Writing and Publishing Scientific Articles Course Workbook

Cohesion and Clarity

12- 19

Activity 4

Reword the phrases in bold to make them more parallel:

1. Specifically, bone provides chemotactic factors, factors for adhesion, and growth factors that allow the cancer cells to target and proliferate in the skeleton. (From Keller et al., 2002)

2. The activity of FPGS is high in the liver and in bone marrow stem cells may also be high.

3. It was observed that BTAK/Aurora-A protein kinase is preferentially activated/overexpressed in low-grade and early-stage ovarian cancer, although there was no statistical significance at the kinase level between low-grade/early- stage and late-stage/high-grade tumors. (From Gritsko et al., 2003)

6. Effective scientific writing is streamlined.

According to the author instructions of the journal Biochemistry, “Manuscripts should be written in clear, concise English and should be condensed to [the extent] most compatible with clarity. Editors, reviewers, and readers may tend to be biased against results reported in complex or excessively verbose language.” Fortunately, complex science does not require complex language. In her ESL Resource Book for Engineers and Scientists, Elaine Campbell writes, “Technical writing style in the United S tates is quite standardized…. It emphasizes plain prose and simple word choice. Whenever possible, it favors brevity of expression, although brevity must never take priority over clarity.” “In Englis h, we like sentences that are lean and mean. We like nouns and verbs and are suspicious of other parts of speech.…” — Composition Center, Dartmouth University (www.dartmouth.edu/˜compose/tutor/problems/esl.html)

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