How should I respond to a supervisor/editor who thinks my technical writing is "too conversational?"
My team and I are drafting a technical report to summarize the methods and results of a pilot study we recently conducted. After drafting a handful of sections, I passed them off to our supervisor for revisions and suggestions. One comment he repeated several times was that parts of my text sounded "too conversational." I think he meant that I didn't sound professional or academic enough. He also suggested revisions that increased the word count and complexity of the sentences without adding any additional meaning. I disagree with those comments and I don't like the suggested edits, and here's why:
I always strive for clarity and brevity. I avoid using slang or colloquialisms, but I never add extra words (or extra-technical words) just to "sound smart." I believe that sometimes (always?), simple language is best. I also believe the impenetrable "academic" writing style of many scientists is a major shortcoming - it only hinders communication among scientists and isolates us from the public, who can't make sense of what we're trying to say. The higher word counts, more complex sentence structures, and lack of additional meaning in the revisions were a clear sign (to me, at least) that he was taking things in the wrong direction. I know there's room for subjectivity, but I honestly think the sentences I crafted are just better - and I don't want to trash them.
So, how can I respond politely to my supervisor without ruffling any feathers? If I were to defend my writing, I feel like I'd be calling his own writing skills and workplace authority into question. At the same time, I take pride in my writing and I want my published documents to reflect that.
And in a broader sense, how can we as writers rebut our editor's/supervisor's/thesis advisor's criticisms when we think they are clearly misguided? I don't think we should just "go along with it" and let them sully our writing, especially if our own names will be on the published document. How have other authors in the community approached this problem?
Edit: here's an example. My writing:
When the difference between unique observations was greater than 10% water cover, or when cover percentages did not equal 100%, points were discarded.
23 words, one sentence.
His feedback:
Too conversational:
Try To reduce sampling bias, input data points were removed when variance was greater than 10% between independent observations. Input data points were also removed if the percent cover class did not equal 100%.
33 words, two sentences. The only additional meaning added here is "to reduce sampling bias, which could be added to my sentence if it was important (IMO it's already obvious, given the context).
Anyways, two days later I'm not really as worked up about it anymore. This particular example was one of the most egregious, and in hindsight it doesn't seem like my text is near-perfect or that his edits are really that much worse. However, I still think this is an important question, and one I have been dealing with for a long time. This stuff comes up too often, because a lot of people in science just don't seem to care about writing, or they think they care but they never do anything to actually improve. So, I'm asking for help in this specific instance, but also for guidance on how to handle these situations more generally.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/34591. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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There have been significant changes in technical communication style over the last 20 years, and particularly in the last five years as increasing volumes of evidence have shown that simple friendly language is both easier to understand and more respected by users.
But it sounds like your supervisor is a stickler and the way you convince a stickler is by citing an authoritative source. So here is that source. There are few works on technical communication style that are better established or more respected than the Microsoft Manual of Style. That manual has recently undergone a major update to bring it into line with modern practice and research. You can find it on line here: Microsoft Writing Style Guide
Here are the top ten tips from that guide (see the guide for details and examples of each tip):
Use bigger ideas, fewer words: Our modern design hinges on crisp minimalism. Shorter is always better.
Write like you speak: Read your text aloud. Does it sound like something a real person would say? Be friendly and conversational.
Project friendliness: Use contractions: it’s, you’ll, you’re, we’re, let’s.
Get to the point fast: Lead with what’s most important. Front-load keywords for scanning. Make customer choices and next steps obvious.
Be brief: Give customers just enough information to make decisions confidently.
When in doubt, don’t capitalize: Default to sentence-style capitalization—capitalize only the first word of a heading or phrase and any proper nouns or names.
Skip periods (and : ! ?): Skip end punctuation on titles, headings, subheads, UI titles, and items in a list that are three or fewer words. Save the periods for paragraphs and body copy.
Remember the last comma: In a list of three or more items, include a comma before the conjunction.
Don’t be spacey: Use only one space after periods, question marks, and colons—and no spaces around dashes.
Revise weak writing: Most of the time, start each statement with a verb. Edit out you can and there is, there are, there were.
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How should you respond? Take a careful and critical look at your own writing, and - in effect - do as your supervisor has suggested.
We all get attached to our own writing, word choice, phrases, and so on. Writers (novelists) are often given the advice to root their favourite, overused phrases and kill them off. As far as academic/technical writing is concerned, the responsibility lies with the author to make it understandable to the reader, and I agree entirely that clear and concise language is to be preferred. But that doesn't mean that the style of writing should be "chatty" or "informal".
To be honest, you sound too wedded to your own writing style; when comments like this come back from a future reviewer of your work - whether that's academic papers, or feedback from the people who read the report - you simply cannot argue with them that they are wrong and you are right. You have to be willing to bend, and to learn from the input of supervisors, editors, reviewers and so forth.
"Too informal" is how - in my experience - I would describe most writing from most undergraduate and graduate students (that, or overly grandiose). Learning to write well takes time, it takes feedback, and it takes humility. If you revise as suggested you are likely to end up with a more solid piece of work - this is my my experience from both sides of this scenario.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34599. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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