Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
5 - What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
from Part One - Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2016
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
Summary
I write bleary-eyed and disheartened, after a long proofreading session mainly devoted to inserting into the galleys calls for the restoration of what was capriciously and destructively altered in the editorial offices of Physical Review. I proofread simply by reading the galleys, without reference to the original manuscript. My writing is a process that does not converge: I cannot read a page of my own prose without wanting to improve it. Therefore when I read proofs I entirely ignore the manuscript except to check purely technical points. Proofreading offers one more shot at elusive perfection. Proceeding in this way. I come to the end of a paragraph with a lurching sensation. The last sentence seems to be a non sequitur. Can I be failing to get my own point? Turning to the copy-edited manuscript, I find a marginal message: “Author: Please note that we discourage single-sentence paragraphs.” As an application of this principle, one short emphatic paragraph has been attached to the end of another, to which it is entirely unrelated. If you set asunder what Physical Review has joined, it makes sense again.
What is the justification for such a rule? Excessive use of single-sentence paragraphs blurs the distinction between the sentence and the paragraph, makes for a visually unattractive page and becomes boring. But the occasional single-sentence paragraph is a powerful device. It gives a pause in the rush of thought, it focuses attention, and it can contribute powerfully to the rhythm of the prose. The Constitution of the United States of America, whose prose Warren Burger enjoined us to admire in its 200th-anniversary year, is chock-full of beautiful single-sentence paragraphs. A blanket prohibition is absurd, and enforcing it by paragraph grafting is almost certain to do violence to the clarity and even the meaning of a well-written essay. So I go through the galleys restoring the three or four indigestibly merged paragraphs, adding my own marginal messages (“Editor: We discourage gratuitous confusion”) in the hope that my counterinstructions will not be ignored.
A bit later I come to a reference to nature, “Nature herself,” I remember writing, “has proved to be quite unambiguous…” The galley reads, “Nature has proven quite unambiguous….” Not bad, I think, getting rid of that unnecessary “to be”—should have spotted it myself. But then I notice that nature has been depersonified.
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- Why Quark Rhymes with PorkAnd Other Scientific Diversions, pp. 29 - 34Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016