The Manual of Scientific Style A Guide for Authors, Editors, and Researchers First Edition Edited by Harold Rabinowitz and Suzanne Vogel Amsterdam • Boston • Heidelberg • London New York • Oxford • Pans • San Diego San Francisco • Singapore • Sydney • Tokyo Academic Press is an imprint of Elsevier Academic Press is an imprint of Elsevier 30 Corporate Drive, Suite 400, Burlington, MA 01803, USA 525 B Street, Suite 1900, San Diego, California 92101-4495, USA 84 Theobald's Road, London WC1X 8RR, UK This book is printed on acid-free paper. Copyright © 2009, Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Permissions may be sought directly from Elsevier’s Science & Technology Rights Department in Oxford, UK: phone: (+44) 1865 843830, fax: (+44) 1865 853333, E-mail: [email protected]. You may also complete your request online via the Elsevier homepage (http://elsevier.com), by selecting “Support & Contact” then “Copyright and Permission” and then “Obtaining Permissions.” Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Application Submitted British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-0-12-373980-3 For information on all Academic Press publications visit our Web site at www.books.elsevier.com PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 09 10 11 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Dedication To Mr. Murray Glass, who launched my ship, Rabbi Mark Cogan, who demanded that the ship be seaworthy, Dr. Ralph E. Behrends, who taught me how to row, and Dr. David Finkelstein, who taught me to love the ocean. HR To My Mom, Irene Greenstein My teacher in science, and in life SV Contents Note: A detailed Table of Contents for each chapter appears at the beginning of the chapter. Preface • vii Part I. The Elements of Scientific Style • 1 Chapter 1. Elements of Science Writing • 3 Chapter 2. Preparing the Manuscript • 89 Chapter 3. Elements of Style and Usage • 131 Chapter 4. Citations and References • 261 Chapter 5. Copyright and Permissions • 285 Part II. Style and Usage for Specific Disciplines • 299 Chapter 6. Style and Usage for Mathematics • 301 Chapter 7. Style and Usage for Physics • 325 Chapter 8. Style and Usage for Astronomy • 351 Chapter 9. Style and Usage for Chemistry • 375 Chapter 10. Style and Usage for Organic Chemistry • 399 Chapter 11. Style and Usage for Earth Science and Environmental Science • 427 Chapter 12. Style and Usage for Life Science • 469 Chapter 13. Style and Usage for Medical Science • 507 Part Three. Appendices • 543 Appendix A. Tables and Conventions for Mathematics • 545 Appendix B. Tables and Conventions for Physics • 603 Appendix C. Tables and Conventions for Astronomy • 643 Appendix D. Tables and Conventions for Chemistry • 699 Appendix E. Tables and Conventions for Organic Chemistry • 737 Appendix F. Tables and Conventions for Earth Science and Environmental Science • 767 Appendix G. Tables and Conventions for Life Science • 819 Appendix H. Tables and Conventions for Medical Science • 843 Appendix I. Further Reading and Resources • 925 Index • 933 Preface S o begins our journey. It is a journey that others have taken before us; in fact, in reaching our destination we will rely on the efforts of those who came before. Just as Columbus retraced steps taken by others before him (perhaps as long as two millennia before he sailed), so we gratefully acknowledge the work of those who went before. Yet, like the voyage of Columbus, there is a sense of beginning, a tenor to the enterprise that makes it a voyage of discovery. Those who came before Columbus came for their own benefit, to find wealth and riches in an untapped land. But Columbus came for other purposes as well: he sailed for king (and queen) and country and to establish trade dominance over the seas, and ultimately the globe. The sudden appearance of a continent barring the way to China was not a dis- appointment; it was an opportunity—to extend an empire and to provide a place for colonization. Columbus realized that his voyage would make history and that he would return, or that others would follow him. However well visited the Western Hemisphere may have been before Columbus, it was now indeed a New World. We have a similar sense of newness. The guidebooks on scientific style and writing that have appeared have grappled with many of the issues covered in this book and have provided much instruction of the ways of scientific discourse. The approach that we have adopted, though respectful, grateful, and admiring of previous efforts, differs from them somewhat in ways that bespeak a different set of values and guidelines. What is new is presented mainly in Chapter 1 of this work, and it may be summed up as follows: In addition to the importance of precision, clarity, and veracity in scientific reporting and discourse, there must also be a profound sense of reality—a connection to the genuine human thought processes that gave rise to theories; to the details and vicissitudes of the experiments that support one contention or another; to the real life circumstances of science and to the very human concerns that color what on the surface seem to be highly theoretical concerns, even when dealing with the hardware and measurements of the laboratory. vii Manual of Scientific Style This view of science was first explored in theory in Peter Galison’s How Experiments End (1987), and later (1997) demonstrated in his de- tailed history of microphysics, Image and Logic. (References for all chapters may be found in Appendix I.) The underlying point—that journal articles report what researchers believe happened in some idealized sense, and not what actually took place in the laboratory or in the field; or that theory is more often driven by hunches, inspirations, even dreams, than by the hard mathematical demonstrations on journal pages would allow one to believe—is now being understood as responsible for providing a much-needed corrective to the relationship between science and society. On the one hand, with so much at stake, personally and institution- ally, in the assessments made in what constitutes a productive avenue of research and what does not, it is vital that scientists convey their beliefs and findings with a clarity that goes beyond the mere formal require- ments of journal publication. If, for example, the Large Hadron Collider, (LHC) which has just begun operation beneath the French-Swiss border, corroborates the predictions of String Theory, then the decision not to build the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) in Texas will be viewed as having been short-sighted and detrimental to American leadership in high-energy physics. And if the rings of the LHC produce the largest null result in human history, then the discussion on the advisability of the SSC will begin anew, but with the severe disadvantage of the argument for its construction not having been made effectively in the early 1990s. On the other hand, public discourse on issues in which science has important things to say, such as the extent and severity of global warm- ing, to take one of many possible examples, needs to be informed by the most precise and cogent scientific writing possible if necessary steps (whatever they may be) are to be taken to deal with the issue. This is the new territory to be charted and which we explore here: how to navigate the human dimension of science—an enterprise that has often suppressed the humanity of the scientist, thus compromising or at least limiting the extent and richness of communicating science, both to the public and to other scientists. We hope readers will find the structure of the book straightforward and useful. Each chapter begins with a table of contents for that chapter. In Part I, we examine the elements of science writing, first regarding creating engaging, effective prose (Chapter 1); then preparing work for the various publication outlets for scientific material, with special em- phasis on preparing work for science journals and research-level publi- cations (Chapter 2); and then (in Chapter 3) presenting the general elements of style for English, with a focus on science writing, and ending viii Manual of Scientific Style with a list of words and phrases that are often misused or confused in sci- ence narrative at many levels of scientific sophistication. Part I ends with two chapters—Chapter 4, on the proper forms of citations and referencing of sources (unfortunately, still inconsistently framed, even in other style guides); and Chapter 5, on the legalities and practices of copyright protection and permission procurement. The concluding part of Chapter 2 contains guidelines on the design and creation of tables and other graphic material that may enhance or clarify the points being made in the writing. Though we have endeavored to present a helpful set of guidelines, the experience of working on this book has convinced us of the need for a thorough examination of this subject in a work with greater production values than the present volume—something to be addressed in sequels, we hope. Part II contains eight chapters on the style conventions and practices relevant to eight areas of science writing: mathematics; physics; astrono- my; chemistry; organic chemistry; earth and environmental sciences; life science; and medical science. Each chapter in Part II begins with a de- tailed Table of Contents for the chapter and ends, first with a list of the tables contained in the chapter, and then a list of the relevant tables con- tained in the Appendix chapter for that discipline in Part III. Part III then presents Appendices, one for each discipline, labeled Appendix A through Appendix H, and containing tables, lists, glos- saries, and diagrams that authors in these disciplines might find helpful. Some readers may argue that a list of journal abbreviations need not have been so extensive and others will wonder why the style guide to the spelling of proper names used to identify mathematical theorems is not longer. We acknowledge that both opinions may be correct. The final appendix, Appendix I, contains guidance on sources and further reading. The work ends with an Index. By “scientific writing” we mean the physical sciences, as opposed to the technological areas (usually subsumed under the rubric of “engineer- ing”), and the social sciences. There, too, other volumes would seem to be in order, so that we hope we will have the opportunity to continue with manuals of technological and social science style, as well as sci- entific illustration. The editors and publishers would be most grateful to readers who point out any corrections or failings that have managed to appear in this work in spite of our best efforts to eliminate any errors. This may be sent to the editors care of the publisher (see the contact in- formation on the copyright page), or readers may feel free to commu- nicate with the editors directly at [email protected]. We welcome any criticism, corrections, information, suggestions, or ad- vice that readers may offer, and we thank them in advance for taking the trouble of corresponding with us. ix Manual of Scientific Style One of the people to whom this work is dedicated was a fifth grade teacher in a small, Orthodox Jewish day school in the Williamsburg sec- tion of Brooklyn. He noticed a young boy’s interest in language and writing and he encouraged him; he even urged the principal of the school (another dedicatee) to “fund” a class newspaper the boy wanted to pro- duce. The teacher impressed upon the boy the need to “make every para- graph a home for ideas,” and to insist that every paragraph “earn its address”—which, of course, meant that every paragraph had to have an address. Thus began the practice (with this writer, at least) of numbering each paragraph, making certain that every sentence that “dwelled” in that paragraph was well-behaved; that every sentence and clause in it had its place there and was consonant with every other part of the dwelling; and that the paragraph made clear to everyone who visited it what the para- graph was saying and what sort of a “house” he or she was in. It was just a small leap from there to seeing how important it was to use these dwellings to create a street, a neighborhood, a town, a city. For the next five years, that boy and three like-minded friends pro- duced a class newspaper (the only publication produced by the students other than a yearbook), and would dutifully submit it to the principal for review on the first Monday of the month. The principal would correct any mistakes (which in those days meant retyping the entire page), but never once asked that any article’s message or content be changed. The principal, the most impeccably tailored rabbi that boy was ever to en- counter (in a life densely populated with rabbis of all stripes), remained a mentor and then friend to the boy for the next thirty years. In high school, during a hospital stay of several weeks, the boy discovered Isaac Asimov. At one point, the boy had convinced himself that “Isaac Asimov” was (like “Nikolas Bourbaki”) actually a group of people publishing under this collective name, for no one human being could possibly produce so much on so many different subjects. During that month of convalescence at the beginning of the school year, the boy continued reading Asimov (there seemed to be no end!) and tackled the opening chapters of an introductory college physics textbook borrowed by a friend from the Williamsburg branch of the Public Library. A month into his senior year, still in bandages, the boy returned to high school; it was the day of the physics midterm, and the teacher excused the boy from taking it. The boy asked if he could see it (“Let’s see what I’ve been missing,” he quipped) and instantly recognized the problems as those he had worked on from the physics textbook. Barely able to hold a pencil, the boy zipped through the exam and turned it in halfway through the period. The teacher smiled dismissively and told the boy to sit down as he glanced at what he was certain would be a paper filled with meaningless scribbling. As the boy, in pain and groggy from pain medi- x