The latest Twitter phenomenon is FakeAPStylebook, an amusing take on guidelines to proper journalistic writing. Some tips include:
- STAR WARS Episodes IV-VI are to be referred to as “The Original Trilogy.” Episodes I-III are not to be referred to at all.
- Always capitalize Satan. You don’t want to get dead goats from those people.
- The correct spelling is “Rocktober,” not “Roctober,” which is the month of giant birds.
- Replace “situation deteriorated/worsened” with “shit [just] got real.” Ex: On day three of the hostage crisis, shit got real.
Amusing enough, but I have to admit that I originally read “Fake AP Stylebook” as “Fake APS Stylebook,” as if it were the (fake) American Physical Society rather than the (fake) Associated Press that was handing out advice. After all, the real APS is quite a bit quirkier than the AP; they insist that no article title begin with “The,” and for a while there they were insisting that “Lagrangian” be spelled “Lagrangean.” (Everyone has their quirks; Nature has banned the words “paradigm” and “scenario” from its pages entirely.)
So I’m sure we can do better. Any good suggestions for improved physics style? I promise to tweet anything sufficiently amusing.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:03 pm
I propose an immediate moratorium on the use of “Cheers” as an email signoff (particularly among astronomers), which has reached epidemic proportions and is really just getting ridiculous.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:30 pm
You think Nature is quirky; I served the word “paradigm” with a restraining order so it can’t come within 100 yards of my person.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:30 pm
All submission titles should begin “Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of…”
Do not italicize Latin, such as “in vivo”, but do italicize 80s slang, such as “cowabunga” and “radical”.
Though the passive voice is often used in scientific writing, the passive-aggressive voice is preferred. Ex: “The sample was prepared according to the procedure described by Dalton et al (2002)” is not as preferable as “The sample was prepared according to the procedure described by Dalton et al (2002), though not very well, but it is assumed they were very busy and didn’t have time to go over it in detail.”
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:33 pm
I second Supernova’s remark. In my experience “Cheers” has become the signoff of choice in academia.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:42 pm
I was halfway through reading your post before I realised that “FakeAPStylebook” had nothing to do with Facebook. Oh dear. Perhaps I should read more slowly.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Not exactly on topic, but I remember someone suggesting to replace the word ‘wand’ with ‘wang’ in the Harry potter Books… example here: http://bash.org/?111338
November 3rd, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Sean, it’s an excellent blog. Can we exchange links?
November 3rd, 2009 at 4:31 pm
British authors should take pains to spell words phonetically, e.g. “Alyouminnium oxide.”
“In this letter” is often an insufficiently pompous way to remind the reader of the importance of your paper; emphasize your direct communication with the editors by adding “Dear Sir,” or “To Whom It May Concern.”
“Novel” is over-used and unclear – consider the simpler word “book” in its place.
November 3rd, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Hi,
As a Brit who has used Cheers as a goodbye greeting in person and over the phone for many years before email, I deplore the Supernova’s suggestion. You just have a prejudice against British slang. If I have to put up with a “Hi” at the top of every email then you can certainly put up with a “Cheers” at the bottom.
Cheers,
Matt
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:09 pm
When writing about sports, do not use the terms “sartorial” or “quotidian!”
To all fashion commentators, immediately stop using the term “product!”
People need to know, that when one fails the colorblindness test for a driver’s license, one can still be a racist.
From now forward, all sci-fi movies and tv series must not contain the word “STAR” in their titles
Finally, all academics need to follow the advice of Thorstein Veblen: to become a connoisseur in creditable viands of various degrees of merit, in strong beverages and trinkets, in seemly apparel and architecture, in weapons, games, dances, and narcotics!”
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Let this thread not continue on – at least at this point in time….
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Ban the use of openings of the form, “The recent work of [Famous name] has attracted much attention,” , as if that were an excuse to write another one, instead of the reverse.
Reward extreme honesty. “This paper has a good idea, but I can’t do anything with it; still, you never know, Ed Witten might see it and something good might result in that way.”
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:40 pm
“It is easy to see that…” should be replaced with “If you are smart enough, you will see that…..if not, please email author.”
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Based on a quick study of the ArXiv: “Consequently”, “therefore”, and “In view of the previous paragraph” should each be replaced by “so.”
Acronymns and abbreviations should always be spelled out in Titles. Example: X-ray … who remembers what that X stands for anyway.
Greek and other foreign alphabets should always be coverted to their English equivalents. No abbreviations!
Authors names should be listed alphabetically. If there are more than three authors, those beyond the third will be omitted.
Use passive voice for scientific communication. Example “Active galactic nuclei” -> “Galactic nuclei of minimal passivity”
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:33 pm
@Matt: I’m willing to exempt the actual Brits.
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Single author papers are not permitted to use the first person plural, except if the author is actually the Queen of England.
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:47 pm
How about these:
- A stringent and unforgiving requirement imposing a maximum of two indecipherable terms per abstract? It would be nice.* Indecipherable means not readable by fellow human beings who are educated in science at an advanced level.
- Every paper that makes use of statistical claim or underlying probability theory** in any capacity should have a warning/hazard symbol watermarked on the front. And every usage of said mathematics should be linked to a footnote (dagger symbol preferred here) or an elaborate endnote detailing the author’s understanding of what murky, murky waters he wades in, and the controversial and rather horrid nature of this field.
- It is not always clear what emotions the author is trying to communicate, and that sucks. Smileys/emoticons can help here. For e.g., “This is problematic
” can mean the problem is finally resolving some bigger issue. “This confirms X 
” means a problem is persisting. The smileys will serve as guiding points in the storyline of a paper, so we don’t have to read all of it.
Moving from style to more general regulations:
- Every paper not within the technical grasp of a good undergrad in physics/math/similar should be accompanied with a sister-paper explaining it to (at minimum) such an audience. Just to make sure the author (and the committee!) actually knows what’s going on. String theorists can of course just write an apology or something.
- All papers authored by people believing in the “multiverse” idea should be rejected. This should not hurt anyone’s feelings. In some other world, it was accepted, celebrated, and its results enshrined in patterns of solid gold on the stone walls of a temple in Venice.
(*) Note that this does not apply to the title, which can be as cryptic as necessary.
(**) With the exception of works on fundamental quantum mechanics related to uncertainty. They are the only people for whom the topic is real, not painfully approximate.
Cheers,
-A
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:11 pm
[...] Fake Style at Cosmic Variance From comments to Fake Stile [...]
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Authors should select one of “missing link”, “Rosetta stone”, or “holy grail” to describe any new object discovered.
Authors should refer to at least one dark matter model that fits any anomalous effect observed. Vague assertions that it may instead be due to pulsars or LMXBs are optional.
All data used in a published paper should be included in the paper, in an online supplement, in a publicly-accessible archive, or on hard disks in a grad student office buried under a pile of papers. Reel-to-reel tapes and 8-inch floppies are discouraged.
November 4th, 2009 at 1:21 am
From the actual style sheet of Language, the journal of the Linguistic Society of America:
“3c. Use boldface for certain forms in Oscan and Umbrian, and to distinguish Gaulish and other forms originally written in the Greek alphabet.”
Also, the journal Natural Language Semantics states very sternly, and in boldface so that you don’t miss it, that “PDF is not an acceptable file format” for submissions. This line comes right after a line where TIFF, GIF, JPEG, Excel, and Powerpoint are listed as acceptable formats.
Man, there is something wrong about my profession.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:17 am
‘Breakthrough’ is preferable to ‘result.’
A good abstract should note how much sooner the cure for cancer will be found as a result of the breakthroughs contained in the paper and estimate how many lives will be saved.
The innovative character of the paper should be emphasised by omitting misguided prior work.
It is a good idea to congratulate yourself and your coauthors in the concluding paragraphs.
Those who disagree with presented view should be clearly labeled as crackpots with the word preferably in bold, if criticism has to be included for reference use strikethrough font.
Statements of questionable validity should be preceded with ’self-evident.’
Instead of giving undue weight to individuals it is often preferable to cite scientific consensus.
Never let data stand in the way of great science.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:32 am
20, Luis:
I think it’s hard to edit PDF files.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:57 am
I once got in an argument with a collaborator (fairly well-known, but nameless in a public forum) over the correct spelling of “Lagrangian”, his argument being that “well, Phys Rev D spells it ‘Lagrangean’”. He is lucky, frankly, to be alive after that comment.
The use of “shit just got real” in a physics paper should be saved for some nasty three-loop calculation, or the moral equivalent. Anybody using it as a math pun will face consequences too terrible to type.
November 4th, 2009 at 7:48 am
I have had (rather pointless) discussions with colleagues about whether to capitalise words like Hamiltonian, Gaussian etc. As a “brit” I would replace American English by English #opens can of worms#.
Also, when speaking I tend to use cheers to mean “thanks” rather than “goodbye”. I have been cheerfully assuming that email correspondents are grateful to me for something.
November 4th, 2009 at 8:09 am
I don’t know, a nasty three-loop calculation would be more accurately described as a pimped out perturbation. Shit got real should be used as intended, e.g., “The LHC was switched on, and shit got real.”
November 4th, 2009 at 8:17 am
Personal annoyance: ban the expression ’spectacular signature’ from phenomenology papers.
As in ‘We propose a scenario in which 14TeV pp collisions lead to resonant pair production of fire-breathing unicorns. Our model has various spectacular signatures….’
November 4th, 2009 at 8:58 am
So Albion, you would prefer “shit just got complex”? Or “shit picked up a small imaginary part”? I like “throughout the process, shit remained holomorphic.”
November 4th, 2009 at 9:12 am
“Currently” can almost always be omitted.
November 4th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Open papers with gratuitous and pedantic references of dubious relevance to obscure Greek philosophers: “According to Hippon of Samos, the universe was created in a water-born conflagration, but we now know from detailed observations of large-scale CMB anisotropies…”
November 4th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
“Single author papers are not permitted to use the first person plural, except if the author is actually the Queen of England.”
Phys Rev D actually has that policy. Take a look over there to see how ridiculous that looks. “I find that…..I have computed that….” It’s like reading Facebook.
November 4th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Sentences of the ilk of “It is widely, but erroneously claimed that…”; “Some authors have maintaned that…”; “It is an apparently intuitive, but erroneous supposition that…” must be immediately followed by one of the form: “I’m looking at you, Blague, Schnortz, and Weasle.”
November 4th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Whoops, forgot to sign off with “Cheers”.
With me, it doesn’t mean I’m thanking the recipient, it means I’m going to follow the email with a glass of wine. What’s that? No, I don’t mean you’re about to get a glass of wine in your inbox…
Cheers,
Howard
November 5th, 2009 at 7:11 am
Abridged abstracts should be strongly discouraged. Whats the point of witing a very long abstract
that gets cut down in the editorial process. Have seen these in some astronomy journals.
November 5th, 2009 at 7:15 am
Sean — I have to confess, the holomorphic line is great.
Pieter — I think I’d reserve “pimped out” for sufficiently flashy and ornate models. SJGR should work for 3-loop calculations or data, in the right context.
I’m pretty sure that “we’d like to thank your sister *and* your mother” is forbidden by APS style rules, but allowed in JHEP.
November 5th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Well, we can start by distancing ourselves from all the black/dark references in physics.
For black hole, call it a relativity quagmire
For dark energy, call it universal compensator
For dark matter, perhaps exotic matter with pasties (ok, you can leave the pasties part out of it if you really insist)
As for brown dwarfs, well, d-list stars might be more apt as a name
November 5th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Scientific papers could use more “dude”. For instance, we could replace QED with
“Duuuude!”
Also useful as a single word caption for a particularly pretty picture for which you cannot otherwise find a true use.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
What a pity, then, that ‘dude’ was removed.