Timeline for Why are research papers written in language that's difficult for undergraduate students?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
7 events
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| May 24, 2018 at 12:33 | comment | added | Jessica B | @Luc Yes, I would use the same language for the subject as when writing papers. Mathematicians spend a lot of time saying very very carefully what they mean. | |
| May 24, 2018 at 11:30 | comment | added | LLlAMnYP |
@JessicaB I'm not quite sure, what you're arguing for? I interpreted Luc's comment as in favor of We heated the sample to T=350K, rather than We elevated the temperature of the sample to a sufficiently high value of 350K.
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| May 24, 2018 at 10:56 | comment | added | cbeleites | @Luc: I got quite the opposite advise when writing one of my first papers: my supervisor told me e.g. to replace a) "advanced" grammar (genitives with 's [which are easy and natural for me as they are similar to what my native language does]) by a more plain construction (of) and b) avoid the use of synonyms in favor of one and the same term. The reasoning was to make reading easier for non-native speakers who possibly have never met the concept of cases and may need to look up terms. | |
| May 23, 2018 at 21:30 | comment | added | Luc | @JessicaB After how much practice in writing papers? Would you use those when you didn't have experience in writing papers, but you did have topical knowledge? I'm currently doing a master's, but I got here via an odd route and while I have had subject knowledge for years, I found papers on the subject quite hard to read (understandable, but it just takes forever to parse it all). It has gotten better, but both reading and writing them takes practice. It's a different kind of English, and I just don't think it's always required to get the point across concisely. | |
| May 23, 2018 at 21:21 | comment | added | Jessica B | @Luc 'but it's still extra effort to use difficult words where easy ones would do'; errr.... no. The 'difficult' words in this context are the ones you normally use. | |
| May 23, 2018 at 18:15 | comment | added | Luc | This only partially answers the question. Sure, they are not the target audience, but it's still extra effort to use difficult words where easy ones would do. This is expected of us (I'm doing a master's right now and a paper written like a blog post... well, nobody ever dared to try) but it also purposefully keeps less well educated people out. This might reduce the noise (if stupid people can't keep up with your conversation, they can't join it) but is that truly the goal? Are we all agreed on that we should keep a large group out, or is it just a practice that stuck? | |
| May 22, 2018 at 13:44 | history | answered | G-E | CC BY-SA 4.0 |