The Plain Style in Scientific and Technical Writing

Abstract

The ornate style practiced before the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century too often led to obscurity and verbal games rather than clarity and the pursuit of truth. In reacting against ornateness, however, scientists developed the ideal of a plain style that is itself problematic. The writer's posture is essentially defensive; he is more concerned with what not to do than what to do in his writing. The practice of amplification, useful for audience adaptation, has been abandoned, and rhetorical devices that promote the personal touch are no longer taught. Recent experiments indicate that classroom exercises involving rhetorical devices can help promote economy and clarity, encourage more personal and aggressive writing, strengthen the idea that writing is an art, and arouse writer and reader interest. The study of stylistic devices in use before the scientific revolution can be fruitful for modern scientific and technical writing.

Herbert Spencer's Philosophy of Style: Conserving Mental Energy

“…The essay on style that Spencer wrote in his early twenties was the result of his perusal of five treatises on rhetoric: 22 What struck Spencer were the passages-scattered, not theoretically linked or properly analyzed passages, in his view-having to do with brevity, economy of expression, effective syntax, and the best choice of words and figures:…”

“…Literature is legion on the topic of plain language as a legal and sociopolitical phenomenon; for a good sampling see Steinberg's collection [21]. "Plain style," in its traditional sense, has also generated a lot of literature; for discussion of this topic with reference to scientific and technical communication, see Whitburn [22], as well as Halloran and Whitburn [23].…”

“…/ HIRST22 For more analysis of Spencer's indebtedness to these and other authors, see Denton[37] 23. Quotations from "The Philosophy of Style" are taken from the essay as it appears in Spencer's Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative[3] 24.…”

Suggestions for Grantsmanship in Ecology

“…For most of us in science, argument is far easier than theme development. Messages often get cropped as we push to be concise and clear; we can all benefit from considering rhetorical devices, such as parallelism, antithesis, and ellipsis, which add a personal flair and hold the reader's interest (see Whitburn 1978).…”