Book Reviews Writing Science in Plain English.

Writing in science has reached an all-time nadir and has become practically unintelligible to all but special-ists in narrow fields. Professional articles on science are burdened by cumbersome expression, poor gram-mar, and a concomitant lack of precision and clarity. Accordingly, there is a great need for a primer of scientific writing. The brief book ‘‘Writing Science in Plain English’ ’ addresses that need. Authors in science commonly justify needless jargon and ineffective communication. The most common way is to excuse it with ‘‘that is the way it is said in my field,’ ’ with little, or no, regard to how it ought to be said in that field. A second fre-quent response is ‘‘everybody knows what I mean.’’ That likely is not true; yet, even if it were, it is scarce justification for substandard communication. Were I to say ‘‘him and me is scientists’ ’ everyone would understand my meaning, but such an expression would not be allowed in a scientific journal (I hope). Author, Anne Greene, poses the question in Chapter 1: ‘‘Why does this epidemic of poor scien-tific writing matter?’ ’ The reasons she provides are: (1) it hinders the flow of information among scien-tists and makes it difficult to apply discoveries from one field to another and (2) it is partly responsible for a declining scientific literacy on the part of the public. She raises hope by explaining that adherence to a few simple rules can improve communication in science. Presenting those rules in later chapters, she offers carefully selected examples both of good and of bad writing. Readers are offered practice in apply-ing these rules by revising sample passages. In Chapter 2 she recommends planning before writing begins, then contrasts different registers of writing: informal, popular, conventional, and abstract. She explains the type of audience for which each is applicable. Finally, she addresses the importance of the tone of articles. Chapter 3 reviews the use of nouns and verbs. Advice is given to use strong verbs and to locate subjects close to their corresponding verbs, thereby increasing the clarity of the sentence