写好一篇英文文章，是现在科研工作者所必备的素质之一，毕竟我们要发的文章大部分都是英文的。 今天贴一篇分析化学主编Royce Murray写的一篇关于怎么写好英文文章的文章。Royce Murray是unc分析化学的台柱子之一，年龄已经相当大了,他需要带助听器才能和人交流。在unc化学系，Royce Murray是很重要，很知名的教授之一，以至于化学系新建的一个大楼都用了他的名字来命名。闲言少叙，书归正传。 请看他最新写的这个短文，很容易读，我就不翻译了 Skillful writing of an awful research paper
As a Editor, I have from time to time in this column offered advice to authors on the desirable elements of a good research report. Like contrary children, for some authors such advice seems to vanish like smoke in a wind. So I take here a di?erent approach, based on the idea that some folks have a knack for doing the opposite of what is recommended to them (like contrary children). I present some guidelines for how to prepare a research report that is variously boring, confusing, misleading, or generally uninformative. Whether the author’s project is imaginative (or not) and the experiments are done with skill (or not) and the data are scienti?cally meaningful (or not) is irrelevant. My advice is solely based on principles of presenting the objectives, experiments, results, and conclusion in a fashion that as such no one will ?nish reading them or, if they do, readers will have little chance of understanding or remembering them. Like any form of skillful writing, following the rules below for awful writing requires practice and a lack of mental concentration.
Rule 1. Never explain the objectives of the paper in a single sentence or paragraph and in particular never at the beginning of the paper.
Rule 2. Similarly, never describe the experiment in a single sentence or paragraph and never at the beginning. Instead, to enhance the reader’s pleasure of discovery, treat your experiment as a mystery, in which you divulge one essential detail on this page and a hint of one on the next and complete the last details only after a few results have been presented. It’s also really fun to divulge the reason that the experiment should successfully provide the information sought only at the very end of the paper, as any good mystery writer would do.
Rule 3. Diagrams are worth a thousand words, so in the interest of writing a concise paper, omit all words that explain the diagram, including labels. Let the reader use his/her fertile imagination.
Rule 4. Great writers invent abbreviations for complex topics, which also saves a lot of words. Really short abbreviations should be used for very complex topics, and more complicated ones for simple ideas.
Rule 5. In referring to the previous literature, be careful to cite only the papers that make claims that would support your own, especially those that contain little evidence for the claim, so that your paper shines in comparison.
Rule 6. It should be anathema to use any original phrasing or humor in your language, so as to adhere to the principle that scientific writing must be stiff and formal and without personality.
Rule 7. Your readers are intelligent folks, so don’t bother to explain your reasoning in the interpretation of the results. Especially don’t bother to point out their impact on or consistency with other authors’ resultsand interpretation, so that your paper can be an island of original thinking.
So these are a few simple rules for poor scientific writing. If you follow them faithfully and your paper is rejected or never cited, irrespective of your native brilliance, you have nonetheless been successful as a poor writer.
作者是George M. Whitesides，Whitesides于1960年获得美国哈佛大学学士学位，1964年获得美国加州理工学院博士学位，目前担任美国哈佛大学首位也是该校最高教授殊荣(Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers讲座)。曾经担任MIT教授，以及哈佛大学化学系教授、系主任、文理学院副院长。曾获得威尔士奖(2005年)、普利斯特理奖 (美国化学学会，2007年)、阿斯图里亚斯王子科学工艺奖 (阿斯图里亚斯王子基金会，西班牙，2008年)和班哲明富兰克林化学奖 (富兰克林基金会，2009年)。他亦是美国国家科学院院士、美国国家工程院院士、美国哲学学会会员、荷兰皇家文理学院会员、物理学院会士、印度化学研究学会荣誉会士和英国皇家化学学会荣誉会士
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