How to make a case based on factual evidence that my colleague's writing style for submitted manuscripts has got to be overhauled?

Question

Background (and, OK, venting a little frustration):

I have a colleague who's writing with English as a second language. They've learned a scientific writing style that was probably already outdated decades ago; something one might find in painful-to-read century-old textbooks.

I'm the only native English-speaking co-author on their papers, it falls to me to "fine-tune the grammar" but the long, stilted, complicated, highly structured sentences just can't be fine-tuned. Small adjustments bring them to English which is no longer incorrect, but it's still far from natural language.

Before I can implement this advice I must convince my colleague of the dire nature of the status quo. Yes, reviewers' comments on manuscripts invariably contain pleas to improve and correct the English and have a native English speaker review the text. I'm tasked with addressing that issue, but my effectiveness is severely limited for two reasons:

1. I'm only presented with the manuscript at the very end - there's no opportunity to suggest changes during preparation (it's just their "do everything myself" style)
2. After their six months of writing slowly and carefully in solitude, there is a sense of urgency and immediacy. There's no way I can take the time necessary to completely rewrite the full manuscript in natural English. The points are complex and it would be a slow, interactive effort to make sure each step of the way my rewrite did not change some nuance I didn't detect but my colleague is certain it is clear as day.

Actual question:

The only way I am going to get my colleague to embrace working directly with a style checker as they write or even a digital writing assistant is to convince them that their style is old and outdated and must change, and it's not the typos or an occasional missing article or singular/plural mixup that the reviewers are complaining about, it's the sentence complexity and 1950's textbook tone that they're reacting against.

The text is simply quite painful to read!

What I need is indisputable evidence of this fact. They're quite logical, and faced with factual evidence, they accept it and can implement the changes necessary. But not until then.

Are there:

1. Style scoring algorithms, perhaps with website implementations, that might score things like sentence complexity and paragraph density? I'm not talking about an AI assistant yet, just something that can tell the difference between a poorly written and painful-to-read paragraph (as discussed above) and a similar content but well-written, clear paragraph using more natural English? If the output were numerical and could differentiate style, that would be helpful to demonstrate that something needs to be done.
2. An academic review of how academic writing styles have evolved from stilted/mechanical to more natural language. Something that might support a statement that "Things have changed, scientific writing is now much less formal and more like natural speech."

Basically, I need to make a case based on factual evidence that the writing style for submitted manuscripts has got to be overhauled.

Answer 1

Choose your co-authors carefully, and lay down working requirements if needed

Firstly, you get to decide who you co-author papers with, so you don't need to convince him of shit. The notion that you need to "make a case" for changes in his writing style and "collect factual evidence" for this is a misunderstanding of where the onus of decision-making lies in this case. You can stop co-authoring papers with this academic any time you want, for any reason at all, or for no reason. If he wants to keep doing papers with you, then he will need to ensure that is a mutually beneficial arrangement that suits you.

My recommendation here would be to start by considering whether it is worth the trouble of continuing co-authorship of papers with this academic, and weigh this off against the potential difficulties of laying down requirements over writing style and duties. If you decide that a continued co-authoring relationship is beneficial (or at least, potentially beneficial), I recommend you do the following:

• Tell your co-author your concerns about his writing style, being tactful and empathetic but also frank. Explain your position and give examples and evidence (e.g., reviewer comments) if helpful, but don't try to "prove" anything. Don't get into a debate on the issue --- just be clear on your position and your reasons for this position. You can acknolwedge that your colleague is ESL, and that is an understandable reason for the inadequate writing style, but the result is the result.

• Address the fact that your colleague wants to "do everything himself", but is evidently incapable of doing the writing well. Something has to give here. It will probably be necessary for you to write the first draft of the paper yourself, to avoid large amounts of editing work. If your colleague is not amenable to this solution, it is likely that there is no fruitful collaboration here.

• Understand the limits of your role here, but also your own decision-making power. If your colleague would like to continue co-authoring with others but doing the writing himself, he will need to take the initiative to improve his writing. It is not up to you to make a plan for him to do this or direct him to resources for this purpose. He is a big boy with a PhD (I assume), so he can find resources for improving his writing if this is something he wants to pursue.

Answer 2

I'm going to have to suggest that your quest is fruitless in the time frame available. If their writing style is so cramped as to be painful, it is not going to be changed by any means in the short term.

You would be far better off, painful as it is, to take over the writing yourself, depending on them only for disambiguation when you don't understand the arguments made in the draft you have. A style checker is unlikely to help as they might not trust it.

I only hope that as a native English speaker you can convince them that ESL isn't going to be enough in this case and to trust you. You need to get in to the writing process at the beginning, not at the end.

Alternatively, you can just let them do what they do and go through the multiple revision cycles that will be suggested by reviewers to bring the writing up to journal standards.

If you need to convince them, ask a trusted native speaker, independent of your project, to comment on the writing style. That might be enough.

Neither is ideal, but what you suggest in the question seems like a pipe dream. Good luck.

Answer 3

Readability is a well-studied field.

Simply put, yes, there are objective metrics that you can use to show your co-author's writing style is bad. Just open up Microsoft Word, head over to the "Review" tab, open the spellchecker, then scroll down to the button labelled "Document Stats" in the right-hand toolbar and click on it. Those readability and grade level stats? Those are objective measurements of how easy your document is to read.

The names associated with them in Word are the names of the academics that created them. I'm sure you can use that as a starting point to find a million papers on readability and literacy to clobber your colleague over the head with.

As for options to actually improve your colleague's writing, I have a few suggestions:

• Try to get a readability score of 50 or higher and a Grade Level of 10 or lower. The majority of the populace has a surprisingly low level of literacy. This would doubtlessly be higher for academics, but time is precious and the easier it is to read, the more people will read it and the more citations you're likely to get.
• Microsoft Word has a readability checker built-in, but it's pretty basic. You may want to consider using a paid readability service like Grammarly or VisibleThread to assist in the revision and writing process.
• Consult your Style Manuals. Obviously, the Style Manual the journal you're writing for takes precedence, but you can also consider the guidance of other manuals in areas where they don't conflict. For example, the Australian Government Style Manual was written with the intention of turning "bureaucrat-ese" into plain English, which is very similar to the task you're facing here.

Answer 4

1. Forget AI.

2. There likely are such papers but what you need is more like an instruction manual written in a friendly way. Refer to isolated matrix's answer above.

There's something odd in this situation.

You are a co-author but it reads like you do not do much of the actual work going into these papers . . .

Tell us honestly - were you just assigned to these other researchers to "help them with their writing" ? It sure seems like that.

If you are a real working, i.e. researching and liaising, partner of this research group, then you obviously have to take control over the writing from start to end: you are the best person to do this.

You do the first draft, you let them comment verbally, not via rewriting what they feel is missing from the work - though I can't see how there should be much difference of opinion on what should be in or out of the paper if you are all working on this together.

I think it's time you discussed this situation with your HoD as you seem inhibited on doing the necessary here.

Answer 5

One resource you could point them to is a book called The Chemist's English, written by Robert Schoenfeld. Schoenfeld was an editor of the Australian Journal of Chemistry, and adapted several of his own articles to form chapters in this book. It is very useful, even for a native English speaker, as it deals with grammar, punctuation and gives advice on writing style, even discussing the use of italics. While it is called The Chemist's English, most of the content is relevant for any discipline (it just happens that the examples all relate to chemistry). As a native English speaker myself, I cannot recommend this book enough!