Scientific writing asks readers to grasp complex theories and ambiguous results. By writing clear, readable sentences, you free up working memory for evaluating your evidence rather than decoding your grammar.
Readability vs. Convention
This topic is written with to sole aim to increase the readability of your text. However, some fields require traditional structures for publication, where heavy nominalisations and left-branching sentences signal “insider.” For publication, prioritise your field’s established conventions over these recommendations (see also Language conventions).
Word choice: abstract vs. concrete
Latinate vs. Germanic
Academic language mixes words of Latinate and Germanic origin. Latinate words (elucidate, demonstrate, inherent) tend towards abstraction; Germanic words (show, find, build) keep things concrete.
While using some Latinate terms signals that you are ‘intelligent’, stacking too many in one sentence creates impenetrable academese. As a rule of thumb, use no more than 1 to 3 words of Latinate origin in one sentence.
❌ The mechanisms by which machine learning models are capable of discerning among the diverse patterns inherent within the data have yet to be elucidated.
✅ How machine learning models can discern among the diverse patterns in the data is yet to be elucidated
Nominalisations
Nominalisations are nouns that should be verbs or adjectives. Using this many nouns requires a lot of energy from your reader’s brains. That’s because nouns are more abstract than verbs. We need to hold all these abstract concepts in our working memory, while trying to make sense of how they relate. This is tiring, because our brains are not wired for so much abstraction.
Nominalisations often have these suffixes: -ion, -ment, -ness, -ation, -ity, -al, -age, -int
❌ The exploration of the interplay between soil composition and irrigation patterns in agricultural crops is crucial for the advancement of our understanding of the impact of climate variations on food security.
✅ Exploring the interplay between soil composition and irrigation patterns in agricultural crops is crucial to understand how climate variations impact food security.
Here’s how to recognise nominalisations:
- Can this word be a verb? The development → to develop
- Can you add ‘the … of’ to the word? The growing of → to grow
You can reduce nominalisations by writing actively:
Passive: This study was conducted to determine the effects of natural processes on trace metal distribution.
Active: We determined the effects of natural processes on trace metal distribution.
Note on abstraction
Academic writing requires a certain level of abstraction. Technical shorthand like “wave attenuation” (vs. rewriting “the way wave energy lessens when hitting obstacles” every time) prevents exhaustion. Use abstract terms as precision tools, not default settings.
Remove filler words
Filler words make it harder for readers to grasp the meaning of your sentence – much like searching for something in a messy room. The more clutter there is, the harder it is to find what you’re looking for.
Common filler words and phrases: past history → history; advance planning → planning; future prospects → prospects; end result → result; close proximity → proximity; at this point in time → now; for the purpose of → for / to; it should be noted that → (delete entirely, usually unnecessary); the reason why → because; on the basis of → based on; at the present time → currently / now; with regard to → about; in order to → to
❌ There are several sustainability principles that are relevant to energy conservation that are relatively well-understood, including resource efficiency, technology effectiveness and adoption, as well as regulatory policies. ✅ Sustainability principles relevant to energy conservation include resource efficiency, technology effectiveness and adoption, and regulatory policies.
Sentence structure & rhythm
Right-branching sentences
Right-branching sentences place the main action at the beginning, making it immediately clear what the sentence is about. This style is easier to follow, because you are not required to hold any information in memory before you can interpret the sentence correctly (which happens in left-branching sentences).
❌ By combining predictive forecasting with experimental approaches that identify species-level physiological tipping points, we may increase our ability to predict responses to future marine heatwaves. ✅ We may increase our ability to predict responses to future marine heatwaves by combining predictive forecasting with experimental approaches that identify species-level physiological tipping points.
Note that sometimes it makes more sense to have a left-branching sentence, for example at the start of a paragraph, or when applying the old-to-new principle.
Use similar grammatical structures
Parallelisms are similar grammatical structures that create a sense of balance. Our brains like it. Without parallelism, they ‘stumble’ over the awkward sound of a sentence.
❌ The study aimed to investigate how environmental stressors affect plant growth, assessing whether soil composition has a significant influence on water retention, and the role of nutrients and sunlight in photosynthetic efficiency.
✅ The study aimed to investigate how environmental stressors affect plant growth, how soil composition affects water retention, and how nutrients and sunlight affect photosynthetic efficiency.
Mix up sentence length
Long sentences (>25 words) are difficult to understand, as your reader needs to hold a lot of information in their working memory. Using sentences of reasonable length mixed with shorter sentences, creates a natural rhythm – more similar to a conversation. This is easier to comprehend.
❌ Over the course of the past millennia, the physical characteristics of marine ecosystems have predominantly remained static. Stationarity does not imply absolute immutability, but rather denotes that temperature is derived from a distribution, where each year’s temperature can be envisioned as derived from a probability distribution with a consistent mean and standard deviation.
✅ For most of the last 10,000 years, the physical conditions in marine ecosystems have been nearly stationary. Stationarity does not mean unchanging. It means that you can think of each year’s temperature as being drawn from a probability distribution with a stable mean and standard deviation.