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Clarity First: Language in Research Articles A
s a scientist, I rely on communication by “print journalism”, rather than radio or television. The written or electronically transmitted word has an exacting capacity that conveys information and understanding. Visual images and spoken words—television and radio—are powerful at evoking learning and understanding on emotional levels and at stoking a desire for learning. But written communication is the superior way to instruct, interpret, analyze, criticize, and hypothesize about complex subjects, like science. Additionally, there is the reiteration effect: One can read and re-read to achieve a better accumulative understanding and exploit the subtleties of language to convey the uncertainties of scientific interpretations. TV “talking heads” never repeat their 15-second summaries of the state of the world in order to evoke anyone’s understanding. Our world—its politics, economics, and (even) sports—also has enormous complexity; I try to understand some of it through reading print journalism. This editorial was provoked by an editorial by S. S. Pickering in The New York Times, which stated that solving grammar problems depends “not so much on how many grammar rules I knew, but on determining the clearest, briefest way to get on to the next sentence, that is, on good syntax and common sense.” Later, he said “grammar is important, clarity is more so.” These remarks resonated with this Editor. Analytical Chemistry (and most ACS journals) has seen a steady growth in manuscripts from authors in non-Englishspeaking countries. This is good—basic chemistry has no nationality. Most of our “off-shore” authors are admirably fluent in English and in the subtleties of language needed to express the full scope of the cutting-edge research reports that they submit to this journal. The most language-demanding expressions are of uncertainty, about their own work—both experiments and interpretation—and the previous literature. Some off-shore authors have, however, limited language abilities, which has been a continuing problem for reviewers and readers. Steps taken to cope with this problem have included admoni-
tions by the Editor to have the paper edited by someone competent in English, summary editorial rejection of incomprehensible papers, and acceptance of a paper that was entrusted to the competent ACS copy editors to fix its awkward moments. The New York Times article prompted me to articulate a long-standing Analytical Chemistry attitude about language, which mirrors Pickering’s comments, namely, “grammar is important, clarity is more so.” Our editorial actions focus on clarity: what the author is saying about the existing state of knowledge (all of the relevant literature), the experiment described (what was it), the results (what were they, pre-interpretation), the interpretation (consistent with the results, or why not), and the broader implications (the impact). Whether the paper’s grammar is impeccable is not as important as clarity, which includes the aspects of uncertainty previously noted. Reviewer comments are consistent with this view; reviewers are generally critical when previous and obviously relevant literature citations are ignored in favor of the author’s own work, details that make the experiment understandable are omitted, inconsistent results and theoretical contradictions are ignored, and interpretations are excessively broad or inadequately supported by the results. I fully support these kinds of reviewer responses, which occur regardless of the authors’ nationality and, as Editor, act accordingly in accepting or rejecting papers. The English language is remarkably resilient to mishaps of grammar, while still conveying the information desired, even in the field of chemistry. Authors of Analytical Chemistry papers must nonetheless attain a level of clarity that conveys the desired information, as outlined in this editorial. We otherwise do not serve our readers well, or the science of analytical chemistry.
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