(no subject)

[moonwise]

I cannot let this PNAS paper go out with my name on it. Whoever wrote most of this needs serious improvements in their writing skills.

"Delineation of the pathogenetic role of peroxynitrite in disease conditions requires the use of potent, in vivo active peroxynitrite decomposition catalysts."

Ahem. How about "peroxynitrite decomposition catalysts that are active in vivo?" And okay. You've used the word "potent" once. Let's see if you can find another one...

"Here we describe the synthesis of FP-15, a potent porphyrinic peroxynitrite decomposition catalysts, which potently inhibits tyrosine nitration and peroxynitrite-induced cytotoxicity in vitro and in vivo.

Guess you need a thesaurus, hmmmm?

And this is just in the abstract!

Comments

[fireceremony.livejournal.com]

"Delineation of the pathogenetic role of peroxynitrite in disease conditions requires the use of potent, in vivo active peroxynitrite decomposition catalysts."

That's classical scientese if I ever heard one... hard to convince ppl to use more direct terms when they think the more intricate syntax a sentence has, the smarter and more "scientific" it sounds. Pretense hm ?

There must be other terms one can use instead of "potent", even if "potent" may be an established scientific descriptor (such as "dose dependent").

Good luck in improving the language of that article ! I'm sure the authors should be happy to receive input about it, even if they're not so at first.

[arafel.livejournal.com]

*grins* I edited it so it sounds a little better. All of us P'ton people were wondering who wrote that junk. There are always ppl who didn't pay attention in English class. :P

Ended up just removing all the "potents" as well. Think up a new word, folks.

I'm sure you're well familiar with "scientese" and language that's so wrapped up in sounding pretentious that you can't understand the point they're trying to make.

[ssilverfish.livejournal.com]

A potent thing that acts potently? No kidding... ha...

One thing that I think really sucks about scientific writing is how it leans on the passive voice so much. Switching to an active voice wherever possible makes reading this crap so much more interesting, so I spend half my life reversing my advisor's sentences. She crosses out my semi-colons, so I guess we're even. (I'm still thinking of buying her a copy of Strunk and White. The idea of parallel construction of sentences was a complete mystery to her until I came along. She insists on starting sentences with "however," too. Ugh.)

Good luck with editing this sucker, and don't let it go out until you think it's ready! :)