Author Scott L. Montgomery's uses Chapter Five, "Writing Very Well: Opportunities for Creativity and Elegance," in his Chicago Guide to Communicating Science to highlight various stylistic devices that can be used effectively in scientific writing or in writing about science for popular audiences. Some of the devices that he features are modulating sentence length and rhythm, posing questions, applying parallel structure at the sentence level, coining new terminology, and smooth transitions. Montgomery is careful to remind his readers that he believes “scientific writers must exhibit expressive restraint and must be relatively subtle in their creative act.” He does emphasize though that there is an opportunity for writers to add memorable or inventive phrasing, excellent organization and polish in their writing and focus on subtle transitions.
As a way to better understand some of Montgomery’s ideas, I reviewed “From sea to plate: how plastic got into our fish,” written by author Susan Smillie and published on Feb 14, 2017 in The Guardian, an online source for American and international news. This article is one that I found as part of my research for my final project. It is an example of science writing that has been written for popular audiences and focuses on the development, impact and prevalence of microplastics in the environment and in our food. Smillie uses many of the techniques that Montgomery references in writing her article. The best example of this is in her rather inventive opening phrase “It’s enough to make you cry over your moules frites” when referring to the rather serious topic of the volume of plastic fragments consumed by humans on an annual basis: “Scientists at Ghent University in Belgium recently calculated that shellfish lovers are eating up to 11,000 plastic fragments in their seafood each year.” Another of Montgomery’s devices that Smillie uses effectively is to pose questions. In fact, she leverages the opportunity not only to ask questions, but to challenge her readers to think about whether they are considering the right questions. “The question is no longer: are we eating plastic in our seafood? What scientists are urgently trying to establish is just how bad for us that is. Another question we might ask: how did we get here?” Some of the techniques that Montgomery highlights that I would incorporate into my scientific writing and my final project to ensure that it is both informative and engaging for my readers are to vary sentence length and rhythm, to challenge my readers to consider the impact of microplastics by posing direct and relevant questions, providing smooth transitions between concepts and using memorable examples.
1 Comment
Jacob Fies
3/22/2018 06:08:56 am
Hey Collin,
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AuthorHi! I am Collin Barker and I am a Marine Biology Major at Roger Williams University, an avid reader and fish keeper. To learn more about me check out my About page. Archives
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