[分享]寫科研論文導師不傳授的細節

　　寫科研論文導師不傳授的細節

　　當審稿人拿起文章的時候，總體印象起了很大的作用。審稿人的心理定勢就是判斷“過”還是“不過”，沒有第三種選擇。如果他的印象是“不過”，就反復找理由挑毛病。所以要想通過，首先要寫得好，讓審稿人挑不出毛病。而如何寫得好?很多細節導師是不會傳授的。悟性非常重要!以前的碩士生導師的科技英語寫作水平非常好，有時候她修改別人的文章后，會把修改文章的思路和文章的寫法傳授給我。后來讀博士的時候，導師的寫作水平就更棒了，他雖然沒有條條框框地指導，但是從反復修改文章的紅筆文字中，我也悟到了很多。現在我來分享一些我體會出來的別人很少傳授的寫作細節。

　　1)寫作的時候一般不要描述發現科學事實的曲折故事。可以寫我們受別人某個工作的啟發發現了我們的東西，然是不要說：“我們首先叫某個學生去做，沒有做出來。后來我們親自改進了方法，終于做出來了。”不要說：“為了確定這個物質，我們查閱了大量書籍，從來沒有報道過。于是我們到圖書館找了其它文獻，發現了歸屬。”不要暗示“沒有功勞也有苦勞”，而要直奔主題。

　　這個要點也許顯而易見，但是其實不然。在讀文章的時候經常可以看到這樣的不妥當的說法。我以前讀博士第一次做報告的時候，最后一張薄膜是一堆雜志的封面。我對聽眾說，為了做這個年度考核報告，為了做我的科研，我看了這些雜志三百篇文獻。會后，導師對我說：“不要讓別人看到你的汗水，要用科學結果來吸引別人。即使你繞了很大彎子得到最后的結果，你也要輕松地講，讓別人感到你很聰明。”

　　根據How to Write a Successful Science Thesis (Wiley-VCH)一書p. 98, "Experimental work is by definition a journey into the unknown, fraught with detours and dead ends, but all such obstacles are basically irrelevant from a scientific standpoint. Look upon your dissertation--as you would any other research report--not as a memoir documenting and explaining your every activity, but instead as a proclamation of a set of new insights. How you achieved your results may perhaps play some role in your mentor's appraisal of your efforts, but otherwise it will be of interest only to the extent that certain intimate details may be critical from a methodological standpoint."

　　2)少用陳詞濫調。很多很多所謂寫作秘訣的網上資料都提供一些句法，但是其實很多都是陳詞濫調，不提供任何信息，可以高度精簡。以下是我給一篇文章審稿的片斷意見："[7] Another reason on why this paper is long and somewhat distracting is that you frequently use words such as "It was found that" (p. 2), "It is worth noting that…" (p. 7), "It was observed that …" (p. 8), "It was observed that…" (p. 9), "It was noted that…" (p. 12), "We observed that…" (of course, it's you who make the observation!), "It was noticed that" (p. 13), "It was interesting to see that…", "It was observed that…", "It was concluded that" (p. 15), "It was found that (p. 17)".”

　　有時候用了陳詞濫調反而幫了倒忙。以下是我給另外一篇文章的審稿意見片斷："[10] Throughout the text, for two or three times (e.g., line 11 of p. 12), the authors always wrote "it is not surprising that...". The intention of the authors was to justify their data, to say that their data are "normal". However, if the authors always say "it is not surprising", why should the reader care unsurprising results? Isn't it better to use "it is justified that..." or "it is reasonable that..."?”

　　為了證明我說的這些是有道理的，我舉How to Write a Successful Science Thesis (Wiley-VCH)一書p. 39,"Avoid sentences that are unnecessarily complex and entangled, or run on interminably. Problems of the latter sort often have their origin in 'that' constructions:

　　Example 4-8: It is well established that... (of course!)

　　One can assume that... (presumably!)

　　From this result it follows that... (= thus, hence, therefore)

　　We must not take it for granted that ... (= unlikely)

　　Note that the examples above are followed in parentheses by a word or words with the potential to head the offending sentence off in a more promising direction. Sometimes a single well-chosen word is able to replace an entire phrase, simultaneously eliminating the need for at least one punctuation mark. Equally important, a remodeling in this sense often permits the true message of the sentence to migrate from an awkward subordinate clause to the main clause, where it belongs."

　　3) 寫文章不能用討審稿人打的時髦語，不能任意吹噓夸大影響。比如有的人說自己的實驗設計是"beautiful"，實驗結果是"amazing", "remarkable"，自己的催化劑是“超級穩定”，自己的薄膜是“超級薄”，在引言部分說自己的課題是“公眾都注意的北極星”，這樣必然招打。很簡單，什么是“超級穩定”的定義?最穩定就是轉化率一直100%不變，那么“超級穩定”究竟超級到什么程度?什么叫“超級薄”?最薄就一個原子的大小，“超級薄”能比一個原子還小嗎?

　　有的人寫文章引言夸大能源危機，搞得讀者人人自危，帽子雖然打，最后還是縮小到自己一個沒有意義的課題。那么，審稿人就要問：就憑你這點結果，你的催化劑能解決能源危機嗎?你的催化劑能工業化嗎?

　　Communicating Science: A Practical Guide一書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(插圖版)一書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) 鼓勵恰當地用主動語氣。以前很多老師都說寫科研論文要用被動語氣。其實，大家去讀Chemical Communications雜志，每一篇文章都讀，發現大多數的三頁文章里面至少有幾個主動句，有的有十幾個主動句。什么情況用被動句，什么情況用主動句?答案是大多數情況用被動句，特別是描述實驗方法。但是有的情況下用主動句有畫龍點睛的效果。仔細讀Chemical Communications雜志，發現的常見主動句是"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...".可見主動句有幾種，第一種是在引言中說我們發現了什么;第二中是說我們認為什么，是提建議的;第三種是說為了證明什么，我們做了進一步的實驗。有了這些主動句，文章就更加神采飛揚了。

　　為了說明我的話是合理的，我舉How to Write a Successful Science Thesis (Wiley-VCH)一書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) 注意段落的長度和結構，注意起承轉合、行云流水、收發自如!讀間行打印的原始稿件，如果一段話占據一頁，就太長了。一般6-15行是正常范圍。How to Write a Successful Science Thesis (Wiley-VCH)一書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."

　　一篇好文章的總體結構見The Longman Practical Stylist一書：龍頭，鳳尾，豬肚。寫引言的時候從一個吸引廣大讀者的寬泛的概念聚焦到本文要描述的實驗，由大到小，倒金字塔結構。最后收尾的時候，從本文具體的結論展望到未來，由小到大，金字塔結構。

　　6) 文章要寫得花妙，還得注意結尾部分。就是說，文章寫到最后，不能嘎然而止，而要說清楚本文的意義、對這個領域的貢獻、本文的局限性和下一步可以怎么做。這樣，讀起來有意猶未盡的感覺。How to Write a Successful Science Thesis (Wiley-VCH)一書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."

　　寫了那么多“秘訣”，覺得科研寫作的確是奧妙無窮的。說到這里，舉一個例子：最近讀到一篇奇文。這篇文章講的是超高真空表面化學，只有一張圖，一個示意圖，居然能中德國應用化學會志。