However, it is obvious, in talking to chemists from around the world that chemists never use most of the words they so “poetically” use in their articles. My favorite word used is concomitantly, a word I’ve never once heard in common discussion, but which I come across every day in reading articles to describe two things happening at the same time.

Unfortunately, I doubt much change will ever be made in this front, because I (and I’m sure every student who has ever written a paper) use words that sound better and more intelligent when typed out, but awkward in face-to-face discussions. It a way to make yourself seem more intelligent than you may really be to the reader, something which is important to scientists–no one wants to appear dumb by using easy-to-read language. Furthermore, Word and similar software can show you a list of synonyms of any word you type. This makes it much simpler for anyone to have what appears to be a very broad vocabulary, giving that person a facade of intelligence.

If there was no competition in the education system to get the best grades, to get into the best universities, and then onto the best graduate programs, post-doctoral positions, and eventually best career positions (whether it be outside of academia or within it), I could see this massive difference in written and spoken languages disappearing. However, that will never be the case, students will always try to one-up their peers by one of the simplest methods, using highfalutin words.

Lastly, one argument for keeping these annoying words in use, is that they can allow the author to use words others may not use to avoid being accused of plagiarism. Obviously, a good thing.

But could it be a difference between the American professors and the British ones?
Most of those who comment here seem to be teachers/profs in the States, and I like it that a lot of you are genuinely okay (correct me if I’m wrong though) to banning these lofty-sounding words.

I’m a PhD student and the univ I attend follows the British education system.
I think it’d probably kill my supervisor if I wrote ‘use’ instead of ‘utilise’.
Recently I attended a workshop on ‘Writing the Discussion section of your thesis’ and I swear I was struggling to understand what the guy was saying what with words like ‘epistomology’, ‘operational definition’, ‘warrant’ vs. ‘claim’ and ‘false positive’ in abundance.

Cheers!

I feel a lot of these concepts are well laid out in Strunk and White and George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language.

Cheers,

Emmanuel

Carl: I agree. If I’m editing a piece, I usually strike out about 90% of the adverbs.

Interesting list. You could consider adding the following words

increase
decrease
positive
negative

There is nothing really wrong with these words. The problem is that we often use them when we can’t be bothered thinking of the most apt and precise word to characterize the nature of a change or effect. I keep a look out for these words, because they are signals that my writing is becoming lazy.

Chris

Also “is applicable” and “is inapplicable.” What ugly phrases. “Applies,” or “doesn’t apply.”

I know it seems absurd that anyone would use such a word, but I have heard it used multiple times, usually by people in educational psychology, sociology, and social services. In general it is used as an intensified version of “effective”, as in “that speech was very effective/had an impact on me/was very impactful”.

Almost every time I hear it, I think of someone developing impacted feces: eating a lot of white bread while dehydrated is likely to be very “impactful”…

Morphology, Phylogenetics and Predator – Prey Relationship(s) should not be banned since they refer to size and shape and overall appearance (morphology), phylogenetics (either as a simple short-hand for Cladistics or Phylogenetic Systeamtics or in general, referring to phylogenies) and a fundamental ecological relationship between some organisms (predator – prey relationship).

John

material properties are what us materials scientists study, how can we avoid it? also process is a useful word that is common enough among lay people, why ban process?

Carl: No one loves material properties more than I do! But I also love the words that convey those material properties in a visceral way to those few, few readers who are not materials scientists: words like strong, bright, cold, brittle, gooey.

Process is not actually that useful in a non-scientific piece of writing, I find, because it is just a nondescript placeholder of a word.

[Note: I see why interaction is iffy, but physicists tend to use "interaction" as a (technical IMHO) term since "force" is somewhat ambiguous. For example, gravitation is AFAIU not (causing) a force, say for photons that obey it (no acceleration in their inertial frame as massless particles follows geodesics). It is however an interaction.]

Cancer (unless actually relevant)… for the love of FSM, why does everything in biology have to culminate in cancer? Those of us who have not the slightest shred of interest in the subject are not only marginalised by the media, but also by certain high impact factor weekly journals too! *mutters to self* Oh, and do try to read cell cycle literature when outside the cancer erm…’context’! For some reason we now have “retinablastoma-like” genes in fucking -plants-… *grumble*

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Oh, and also for the love of FSM, “living fossil” – what the flying FUCK is that supposed to mean!?

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And lastly, the one that REALLY gets me off on a multipage rants: “Gene for [x]“. Grrr.

/rant