{"id":1048752,"date":"2012-07-29T15:44:56","date_gmt":"2012-07-29T15:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.immortalitymedicine.tv\/chemistry\/cw-competition-blog-adam-hart-davis.php"},"modified":"2024-08-17T17:58:27","modified_gmt":"2024-08-17T21:58:27","slug":"cw-competition-blog-adam-hart-davis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/chemistry\/cw-competition-blog-adam-hart-davis.php","title":{"rendered":"CW competition blog \u2013 Adam Hart-Davis"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a guest post from one of our judges for the Chemistry World<\/em> Science Communication Competition<\/a><\/strong><\/p>

50 years ago, while taking a gap year teaching in India, I used to write home to my parents every week (no email or mobiles then). In one letter, I asked my dad, a highly respected editor, how to write good English. He wrote back: ‘Use short sentences, and don’t start them with “It…”‘. I have followed this advice ruthlessly ever since, also applying it when editing texts of all kinds from various unfortunate authors, and it has served me well.<\/p>

I have spent my entire career trying to make science accessible, and have found that short words and phrases help, as well as short sentences. So I tend to use ‘chose’ rather than ‘selected’ and ‘now’ rather than ‘at the present moment in time’ – just as William Tyndale, translating the Bible into English for the first time, used words of one syllable wherever he could: ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’.<\/p>

And I try to avoid hype. Listening to commentary on recent tennis and cricket matches, I have been dismayed as shot after shot is described as ‘unbelievable’ or ‘incredible’. No; we have just seen them; they were brilliant, but not unbelievable.<\/p>

So my advice is: keep the language simple. Using long words, excessive hype, and scientific jargon may make your text sound more important, but will always get in the way of understanding.<\/p>

 <\/p>

Adam Hart-Davis is a writer and broadcaster based in Devon, UK<\/em><\/p>

 <\/p>

Read Philip Ball’s competition blog post<\/a>.<\/p>

Find out about the Chemistry World<\/em> Science Communication Competition and submit your entry here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>

 <\/p>

\"Digg<\/a>  \"Reddit<\/a>  \"Stumble<\/a>  \"Share<\/a>  \"Bookmark<\/a>  \"Share<\/a>  \"Bookmark<\/a>  \"Post<\/a>  \"Google<\/a>  <\/div>

Source:
http:\/\/prospect.rsc.org\/blogs\/cw\/?feed=rss2<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a guest post from one of our judges for the Chemistry World Science Communication Competition50 years ago, while taking a gap year teaching in India, I used to write home to my parents every week (no email or … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1246863],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1048752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048752"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1048752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1048752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1048752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1048752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}