{"id":4151,"date":"2019-09-27T12:57:14","date_gmt":"2019-09-27T03:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/163.180.4.222\/lab\/?p=4151"},"modified":"2019-09-27T12:57:14","modified_gmt":"2019-09-27T03:57:14","slug":"novelist-cormac-mccarthys-tips-on-how-to-write-a-great-science-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biochemistry.khu.ac.kr\/lab\/?p=4151","title":{"rendered":"Novelist Cormac McCarthy\u2019s tips on how to write a great science paper"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h5>The Pulitzer prizewinner shares his advice for pleasing readers, editors and yourself.<\/h5>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"article__body serif cleared\">\n<figure class=\"figure\">\n<div class=\"embed intensity--high\">\n<div class=\"embed intensity--high\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure__image\" src=\"https:\/\/media.nature.com\/w800\/magazine-assets\/d41586-019-02918-5\/d41586-019-02918-5_17121762.jpg\" alt=\"JOSH BROLIN, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, 2007\" data-src=\"\/\/media.nature.com\/w800\/magazine-assets\/d41586-019-02918-5\/d41586-019-02918-5_17121762.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption>\n<p class=\"figure__caption sans-serif\"><span class=\"mr10\">Actor Josh Brolin as Llewelyn Moss in the 2007 film adaptation of\u00a0<i>No Country for Old Men<\/i>, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy.<\/span>Credit: Allstar Picture Library\/Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>For the past two decades, Cormac McCarthy \u2014 whose ten novels include\u00a0<i>The Road<\/i>,\u00a0<i>No Country for Old Men<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>Blood Meridian<\/i>\u00a0\u2014 has provided extensive editing to numerous faculty members and postdocs at the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) in New Mexico. He has helped to edit works by scientists such as Harvard University\u2019s first tenured female theoretical physicist, Lisa Randall, and physicist Geoffrey West, who authored the popular-science book\u00a0<i>Scale<\/i>.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"recommended pull pull--left sans-serif\" data-label=\"Related\"><\/aside>\n<p>Van Savage, a theoretical biologist and ecologist, first met McCarthy in 2000, and they overlapped at the SFI for about four years while Savage was a graduate student and then a postdoc. Savage has received invaluable editing advice from McCarthy on several science papers published over the past 20 years. While on sabbatical at the SFI during the winter of 2018, Savage had lively weekly lunches with McCarthy. They worked to condense McCarthy\u2019s advice to its most essential points so that it could be shared with everyone. These pieces of advice were combined with thoughts from evolutionary biologist Pamela Yeh and are presented here. McCarthy\u2019s most important tip is to keep it simple while telling a coherent, compelling story. The following are more of McCarthy\u2019s words of wisdom, as told by Savage and Yeh.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Use minimalism to achieve clarity. While you are writing, ask yourself: is it possible to preserve my original message without that punctuation mark, that word, that sentence, that paragraph or that section? Remove extra words or commas whenever you can.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Decide on your paper\u2019s theme and two or three points you want every reader to remember. This theme and these points form the single thread that runs through your piece. The words, sentences, paragraphs and sections are the needlework that holds it together. If something isn\u2019t needed to help the reader to understand the main theme, omit it.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Limit each paragraph to a single message. A single sentence can be a paragraph. Each paragraph should explore that message by first asking a question and then progressing to an idea, and sometimes to an answer. It\u2019s also perfectly fine to raise questions in a paragraph and leave them unanswered.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Keep sentences short, simply constructed and direct. Concise, clear sentences work well for scientific explanations. Minimize clauses, compound sentences and transition words \u2014 such as \u2018however\u2019 or \u2018thus\u2019 \u2014 so that the reader can focus on the main message.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Don\u2019t slow the reader down. Avoid footnotes because they break the flow of thoughts and send your eyes darting back and forth while your hands are turning pages or clicking on links. Try to avoid jargon, buzzwords or overly technical language. And don\u2019t use the same word repeatedly \u2014 it\u2019s boring.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Don\u2019t over-elaborate. Only use an adjective if it\u2019s relevant. Your paper is not a dialogue with the readers\u2019 potential questions, so don\u2019t go overboard anticipating them. Don\u2019t say the same thing in three different ways in any single section. Don\u2019t say both \u2018elucidate\u2019 and \u2018elaborate\u2019. Just choose one, or you risk that your readers will give up.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 And don\u2019t worry too much about readers who want to find a way to argue about every tangential point and list all possible qualifications for every statement. Just enjoy writing.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"recommended pull pull--left sans-serif\" data-label=\"Related\"><\/aside>\n<p>\u2022 With regard to grammar, spoken language and common sense are generally better guides for a first draft than rule books. It\u2019s more important to be understood than it is to form a grammatically perfect sentence.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Commas denote a pause in speaking. The phrase \u201cIn contrast\u201d at the start of a sentence needs a comma to emphasize that the sentence is distinguished from the previous one, not to distinguish the first two words of the sentence from the rest of the sentence. Speak the sentence aloud to find pauses.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Dashes should emphasize the clauses you consider most important \u2014 without using bold or italics \u2014 and not only for defining terms. (Parentheses can present clauses more quietly and gently than commas.) Don\u2019t lean on semicolons as a crutch to join loosely linked ideas. This only encourages bad writing. You can occasionally use contractions such as isn\u2019t, don\u2019t, it\u2019s and shouldn\u2019t. Don\u2019t be overly formal. And don\u2019t use exclamation marks to call attention to the significance of a point. You could say \u2018surprisingly\u2019 or \u2018intriguingly\u2019 instead, but don\u2019t overdo it. Use these words only once or twice per paper.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Inject questions and less-formal language to break up tone and maintain a friendly feeling. Colloquial expressions can be good for this, but they shouldn\u2019t be too narrowly tied to a region. Similarly, use a personal tone because it can help to engage a reader. Impersonal, passive text doesn\u2019t fool anyone into thinking you\u2019re being objective: \u201cEarth is the centre of this Solar System\u201d isn\u2019t any more objective or factual than \u201cWe are at the centre of our Solar System.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Choose concrete language and examples. If you must talk about arbitrary colours of an abstract sphere, it\u2019s more gripping to speak of this sphere as a red balloon or a blue billiard ball.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Avoid placing equations in the middle of sentences. Mathematics is not the same as English, and we shouldn\u2019t pretend it is. To separate equations from text, you can use line breaks, white space, supplementary sections, intuitive notation and clear explanations of how to translate from assumptions to equations and back to results.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 When you think you\u2019re done, read your work aloud to yourself or a friend. Find a good editor you can trust and who will spend real time and thought on your work. Try to make life as easy as possible for your editing friends. Number pages and double space.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 After all this, send your work to the journal editors. Try not to think about the paper until the reviewers and editors come back with their own perspectives. When this happens, it\u2019s often useful to heed Rudyard Kipling\u2019s advice: \u201cTrust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too.\u201d Change text where useful, and where not, politely explain why you\u2019re keeping your original formulation.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 And don\u2019t rant to editors about the Oxford comma, the correct usage of \u2018significantly\u2019 or the choice of \u2018that\u2019 versus \u2018which\u2019. Journals set their own rules for style and sections. You won\u2019t get exceptions.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Finally, try to write the best version of your paper: the one that you like. You can\u2019t please an anonymous reader, but you should be able to please yourself. Your paper \u2014 you hope \u2014 is for posterity. Remember how you first read the papers that inspired you while you enjoy the process of writing your own.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When you make your writing more lively and easier to understand, people will want to invest their time in reading your work. And whether we are junior scientists or world-famous novelists, that\u2019s what we all want, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"emphasis\">doi: 10.1038\/d41586-019-02918-5<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>(\uc6d0\ubb38: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-019-02918-5?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nature%2Frss%2Fcurrent+%28Nature+-+Issue%29\">\uc5ec\uae30<\/a>\ub97c \ud074\ub9ad\ud558\uc138\uc694~)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; The Pulitzer prizewinner shares his advice for pleasing readers, editors and yourself. &nbsp; &nbsp; Actor Josh Brolin as Llewelyn Moss in the 2007<a href=\"https:\/\/biochemistry.khu.ac.kr\/lab\/?p=4151\" class=\"more-link\">(more&#8230;)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[32,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays-on-science","category-lets-do-science"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":402,"url":"https:\/\/biochemistry.khu.ac.kr\/lab\/?p=402","url_meta":{"origin":4151,"position":0},"title":"Write fiction to discover something new in your research","author":"biochemistry","date":"May 30, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 \u00a0 (\uc6d0\ubb38) \u00a0 \u00a0 Creative writing can help you to approach your science from a completely different perspective \u2014 and boost its impact, says Amanda C. 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