You rightly contend that many people don’t know what Reynolds or Bond numbers are (which is what I feel Science writing should fix but lets put that aside for a moment).

Let’s rephrase that statement in a way that no-one will understand the words and see what it tells us as a reader.

“Yatro and Xesonic forces are negligible in determining column dynamics since the Thompson and Benderman numbers are large.”

Ok, so if I don’t know what Yatro and Xesonic forces are (which I don’t), I’m just being told they don’t matter in this case! So I don’t *need* to know what they are in order to follow the paper. The reason they don’t matter is to do with some stuff I also don’t understand. The Thompson and Benderman numbers are large. If for some reason I desire to know what makes the things I don’t know about irrelevant, google is only one tab away on my browser. Everything written today comes with a built in glossary.

However if by some chance I was thinking “what about the Yatro! they’ve forgotten that”, my question is answered. It adds something for the informed reader and subtracts nothing for the uninformed. That’s a win.

I think you’ve misunderstood what *I* was saying. http://xkcd.com/1028/

I chose Crime writing (*not* legal writing, which is to crime writing as Papers are to Science Writing) because it illustrates how complex issues of ethics, logic, evidence and process can be made interesting to a lay public *without* excluding every latin term. Perhaps even because those latin terms are not excluded. You point out that your children know what a Judge is. That’s not an accident, it’s because the term (which has a different meaning in normal English) *hasn’t* been excluded from fictionalised and news accounts of crime and punishment. By it’s very use, the public has, without any effort, internalised it’s meaning. That’s how language is transmitted from person to person; by use.

I think there is a basic difference in the goals of Science writing as you see them and as I see them (and as your students see them).

Your students probably want to communicate the excitement they feel for their subject.

You’re probably trying to get them to write in a way that will get through a sub editor and see the light of day.

I think that the overall goal of Science writing is or should be, to make Science as much a part of our culture as Crime writing is. To reach the point where words like Reynolds number are understood and people don’t say stupid things like “Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn’t be able to fly”. (ok, a statement about excluding stupid statements from the language is itself a stupid statement, but maybe we can hope for people to stop repeating them?)

So our perceived goals are very different. I’m a consumer of Science writing. I don’t know or care how many articles fell to the sub editor’s red pen. I only see the ones that don’t and I make my judgements from them. They’re almost uniformly appalling. Not from excess jargon. That’s *not* a problem that needs you to solve it with a list. The main groups of appalling are that way because they’re:

Wrong (totally got the wrong end of the stick, completely wrong, not even internally consistent. See anything written about the higgs)

Out of Date (Often as much as 400 years out of date. See almost anything written about gravity.)

Simplified to the point of unintelligibility (virtually everything ever written about science)

Forced excitement (Google of: Science Fun, returned 2.9×10^9 hits while Sport Fun returned 1/10th of that. Which gets more column inches?)

The very best of this genre achieve all four. http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3323822.htm Check it out! This is from my national broadcaster. A segment from it’s flagship science programme. It carefully ticks all four, for a gem of appalling Science writing. I defy anyone who didn’t already understand the subject to come away with anything from that segment.

That’s the kind of Science writing I hate so much. Yes, that’s an extreme example, combining pointless special effects, with humiliation of innocent bystanders to achieve a content free zone but it’s indicative of the quality of what’s out there.

So there should be an example of great science writing then… Something to compare it with. That’s a little harder to find. To be truly great it must exclude all those normal failings of course, but also offer something extra special. Something phrased simply but without patronising the audience. Something about a really difficult subject, yet it holds the audience in rapt attention. Something that changes the way the listener looks at the world. I can’t find anything from this millennium. The most recent I know about is from 1979 and if you watch all of them it really will change the way you look at the world.

http://vega.org.uk/video/programme/45

Science writing in this culture is in disarray. The most important issues of our time that change the way we live our lives, treat our sick, fight our wars, feed our children, care for our homes and communicate with our loved ones are relegated to minor stories occasionally run in some magazines and never mentioned on the news, while the latest football results have a 32 page lift out in every paper and take up half of every news broadcast. There are more sports programmes intended for the informed and interested viewer broadcast every day than Science programmes for an informed and interested viewer created in human history. The University where my mother taught had a massive number of people applying for Forensic Science. Ten or twenty times more than they had places, but the Physics department was closing courses because there were no students. I’m sure that if Dexter mentions Bond Numbers when analysing blood spatter, it would enter the language on that day.

It’s for you and your students to step up to the plate (hey, sports jargon and I understand it…) and make Science writing what it can be, what it should be and thereby make a real difference. Go on, change the world, I *dare you*.

I have two children, ages ten and eight. Both of them know what a judge is.

On the other hand, they would not understand this:

The Kawashimas assert that, if Clause (i) applies to tax crimes, then qualifying convictions for tax evasion under Clause (ii) would also qualify as aggravated felonies under Clause (i), because tax evasion is a crime involving fraud or deceit. To buttress this argument, the Kawashimas point to a body of law providing that a conviction for tax evasion under §7201 collaterally estops the convicted taxpayer from contesting a civil penalty under 26 U. S. C. §6663(b) for “underpayment . . . attributable to fraud.”

This is from a recent Supreme Court decision on a criminal case [pdf]. The Court wrote it using terms like “estops” that are necessary and expected in a legal document. But I would not expect my children to know what “estops” mean. I don’t know what “estops” means. Does that mean I am stupid? Do you know what “estops” means? If you don’t, should I assume that you, too, are stupid?

Of course not.

Scientific writing is a lot like legal writing. Consider a charming paper published in 2010 on how cats lick water. It describes an action we have all witnessed. But it is filled with difficult passages such as, “Viscous and capillary forces are negligible in determining column dynamics, since the Reynolds and Bond numbers are large.”

Find an intelligent person who is interested in science but who has not taken a physics class since high school. Show that person this passage and ask them why large Reynold and Bond numbers mean that viscous and capillary forces are negligible in determining column dynamics. Ask that person what a Bond number is. I suspect that person will not be able to tell you. This does not mean that that person is not interested in science.

When scientists and scientists-in-training try to write about science, they are attracted, like moths to a flame, to precise scientific terminology that makes sense to their colleagues but does not make sense to non-scientists. To push scientists to use the English language in inventive ways, to find useful metaphors, I have to shield them from that flame. I have to provide them with an explicit list of words that serve to confuse their prose. If you try hard, you can find some cases in which people do use the terms I list here in common parlance. Yes, people are familiar with in vitro fertilization. But I regularly get stories sprinkled with “in vitro” referring to experiments, not fertilizations. I get stories in which writers discuss in vitro experiments versus in vivo ones. There a perfectly clear ways to express this in ways that many people will understand, without sacrificing precision. Therefore, I tell students to avoid using “in vitro” in their stories.

A good legal writer, likewise, will figure out how not to use words like “estops,” and instead use clear, compelling prose to describe a criminal case. And if lawyers take a class to learn how to write for the public, instead of for judges, I think they’ve be well served by a list of banned words that included “estops.”

Eh Buddy, how do you like it eh? Are you listening? Do you understand?

So you don’t like this fancy schmancy latin like “In Vitro”. No surprise there ’cause all your readers are schmuks. They’ve never heard of that “In Vitro Fertilisation” malarkey. They’re not interested in that science stuff ’cause who knows what those scientists are up to eh? They’re all on the take anyway from those green guys who have all the money. Can’t trust ‘em I say.

I don’t trust scientists. Now cops, you can trust them. I like that crime writing. Much better than that science writing with all their fancy latin. Theys just say that stuff to confuse us you know.

Me, I’m gunna stick to reading “Crime” writing and give that “Science” writing a miss.

I can’t stand attempting the vernacular any more. I’m not good at it and it sounds forced so I’m also going to give it “a miss”.

Your basic misapprehension is that people some how “accidentally” read science writing and that it has to be couched in terms that someone with no interest in the subject will find immediately accessible without any effort. You’re completely wrong. People who aren’t interested *won’t be reading it*. By dumbing it down you are helping people who won’t read it in the first place (multiply even the largest number you can think of by zero and it’s still zero) and annoying or alienating the people who *are* interested.

If the sports thought experiment didn’t speak to you, lets imagine that you’re teaching “crime” writing rather than “science” writing and applying the same rules. Can you imagine the appalling result of removing from writings intended for a lay audience such jargon as:

Plea
Accused
Judge
Writ
Verdict
Crime
Habeas Corpus
Pro Bono
Jury
Peers
Evidence

Searing courtroom drama would be a little more difficult.

“Hey you twelve guys, my guy says he never done it and that guy in the wig got nuthin that says he did”

Not exactly “Rumpole of the Bailey” is it…

To illustrate my point I ask you to engage in a simple thought experiment. Simply replace the word “Science” in “Science Writing” with the word “Sport”. Then create a list of banned words for all Sports Writers to follow. Play (meaning to create a tactic rather than just engaging in the game), Field (if you mean grass, just say grass), Diamond (it’s just grass remember), stick/club/bat/racquet/paddle/mallet (you hit a ball with it; call it a ball hitter why have all these different names? Don’t get me started on “cricket bat, baseball bat” etc, they already know which sport we’re talking about, “ball hitter”) Hitter/batsman (pick one! which is it?) Tennis/hockey/ping pong/squash/lacrosse/croquet/soccer/foot/bowling balls (why confuse everyone with this, they’re all just “balls”)

One of the above critics questioned the purpose of “banning” words, when such words are deemed necessary to sufficiently discuss a highly complex topic.

I might offer in contrast the idea that many subjects only become highly complex because those people who write about the topics use overly complex terms instead of using simpler terms. I sometimes wonder if their purpose is to limit their audience to walking thesauri(?)

I don’t see the subject as being the literal banning of words. Instead, I see a person exercising control over the part of the world they are actually charged with controlling – their own classroom. I consent.