省部重点实验室
第1楼2011/09/10
有的人写文章引言夸大能源危机,搞得读者人人自危,帽子虽然大,最后还是缩小到自己一个没有意义的课题。那么,审稿人就要问:就凭你这点结果,你的催化剂能解决能源危机吗?你的催化剂能工业化吗?
Communicating Science: A Practical Guide一书p. 50, "Hype tends to creep in naturally under the pen. A good characterization of hype is overindulgence in adjectives. Just like overindulging in sweets leads to obesity, accumulating adjectives bloats a text, makes it bottom-heavy and turns it into failure." p. 26, "I am not telling you to shy from waving your flag. Advertising is definitely involved in the writing of an introduction, but the softest of touches is needed. One-upmanship can be very distructive."
The Elements of Styles(插图版)一书p. 106, "Do not overstate. When you overstate, readers will be instantly on guard, and everything that has preceded your overstatement as well as everything that follows it will be suspect in their minds because they have lost confidence in your judgment or your poise. Overstatement is one of the common faults. A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a single carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for readers, the objective of your enthusiasm."
4) 鼓励恰当地用主动语气。以前很多老师都说写科研论文要用被动语气。其实,大家去读Chemical Communications杂志,每一篇文章都读,发现大多数的三页文章里面至少有几个主动句,有的有十几个主动句。什么情况用被动句,什么情况用主动句?答案是大多数情况用被动句,特别是描述实验方法。但是有的情况下用主动句有画龙点睛的效果。仔细读Chemical Communications杂志,发现的常见主动句是"Herein, we report...", "We propose that..", "To further check/demonstrate this hypothesis, we designed further experiment by...", "We believe that...", "To see whether ... is due to..., we did further experiments...".可见主动句有几种,第一种是在引言中说我们发现了什么;第二中是说我们认为什么,是提建议的;第三种是说为了证明什么,我们做了进一步的实验。有了这些主动句,文章就更加神采飞扬了。
为了说明我的话是合理的,我举How to Write a Successful Science Thesis (Wiley-VCH)一书p. 37,"We urge you in general, as often as you can, to incorporate lively verbs into your writing. Trt to take as much advantages as you can of sentence structures rooted in the active voice, which is the most welcoming environment for 'words of action'. Few world dispute the assertion, however, that passive constructions rarely contribute in a positive way to descriptive prose."
p. 84, "It has become increasingly common in published scientific works to encounter examples of first-person verb forms, which unquestionably add life to their surroundings. Note that this development carries an important inplication, however: the authors responsible are suggesting in a subtle way that the parties involved in conducting a scholarly investigation may themselves play a more than passive role:
Examples 10-7 ... This being the case, we elected to...
... We therefore separated (introduced, heated)..
... In the hope of conferring antimalarial activity on pharmaceutical precursors, we prepared..."
5) 注意段落的长度和结构,注意起承转合、行云流水、收发自如!读间行打印的原始稿件,如果一段话占据一页,就太长了。一般6-15行是正常范围。How to Write a Successful Science Thesis (Wiley-VCH)一书p. 39,"In general, paragraphs should probably not exceed about a third of a page, equivalent to perhaps four to eight sentences. Paragraphs make an important contribution to the intellectual structure of a document, quite apart from the fact that they break up an otherwise 'endless stream of text', which is unsightly and inflicts too much organizational burden on the reader."
"Structuring a document as a series of coherent paragraphs forces the author to sort out and present his or her thoughts in a logical fashion. That is to say, a proper paragraph is dedicated to exploring a single subject or thought, which in principle could easily be articulated in a brief descriptive title."
"The first sentence in every paragraph warrants special attention. One of its principle functions is to let the reader know what the ensuing discussion is about, for which reason it is often referred to as the "topic sentence". The corresponding topic is then pursued in sentences that immediately follow, with the final sentence in the paragraph so crafted that if supplies a bridge to the next paragraph."
一篇好文章的总体结构见The Longman Practical Stylist一书:龙头,凤尾,猪肚。写引言的时候从一个吸引广大读者的宽泛的概念聚焦到本文要描述的实验,由大到小,倒金字塔结构。最后收尾的时候,从本文具体的结论展望到未来,由小到大,金字塔结构。
省部重点实验室
第2楼2011/09/10
6) 文章要写得花妙,还得注意结尾部分。就是说,文章写到最后,不能嘎然而止,而要说清楚本文的意义、对这个领域的贡献、本文的局限性和下一步可以怎么做。这样,读起来有意犹未尽的感觉。How to Write a Successful Science Thesis (Wiley-VCH)一书p. 102,"Near the end of your discussion you may want to be bold and suggest interesting avenues for future exploration: promising approaches to resolving remaining uncertainties, ideas for broadening the scope of a methodology you have developed, or ways of possibly refining your results. If so, be sure the suggestions you make are concrete."
写了那么多“秘诀”,觉得科研写作的确是奥妙无穷的。说到这里,举一个例子:最近读到一篇奇文。这篇文章讲的是超高真空表面化学,只有一张图,一个示意图,居然能中德国应用化学会志。
Hydrocarbon Chain Growth on V(100) Single-Crystal Surfaces via Vinyl Intermediates (p 6583-6585)
Min Shen, Francisco Zaera
Published Online: Jul 23 2008 2:14AM
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.200802338
读罢这篇文章,不禁拍案叫绝。且不说具体的学术内容和新发现吧。这篇文章的写作手法非常巧妙,使出了“杀手锏”。一般人写这类文章,都在报数据,这个峰在这个位置,那个峰在那个位置。而这篇文章,通篇血脉通畅,一气呵成,如行云流水。它逻辑性非常强。在科学哲学当中,有种科学发现方法叫做:提出假说==〉做实验证明==〉得到证据==〉产生新的疑问==〉针对疑问做新的对照实验、诊断实验来消除疑问==〉优化假说。这篇文章里面能够看到这种思辨的过程。里面的新实验都是围绕着疑问进行,然后说是证明了一个假说还是排除了一个假说。而描述这些新的实验的时候,几句话就说明了问题。
这篇文章又粗浅易懂。开头就把这个工作和工业上经久不衰的F-T合成联系起来。在当中,很少叙述图的峰位置、峰形,而是定性地说发现了什么产物,由此推测什么机理。很有启发!