Editage Blog
Health care or healthcare? Policy makers or policymakers? Web site or website? The Oxford Dictionary of English (3rd edition, 2010) makes each a single word. Copy editors struggle with such trivial decisions every day—and often end up disagreeing with one another. Trouble is, there is no single widely accepted source, and even the same source may change its recommendation with time. The Concise Oxford Dictionary, for instance, used to hyphenate co-operation but later switched to cooperation.
The BBC reported that the sixth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (6th edition, 2007) ‘knocked the hyphens out of 16,000 words, many of them two-word compound nouns. Fig-leaf is now fig leaf, pot-belly is now pot belly, pigeon-hole has finally achieved one word status as pigeonhole and leap-frog is feeling whole again as leapfrog.’
As the above quote illustrates, a hyphenated word can change in either direction: it can lose the hyphen altogether to become one word (co-operation to cooperation) or the hyphen may be replaced with a space, the result being two separate words (ice-cream to ice cream).
As a researcher, you can help by being consistent: make your choice and stick to it; the copy editor can always use the Find and Replace routine if your choice happens to be different from that preferred by the journal’s publisher.
["Publish and prosper" is a series of posts about tips for researchers whose first language is not English but who submit papers to journals published in English. The series touches upon not only writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and style) but everything else relevant to publishing research papers that journal editors wish their authors knew.]
Tables are compact sources of information because they avoid repetition; a table that shows the average annual precipitation of a dozen cities, for example, replaces at least a dozen such sentences as ‘The average annual precipitation in Tokyo is * mm’; ‘The average annual precipitation in Seoul is * mm’; and so on. And you could construct even more sentences if you introduce comparisons: ‘City Xyz gets more precipitation than city Abc.’
Imagine, however, that the table mentioned above presents data for only two cities: it is no longer a compact source and can be replaced with a single sentence, namely ‘Average annual precipitation in Xyz and Abc cities is * mm and * mm respectively.’ Because a typical table in a research paper has to be numbered, given a title, and have at least some ‘furniture’ in the form of horizontal lines, it is important to keep in mind whether the table is really making efficient use of space—whether its information density justifies its form.
The same logic applies to charts, pie charts being the most common ‘offenders’ in this respect: imagine a pie chart with only two or three segments and occupying nearly half a page. Such charts waste space, a commodity increasingly scarce in the competitive world of journal publishing.
["Publish and prosper" is a series of posts about tips for researchers whose first language is not English but who submit papers to journals published in English. The series touches upon not only writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and style) but everything else relevant to publishing research papers that journal editors wish their authors knew.]
Although this blog has occasionally featured posts on how to search the Internet more efficiently, advice on that topic from Google is ‘straight from the horse’s mouth’ (an expression that is used for information from someone who has direct knowledge of it).
A few months ago, Google conducted a master class on search techniques titled ‘Power searching with Google’ [1], which consisted of six sessions or topics, namely Introduction, Interpreting results, Advanced techniques, Finding facts faster, Checking your facts, and Putting it all together. The lessons and the supplementary material are available on the website.
Of particular interest is the power of searching for images: just as you can search for specific file types (pdf, doc, docx, ppt, and so on), you can search for images with a specific predominant colour. Another feature, which may appeal to many plant scientists, especially taxonomists, is the facility to upload an image and search for images similar to the uploaded image—a handy feature indeed if you are trying to identify a plant.
One other useful shortcut is Ctrl + f (for users of Windows), which brings up a search box within a web page retrieved by the regular search box: you can then type a word or a phrase in the second search box to find each instance of that word or phrase within the web page (a feature similar to the ‘Find’ feature in Word or other word-processing packages).
Happy searching!
[1] http://www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com/course
["Publish and prosper" is a series of posts about tips for researchers whose first language is not English but who submit papers to journals published in English. The series touches upon not only writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and style) but everything else relevant to publishing research papers that journal editors wish their authors knew.]
An earlier post [1] offered some tips on using the colon in punctuating a sentence and also mentioned that it is inappropriate to insert a colon between a verb and its complement; this post focuses on that common error.
As one web page [2] puts it, the colon ‘shows emphasis and, therefore, you want the reader to stop at the colon before proceeding on to whatever it is you are introducing.’ However, a colon after a verb or a preposition introduces a separation where none is required and thus disturbs the flow of words instead of helping it.
Consider the following sentences:
1. The most commonly used categories of pesticides are: insecticides, weedicides, and fungicides.
2. Greenhouse gases that are relevant to radiative forcing include: carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide.
3. The digestive system consists of: the salivary glands, mouth, oesophagus, stomach, liver, gallbladder, pancreas, small intestine, colon, and rectum.
4. The experiment on seed germination sought to: evaluate the effect, analyse the mechanism, and reduce the extent of damage.
The colon in all the above sentences is superfluous but was probably inserted because the writer associated the colon with lists. However, the difference lies in how a list is introduced: if the introductory text consists of both a verb and its complement, a colon is in order; if the introductory text consists of a verb alone, a colon is wrong. A ‘complement’ completes the verb, as in ‘The most common categories are as follows’, with ‘as follows’ serving to complete the verb ‘are’. Example (4) shows the same superfluous colon after a preposition.
The Writing Centre at the University of Ottawa illustrates the distinction with suitable examples [3] under the heading ‘When Not to Use a Colon’.
[1] http://blog.editage.com/the-colon
[2] http://lilt.ilstu.edu/golson/punctuation/colon.html
[3] www.writingcentre.uottawa.ca/hypergrammar/colon.html
["Publish and prosper" is a series of posts about tips for researchers whose first language is not English but who submit papers to journals published in English. The series touches upon not only writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and style) but everything else relevant to publishing research papers that journal editors wish their authors knew.]
Since this blog claims to touch upon ‘not only writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and style) but everything else relevant to publishing research papers that journal editors wish their authors knew’, I must bring to the attention of the readers of this blog a list of top 10 editorial problems editors at the American Medical Association see in the manuscripts submitted to or accepted for publication by the AMA [1]. The committee of editors who compiled the list of top ten problems hopes that it will help authors avoid the most common errors. I particularly noticed that the problem that topped the list was ‘not reading a journal’s instructions for authors’—a problem that also featured in a recent post in this series [2].
Here is the list, in reverse order. Please read the original post [1], which expands on each of these ten problems.
10 Missing or incomplete author forms
9 Not explaining “behind the scenes” stuff
8 Making life difficult for the copy editor
7 Common punctuation and style mistakes
6 Errors of grandiosity
5 Wacky references
4 Duplicate submission
3 Failing to protect patient identity
2 Not matching up all the data “bits”
1 Not reading a journal’s instructions for authors
[1] http://blog.amamanualofstyle.com/2012/10/19/top-10-mistakes-authors-make/
[2] http://blog.editage.com/what-do-journal-editors-want-from-authors#.UIo1V2FqOiw
["Publish and prosper" is a series of posts about tips for researchers whose first language is not English but who submit papers to journals published in English. The series touches upon not only writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and style) but everything else relevant to publishing research papers that journal editors wish their authors knew.]
Although all the three terms – abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms – are part of an author’s repertoire, their role is not only to help readers but also to test them, for nothing marks a newbie to a conversation (whether it is SMS chatter, techie talk, or an academic discourse) as much as asking to spell out such terms.
As a category, abbreviations subsume both acronyms and initialisms: when initials combine to form a pronounceable word ("laser" and "scuba," for example), the word formed is termed an acronym; when the initials remain apart and have to be pronounced letter by letter ("rpm" and "pdf," for example), they are initialisms. And forms such as kg and mm that make up the SI system (Système International d’Unités) are not abbreviations at all but symbols; they neither form plurals nor take the dot as is typical of most abbreviations. Then there are contractions – "Dr" for "doctor" and "dept" for "department" – in which the first and the last letters retain their original positions in the abbreviated versions. British publishers typically dispense with the dot in contractions whereas American publishers do not. However, in both styles, the dot is usually retained when the abbreviated form can be mistaken for a normal word, as in "no." for "number," "in." for "inch," and "col." for "colonel," or to distinguish between two identical forms, as in "St" for "saint" and "St." for "street."
Then there are the true aliens with no lineage, such as "Ms "(UK) or "Ms." (USA), "OK," and the S in "Harry S. Truman," all of which look as though they are abbreviations but have no fully-spelt-out and universally-agreed-upon counterparts.
Ostensibly, abbreviations save space. Indeed, the decision to spell out journal titles in full in reference lists has serious implications for space—but may well save many hours spent in standardizing the abbreviations and make it easier for readers to trace the journals. Dictionaries and many reference works, if they have to manage their bulk, cannot avoid abbreviations. Personal computers, followed by texting and chatting, spawned dozens of abbreviations because they save not just space but effort as well. After all, if a text message cannot be longer than 160 characters and a tweet no more than 140 characters, abbreviations have to be the norm, all the more so since messages have to be generated not with the spacious QWERTY keyboard but with a keypad with only a dozen keys or so.
Abbreviations also speed up reading not only because they fill less space but also because familiar abbreviations trigger a mental image of the relevant concept directly; in fact, more readers will fumble over "deoxyribonucleic acid" or "dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane" than over "DNA" or "DDT," over "opere citato" or "exempli gratia" than over "op. cit." or "e.g.," and over "carbon copy" or "blind carbon copy" than over "cc" or "bcc."
Whereas abbreviations are merely efficient, acronyms often reflect the origin and evolution of a concept: they begin life as initialisms – a toddler’s first steps or an immigrant’s early struggles – and, over time, take their place as fully independent words thoroughly assimilated into the language and community—the "lasers," "sonars," and "scubas" of the world.
For the copy editor, abbreviations can be a minefield and demand care in handling. It is not without reason that CMOS devotes 41 pages to discuss the topic. Here is an illustrative list of questions that a copy editor is confronted with when dealing with abbreviations.
• Should I use the abbreviation or spell it out?
• Which comes first, the abbreviation or the full version?
• Once explained, should I use the abbreviated form throughout, or only within a chapter?
• Should I set it in caps, uppercase and lowercase, or lowercase? If caps, should I use small caps? Should either be letter-spaced?
• Do some acronyms take the definite article?
• Can I begin a sentence with an abbreviation?
A comprehensive guide addresses all these queries and more, but it means that rather than searching for iron-clad rules in these matters, it is important to realize that many aspects of abbreviations are matters of style (for instance, APA style, followed not only by the American Psychological Association but by many other publishers in the humanities, does not abbreviate "day" and "year" and abbreviates "hour" to "hr." whereas the Council of Science Editors’ Scientific Style and Format abbreviates all the three words and prescribes d for "day," y for "year," and h for "hour").
Abbreviations thus save space and the reader’s time and convey the tone of writing. However, we should not overlook the role of abbreviations in signalling group identity—for example, "CMOS" is clearly "Chicago Manual of Style" to copyeditors but "complementary metal-oxide semiconductor" to chemistry researchers.
["Publish and prosper" is a series of posts about tips for researchers whose first language is not English but who submit papers to journals published in English. The series touches upon not only writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and style) but everything else relevant to publishing research papers that journal editors wish their authors knew.]
If we consider the editor and the matter being edited as sharing a relationship, substantive editing implies that the two are close friends whereas copyediting or technical editing implies a formal relationship between office colleagues or between a customer and a service provider. The difference is all about the extent of involvement: substantive editing helps shape the manuscript so that it is a better product for its intended use; copyediting merely makes sure that the manuscript is free of errors and easier to process, whether for typesetting, coding, or even printing.
Substantive editing, which is concerned with the substance of the matter being edited, requires helicopter vision: the editor should have a broad overview of the matter to be edited and be able to see how different parts of it fit together, whereas a copyeditor can plunge into the manuscript straightaway and begin working on it sentence by sentence. Substantive editing also requires familiarity with the subject matter of the document being edited, its purpose, and its intended audience. Copyediting, on the other hand, is concerned with the exact words in which that subject matter is couched, including spelling, grammar, punctuation, style, and usage.
Van Buren and Buehler [1] elaborate nine levels of edit, with substantive editing representing the highest level, and the University of Chicago Press [2] describes substantive editing as dealing with ‘the organization and presentation of content.’ Einsohn [3, p. 11] explains the difference in a concise paragraph: ‘Although copyeditors are expected to make simple revisions to smooth awkward passages, copyeditors do not have license to rewrite text line by line. Making such wholesale revisions to the text is called substantive editing or content editing [emphasis in the original].’
A more concrete way to understand the difference between substantive editing and copyediting is to imagine the two types of editors at work: the one engaged in substantive editing may well begin the process reclining in an armchair, equipped with no more than a pencil and perhaps a pad of sticky notes, whereas the one engaged in copyediting will be a picture of concentration, reading the text most probably off a computer’s monitor, and ready to make many small changes to the text, a style guide and a dictionary ready to hand.
An even more concrete way to distinguish substantive editing from technical editing is to examine the edited manuscript: a copyedited manuscript will be dotted with many small changes and minor queries to the author but will seldom show text shifted even within a paragraph, let alone across paragraphs; substantive editing, on the other hand, will be visible by directions to move blocks of text across sections or even across chapters, large-scale deletions and additions, and queries to the author about the logic and organization of the text.
Schultz [4, p. 63] provides a simple diagram, referred to as the writing/editing funnel, in which organization and paragraphs represent the top of the funnel and words, punctuation, grammar, etc. represent the narrow end—substantive editing is concerned with the top part whereas copyediting focuses on the narrow end.
Although this essay treats technical editing as a synonym for copyediting, technical editing is sometimes used to refer to those aspects of copyediting that require greater familiarity with subject matter; indeed, Schultz [4, pp. 8–9] explains that copyeditors ‘correct grammar and style of the text, whereas technical editors review the scientific meaning of sentences, abbreviations, symbols, and terminology, as well as the suitability of the abstract and technical aspects of the layout (e.g., equations, tables, figures).’ Another common interpretation of the term ‘technical editing’ is editing that requires familiarity with technical aspects not of the subject matter of the manuscript but of the process of typesetting and publishing and requires technical editors to mark different levels of headings, check whether links if any are current, ascertain whether illustrations if any are in the right format and suitable for reproduction, and so on.
In practice, editing is a continuum with proofreading at one end and developmental editing at the other; the line between copyediting and substantive editing is thin and blurry, and changes with the circumstances associated with any single editing assignment.
[1] Van Buren R and Buehler M F. 1980. The Levels of Edit, 2nd edn. Pasadena, California: Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 34 pp. <www.technical-expressions.com/learn2edit/levels-of-edit/levels_of_edit.pdf >
[2] University of Chicago Press. 2010. The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1026 pp.
[3] Einsohn A. 2006. The Copyeditor’s Handbook: a guide to book publishing and corporate communications. 2nd edn. Berkeley: University of California Press. 560 pp.
[4] Schultz D. 2009. Eloquent Science: a practical guide to becoming a better writer, speaker, and atmospheric scientist. Boson, Massachusetts: American Meteorological Society. 412 pp.
["Publish and prosper" is a series of posts about tips for researchers whose first language is not English but who submit papers to journals published in English. The series touches upon not only writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and style) but everything else relevant to publishing research papers that journal editors wish their authors knew.]
The last blog post in this series dealt with posing questions and answering them [1]. Describing events in the order in which they occurred is at the heart of telling stories; such chronological sequences are important to effective explanatory writing too. The sequences could also be of other kinds: for example, you can use spatial sequences, describing events at a number of locations ordered along the east–west axis; you can use sequences based on magnitude, starting from the cell and going on through tissues, organs, and systems. Whichever sequence you use, make the sequence explicit: tell your readers that you are going to follow the chronological sequence or the temporal sequence, or whatever. If necessary, use such signalling words as first, secondly, and so on.
Here is an example from Avery Gilbert explaining how gas chromatography works, from his book What the Nose Knows (which was shortlisted for the Royal Society prize for the best-written science book) [2].
“As a first step [italics added], the sample to be analysed is injected into the coil, where it is absorbed into the polymer coat. The coil sits in a little oven, which is heated in pre-programmed steps over the course of two minutes to two hours, depending on the set-up. The process is orderly: each type of molecule evaporates and enters the gas stream at a specific temperature and emerges from the other end of the coil in a burst roughly 2 seconds long. The amount of material in each burst shows up as a peak in a graph—the more the molecules, the taller the peak. A pure sample of a single chemical yields a single peak: a complex mixture produces a series of peaks, varying in height, representing the amounts of different constituents of the mixture.”
[1] http://blog.editage.com/tactics-for-explanatory-writing-4
[2] Gilbert A. 2008. What the Nose Knows: the science of scent in everyday life. New York: Random House. 304 pp.
["Publish and prosper" is a series of posts about tips for researchers whose first language is not English but who submit papers to journals published in English. The series touches upon not only writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and style) but everything else relevant to publishing research papers that journal editors wish their authors knew.]
The Nobel Prize is the highest form of recognition any scientist can hope to receive. It’s the world’s most prestigious award and the ideal culmination of years of effort toward the noble goal of furthering science for the development of mankind.
When Alfred Nobel established the Nobel Prizes in his will in 1895, he specified the areas of work in which they should be awarded, namely, Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. Even today, over a hundred years later, the Nobel Prize is awarded in these categories, as designed by the inventor of the prize. The only change in categories has been the introduction of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1969.
But the world has changed and science has evolved tremendously since 1895. Researchers have spent much of the last century developing specialized and sub-specialized fields of study, and now it has become clear that these sub-specializations are not independent of each other but closely related: The physics of atoms and molecules determines the chemical properties of substances; the chemical properties of substances determine their biological activity; their biological activity determines how they will be used in medicine; and so on.
Some of the greatest scientific discoveries have been achieved through collaboration between disciplines. Watson (a physicist) and Crick (a biologist) together discovered the structure of DNA. Some present-day examples of collaborative efforts toward scientific breakthroughs are the ENCODE project for human genome sequencing, and the ATLAS collaboration that led to the discovery of the Higgs-like boson. These projects involved very large international teams that worked together over decades. In fact, published papers documenting the findings of the ATLAS collaboration list author names that run into many pages!
So given how science and research has evolved globally, is the Nobel Prize outdated? Except for the prize for Peace, which can be awarded to organizations, all other Nobel Prizes are awarded only to individuals. Further, there can be a maximum of three shared winners for each of the disciplines awarded. This means that for collaborative initiatives leading to discoveries that can change the world, not all collaborators can receive this great honor.
Perhaps it is time for change. With the Nobel Prize as a current hot topic of discussion, the issue of its incompatibility with multidisciplinary research has been discussed by several leading international newsletters, and some changes have been recommended. The Guardian suggests that new interdisciplinary categories, such as astrobiology, be introduced and varied annually, as research trends dictate. Scientific American proposes awarding organizations as well as individuals, or increasing the maximum number of awardees.
Whatever be the way forward, it is clear that the trend toward multidisciplinary studies should be acknowledged and encouraged. After all, Alfred Nobel was himself a chemist, a physicist, an engineer, and an inventor.
This blog probably gives the impression that submitting research papers to journals and getting them published are orderly processes. The reality is of course different. In his book The Double Helix [1], Dr. Watson, the Nobel laureate who discovered the structure of DNA, gives a behind-the-scenes account of events leading up to the publication of the famous Watson-Crick paper in Nature. Publishing research papers, despite the aura of objectivity that surrounds the process, is very much a human endeavour. The choice of the journal; the reviewers’ personalities, prejudices, and preoccupations; related work in progress elsewhere—all of these and more affect the chances of publication, and it is important to be aware of this.
Another interesting account, although of failure to get published in Nature, is that given by Luca Turin [2]. This book tells a story of a paper that was submitted, rejected, re-submitted, reviewed by a fresh set of reviewers, and rejected once again.
A particularly good source of such stories is the website ‘Web of Stories’—a site well worth visiting. The site began as an archive of life stories told by some of the great scientists of our time. As the number of stories grew, it became obvious that some were on related topics, which gradually led to a web of connected stories. Recently, when I typed ‘publishing papers’ in the search box of the website, the site returned as many as 467 stories featuring renowned scientists from such diverse fields as biology, physics, computer science, and astronomy. The short video clips are recorded by the scientists themselves, and a transcript is provided for each clip.
[1] Watson J D. 1968. The Double Helix: a personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA. New York: Atheneum. 226 pp.
[2] Burr C. 2002. The Emperor of Scent: a true story of perfume and obsession. New York: Random House. 332 pp.
["Publish and prosper" is a series of posts about tips for researchers whose first language is not English but who submit papers to journals published in English. The series touches upon not only writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and style) but everything else relevant to publishing research papers that journal editors wish their authors knew.]
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The most meticulous study may be rejected if the Discussion is not impressive. Learn to write a Discussion that will do justice to your research.