Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the fourth edition
- 1 Start with a plan
- 2 Conduct a comprehensive literature search
- 3 Prepare for the challenge
- 4 Begin well
- 5 Compose the IMRAD core of a strong first draft
- 6 Assemble the rest of the first draft
- 7 Compile tables to develop, clarify, and support your story
- 8 Include figures for evidence, efficiency, or emphasis
- 9 Report numbers clearly and responsibly
- 10 Revise for coherence
- 11 Improve style and syntax
- 12 Improve word choice
- 13 Attend to punctuation, capitalization, and other mechanics
- 14 Address your ethical and legal responsibilities
- 15 Oral presentations: adapt the text and visuals
- 16 Share your story in public: presenting talks and posters
- 17 Publication: the rest of the story
- Thirty exercises to improve anyone’s scientific writing skills
- Selected resources
- Index
13 - Attend to punctuation, capitalization, and other mechanics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the fourth edition
- 1 Start with a plan
- 2 Conduct a comprehensive literature search
- 3 Prepare for the challenge
- 4 Begin well
- 5 Compose the IMRAD core of a strong first draft
- 6 Assemble the rest of the first draft
- 7 Compile tables to develop, clarify, and support your story
- 8 Include figures for evidence, efficiency, or emphasis
- 9 Report numbers clearly and responsibly
- 10 Revise for coherence
- 11 Improve style and syntax
- 12 Improve word choice
- 13 Attend to punctuation, capitalization, and other mechanics
- 14 Address your ethical and legal responsibilities
- 15 Oral presentations: adapt the text and visuals
- 16 Share your story in public: presenting talks and posters
- 17 Publication: the rest of the story
- Thirty exercises to improve anyone’s scientific writing skills
- Selected resources
- Index
Summary
Writing the words “a woman without her man is nothing” on the chalkboard, the professor directed the students to punctuate it correctly.
The men wrote “A woman, without her man, is nothing.”
The women wrote “A woman: without her, man is nothing.”
Punctuation is everything.
unknownIf effective scientific communication is like a well-designed and smoothly operating machine, then grammar – the accepted system of rules by which words are formed and put together to make sentences – forms the nuts and bolts that hold it all together. The individual fasteners of punctuation, capitalization, and such may seem simple and unexciting to look at, but they are undeniably important if the machine is to hold together and function properly.
In this chapter, we suggest ways of avoiding and correcting some common mechanical mistakes that scientific writers tend to make. For further advice, style manuals of special utility for biomedical writers include the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2010), the AMA Manual of Style (2007), and the Council of Science Editors’ Scientific Style and Format (2006). All are updated at intervals; be sure to check for the latest edition.
Punctuate for clarity
Punctuation has one purpose – to help the reader understand the structural relationship within (and thus the intention of) a sentence. For this reason, the best approach to punctuation is almost always the simplest. Punctuation should be almost automatic. If you are puzzled over how to punctuate a particular sentence, you probably have created a sentence that will puzzle readers too, no matter how you punctuate it. Rewrite the sentence in a form that requires only simple punctuation.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Successful Scientific WritingA Step-by-Step Guide for the Biological and Medical Sciences, pp. 170 - 186Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014