disorder caused by deletion or mutation of the maternal allele of the ubiquitin protein ligase E3A (UBE3A).”

 “A conserved protein from enteropathogenic Escherichia coli, NleE, inhibits innate immune defence against infection by disrupting the NF-κB signalling pathway through methylation of ubiquitin-chain sensing proteins.”

 “Insights into the rotary mechanism of the Thermus thermophilus ATP synthase are obtained using electron cryomicroscopy to determine its three-dimensional structure calculated to subnanometre resolution.”

 “In 1969, a palaeontologist proposed that theropod dinosaurs used their tails as dynamic stabilizers during rapid or irregular movements, contributing to their depiction as active and agile predators.”

 I don’t know about you, but from the list above, I would be most likely to select the last one to read.  Based on that first sentence, I would expect this paper to (1) be interesting, (2) tell a good story, and (3) be written in such a way as to be understandable by someone unfamiliar with the topic.

 Here is the second sentence of the abstract:

 “Since then the inertia of swinging appendages has been implicated in stabilizing human walking, aiding acrobatic manoeuvres by primates and rodents, and enabling cats to balance on branches.”

 And here is the last sentence of the abstract:

 “Leaping lizards show that inertial control of body attitude can advance our understanding of appendage evolution and provide biological inspiration for the next generation of manoeuvrable search-and-rescue robots.”

 The title of this paper is, not surprisingly, intriguing and also concisely conveys what it is all about: “Tail-assisted pitch control in lizards, robots and dinosaurs”.  Both the title and the first sentence were written with full comprehension of what this work is all about and its broader significance (robot design).  They even got in some alliteration and reference to a comic book exclamation (leaping lizards!). 

 One of the interesting aspects of good first sentences is that they can convey an enormous amount of information about a topic in a very short space or they can stimulate curiosity or anticipation with just a few choice words.  That is what a novelist or a scientist writing a journal article may strive for.
 
Do you have any favorite first lines in scientific papers? Do you notice first sentences; do they grab your attention or leave you uninspired?

In the next post, I'll take a look at a famous scientific treatise and how the first line is structured.

Photo by DrDoyenne

A Good Sentence Is Hard To Find

It’s time for another series.  For this one, I’d like to focus again on writing but will narrow the focus to sentences—their form and content.  Now don't roll your eyes.  I promise this will be an interesting and informative exercise.  Many of us don’t really think a lot about sentences.  We string them together and hope they tell a good story.  However, sentences are the basic building blocks of our writing and deserve some in-depth scrutiny. 

I began thinking about sentences recently when I came across a book called, appropriately, “How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One”, by Stanley Fish.  Now, I’m not recommending that you run out to your local bookstore (or to Amazon) and buy this book.  Only those people who are really fascinated with sentence structure will enjoy this book.  If you are, however, one of those people who enjoys collecting and analyzing famous first sentences in literary works, for example, then this book is for you (admittedly, I’m one of these). 

For everyone else, there are a few nuggets in this book that I will try to condense and explain in this and later posts. 

Another caveat: although I will attempt to relate these insights about sentences to technical science writing, I’ll be using a lot of literary examples.  Also, because of the restricted style of scientific writing, some of the ideas I will cover may be difficult (or unwise) to implement in your technical papers.  However, the concepts and exercises may prove useful for developing general writing skills.  Even if you have no plans to write a novel any time soon, you may find the examples interesting and even applicable to writing a nontechnical science article, for instance, or letters of inquiry (for a job application), letters of recommendation, or descriptions of your research interests or accomplishments in your CV. 

So let’s get started. 

One of the first points I’ll be making is definitely applicable to scientific writing.  Above, I mentioned famous first lines in literature and will use this example to make the first point.  When we read a literary work that begins with a beautifully constructed, witty, or intriguing sentence, especially one that takes your breath away, we know that we are in the hands of a master and sink back into our chairs ready to savor what comes next. 

Everyone recognizes the first sentence of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

That sentence, with its series of contrasting concepts, perfectly foreshadows what is to come in the telling of a story of parallel lives in London and Paris.  One might argue that it’s not the best opening sentence in literature, but it certainly makes an indelible first impression and indicates that the author is about to unfurl an interesting story.

How about a few more, but lesser known, first sentences? Here are some by female authors:

They shoot the white girl first. - Toni Morrison, Paradise (1998)

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. - Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (1911)

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. - Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948)

He - for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it - was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. - Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928)

In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together. - Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

The doctor’s waiting room, which was very small, was almost full when the Turpins entered and Mrs. Turpin, who was very large, made it look even smaller by her presence. – Flannery O’Connor, Revelation (1965)

We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. - Louise Erdrich, Tracks (1988)

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. - George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872)

Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person. - Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups (2001)

The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. – Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard To Find (1953)

You’ll notice I included two by one of my favorite authors, Flannery O’Connor (hence the title of this post).  In any case, the point to be taken with these examples is that first sentences, whether in a novel, a short story, or a scientific paper, are important for setting the stage for what comes after.  How many times have you sat down to read a journal article and found the opening statement to be uninteresting, uninspiring, and trite?  How often do such papers go on to surprise you with their insights?  As I’ve described in previous posts, when I do reviews of manuscripts, I pay close attention to the title, the abstract, and the first (and closing) sentence of the paper.  If they are poorly written, with ambiguous wording or other problems, then I anticipate that the remainder of the manuscript is going to be torture to read.  And it will take a dramatic turnaround in the writing (or very important data) to change that initial impression. 

Given the competition for space in journals, authors cannot ignore the fact that they’ve got to not only have good data, they must write memorable papers—and if they are smart, they will start off with a compelling sentence. 

In the next post, I’ll take a look at some first sentences in scientific papers.