What's the difference between writing for English class and writing a scientific paper?
This is an excerpt from an assignment I gave my students. I followed it with copies of these two blogs from Puff the Mutant Dragon and these two (respectively) articles cited as source material. I asked them to give me a one-page essay, written in academic scientific style, on the differences between writing to show an interest in science and writing an academic paper on science--format, word choice, syntax, etc. I also asked them to give me three more "rules" about writing like a scientist academically.
"When a scientist conducts an experiment, it is always with the knowledge that eventually his or her findings will be written up and hopefully published for the world to see and admire. What a scientist has to keep in mind, however, is that the scientific community is somewhat…pressed for time. Scientists love to read papers written by other researchers. Scientists love to learn what everyone else is up to, and they especially love to scrutinize every last detail and look for flaws in other people’s work. All of this means that, when writing for a scientific audience, one has to follow a few guidelines:
1.     Keep it short, sweet, and to the point. ...
2.     If you’re using big words, they need to be SCIENCE VOCABULARY words or technical jargon. There is never a need to use words like “alacrity” or “antidisestablishmentarianism” in a scientific paper. No one is impressed by your ten dollar word. A scientist is impressed with the KNOWLEDGE you are imparting, not the WAY you are imparting it.
3.     Make it a point in life to read things written by other scientists so that you can understand the way that a scientist writes.
4.     Everything you write in an official paper must be clear and concise. If you’ve written something clunky and hard to follow, no one is going to bother reading it and you’ll never be a famous scientist.
5. If it's easier to say in a diagram, THEN SAY IT IN A DIAGRAM...Scientists love diagrams...