Style in the Context of Scientific Writing

“Style” is one of those terms that can mean anything or nothing at all. Robert Day defines “style” as the “personality” of a scientific manuscript. He emphasizes that each publication has its own “personality,” dictated by both the writing style used and the particular journal’s editorial requirements.

Active or Passive Voice?

Passive versus active voice in scientific writing has been a controversial issue for many years. Without any doubt, the tradition of using the passive voice in scientific reporting is firmly engraved in scientists’ brains. Many scientific communicators believe that it is inappropriate, even impolite, to use personal pronouns, such as “I” or “we.” They would prefer to say, “it was studied” rather than “I studied” or “we studied.” Note here that the passive sentence does not tell us who studied the subject in question. In his book published in 1971, John Swales states that “… passive sentences are clearer. The first reason for this is that passive sentences do not mention people. For a scientist, many references to people are unnecessary and confusing.”

Nowadays, most modern grammarians, linguists, and editors agree that the exclusive use of the passive voice is redundant. In this time and age where brevity and conciseness critically impact on review and approval of a manuscript, the active voice helps to keep messages lean and clear. Moreover, our time constraints with both the writing and reading of scientific information

call for an unambiguous language involving active verbs and personal pronouns wherever possible.

If the subject of the sentence performs the action, the sentence is in the active voice, but if the subject of the sentence is the recipient of the action, the sentence is passive.

There are two ways to make a sentence active, namely by using a subject (such as “team” in the sentence above) plus an active verb (e.g., “studied”) or by using personal pronouns (e.g. “we”). Although the active voice should be our first choice, the exclusive use of active sentences is sometimes inappropriate and often impossible. Thus, we have to find our own “healthy” ratio of passive versus active formulations.

The Verb “To Be” in Copula Formulations

“To be” acts as the main verb in sentences that do not describe any action. Although such constructions are not strictly passive, they add to the tiresome abundance of sentences containing the verb “to be.” Here are some examples of such sentences:

Overuse of Prepositions

Winston Churchill once described prepositions as an enormously versatile part of grammar, as in “What made you pick this book I didn’t want to be read to out of up for?”

Clear communication would not be possible without prepositions, but scientific writers often use them too liberally because rewording of the sentence would mean a special effort. In fact, many a writing expert would insist that the overuse of prepositions in scientific writing is the single most important cause of confused messages.

Types of Prepositions

Abundant prepositions: The data from the participants of younger age in this study were compared with those of subjects of older age by an analysis of variance.

“Healthy” ratio of prepositions: The data from the younger and older study participants were compared by an analysis of variance.

Preferred because active: We compared the data from the younger and older study participants by an analysis of variance.

Rules for Limiting Prepositions

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