I work at a small publishing house specialized in medical literature. This year we had an editor who had majored in Latin, and he urged us to bring the style of the classical humanities to our physical sciences niche. For example, he said we should follow Aristotle’s rhetorical advice (announce what you’ll say, then say it, then said what you just said), and insisted that the appeal to authority was valid because we always had to cite sources.
Eventually he left the company for his own reasons, but this made me think about the different assumptions about writing that people can have, depending on their background. This guy believed any attempt at communication was unavoidably ambiguous because that’s the way language works. I try to make my writing efficient and clear because I believe language should be transparent.
Perhaps what you already believe about language will shape what you will strive for in your writing.
I think a transparent style is what you need in medical literature. Repeating yourself certainly aids clarity, as long as you aren’t annoying your reader. Giving summaries at the beginning is great. Don’t save the “punchline” of the result for the end, that’s for literature and some journalism, not anything academic.
I don’t know that the classical humanities can lay claim to these ideas though.
I work at a small publishing house specialized in medical literature. This year we had an editor who had majored in Latin, and he urged us to bring the style of the classical humanities to our physical sciences niche. For example, he said we should follow Aristotle’s rhetorical advice (announce what you’ll say, then say it, then said what you just said), and insisted that the appeal to authority was valid because we always had to cite sources.
Eventually he left the company for his own reasons, but this made me think about the different assumptions about writing that people can have, depending on their background. This guy believed any attempt at communication was unavoidably ambiguous because that’s the way language works. I try to make my writing efficient and clear because I believe language should be transparent.
Perhaps what you already believe about language will shape what you will strive for in your writing.
I think a transparent style is what you need in medical literature. Repeating yourself certainly aids clarity, as long as you aren’t annoying your reader. Giving summaries at the beginning is great. Don’t save the “punchline” of the result for the end, that’s for literature and some journalism, not anything academic.
I don’t know that the classical humanities can lay claim to these ideas though.