More on brevity

Yesterday, I wrote about one of Orwell's essays, and about Watson and Crick's famous letter to Nature. The theme: short expositions win. Today, I continue the theme, with two more brief but brilliant must-reads for the aspiring writer. 

Albert Einstein

The first time Einstein's equation appeared in printLike the Watson and Crick letter, Einstein's 1905 paper Does the inertia of a body depend on its energy content? was profound and eternal. In it, he derived the expression m = E / c². Though the paper was arguably little more than an extension of others he published that year, it was very short: exactly three (small) pages long. His concluding remark couldn't be clearer or more succinct:

If the theory corresponds to the facts, radiation conveys inertia between the emitting and absorbing bodies.

Einstein's writing style was influenced by Ernst Mach's book, The Science of Mechanics (Minor, 1984). Mach adopted a pedagogic, step-by-step style that guided the reader through the scientist's reasoning. Asking the reader to imagine an analogous scenario or simplified example was, in my experience, common in physics books of the period. Richard Feynman used a similar straightforward style. I try to use it myself, but sometimes the desire to impress gets the better of me.

Kenneth Landes

Years of reviewing journal papers has convinced me: the abstract is one of the most abused and misunderstood animals of science. I regularly hand Landes' brilliant little plea to new writers, and it bears re-reading once every couple of years. Landes points out that the abstract should "concentrate in itself the essential information of a paper or article". Here is his superbly cheeky, information-free counterexample:

A partial biography of the writer is given. The inadequate abstract is discussed. What should be covered by an abstract is considered. The importance of the abstract is described. Dictionary definitions of 'abstract' are quoted. At the conclusion a revised abstract is presented. 

Read his short note for the improved version of this soggy squib of an abstract. 

What do we draw from these authors? I'll be brief: so should you.

References
Einstein, A (1905). Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Energiegehalt abhängig?, in Annalen der Physik. 18:639, 1905. Published in English by Methuen, 1923.
Landes, K (1966). A scrutiny of the abstract II. American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin 50 (9), p 1992.
Mach, E (1883). The science of mechanics. Later English translation here. 
Minor, D (1984). Albert Einstein on writing. J. Technical Writing and Communication 14 (1), p 13–18. [Requires subscription or purchase]. 

On brevity

As another of my new endeavours for the year, I plan to teach a short course on writing. I have been researching the subject, looking for advice, examples and counter-examples. Some of my favourites come from the archives, where I expected to find only dusty obfuscation, written in the tortuous prose many people associate with science. Instead, I came across some tiny but glittering gems. Today: Orwell, and Watson & Crick. 

George Orwell

Orwell's short essay, Politics and the English Language, is partly about politics, but mostly about language. A little on the dusty side perhaps, at least to my taste, but it has two highlights. First, Orwell quotes some perverse paragraphs from the more pompous writers of the day, like this unreadable piffle from one scholar:

Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate, or put at a loss for bewilder.

Second, Orwell offers six rules to improve our writing:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Watson and Crick

One of the most important and widely recognized scientific publications of the last century turns out to be nothing more than a one-page letter. As well as being brief, it even reads like a letter, with plain language and plenty of opinion and informed speculation. Although the results were published in full elsewhere, doubtless in more technical language, and although letters are still used in some journals, I love the unselfconscious ease with which this seismic discovery was announced. If anyone is up for the challenge, it would be fun to parody a modern press-release for this discovery.

Click the thumbnail for the full paper →

Tomorrow, I offer two more short pieces to rev up your writing. Meanwhile... do you have any favourites from the archives of science writing? Please share them! Unless they're in Latin.