The Handbook of the Biology of Aging has serious flaws if its purpose is to communciate with non-experts
What makes an effective sentence for transmitting academic information to a newcomer to the field?
Information has to be intelligible to the reader
Wordcount, word complexity, and sentence complexity should minimal
Information has to be important
Let’s ignore the issue of trustworthiness, as well as the other purposes academic writing can serve.
With these three criteria in mind, how does the first sentence of Ch. 3 of the Handbook of the Biology of Aging fare?
Replicative cell senescence was first described in 1961 by Len Hayflick as reproducible, permanent loss of the replicative capacity of human primary fibroblasts during in vitro culture (Hayflick & Moorhead, 1961).
There are several problems with unimportant information or verbiage.
“Replicative” qualifies “cell senescence,” but we never hear about any other kinds of cell senescence in this paragraph, so it seems redundant.
“was first described in 1961 by Len Hayflick as” is not important to the reader at this stage.
Does “reproducible” mean “scientifically reproducible?” Isn’t that a criteria for any scientific phenomenon.
“of human primary fibroblasts during in vitro culture” OK, but this is definitely not what we are talking about when we discuss cell senescence in human aging, so is this really the most relevant definition with which you could have kicked off the chapter? Plus, can’t non-human cells senesce?
“(Hayflick & Moorhead, 1961)” we should replace inline citations with a footnoted summary (or better yet a hyperlink or hovertext).
I want to single out a verbal pattern I hate: Z of Y of X.
“reproducible, permanent loss of the replicative capacity of human primary fibroblasts”
Z: “reproducible, permanent loss”
Y: “the replicative capacity”
X: “human primary fibroblasts”
A sentence should be like a movie. Every word lets you picture something new.
Z of Y of X prevents this. It tells you the things to picture in the wrong order. There’s nothing to picture until you get all the way to X. Then you have to fight your impulse to read on, because you still have to construct your mental picture.
Here’s the same phrase in the improved form, X of Y of Z:
“Human primary fibroblast replicative capacity is reproducibly, permanently lost.”
This still isn’t great as an introduction, because it’s almost all jargon words. But the form is a big improvement.
Better still:
“Animal cells permanently stop being able to replicate.”
Here’s how I might rewrite the sentence as a whole:
When animal cells permanently stop being able to replicate, this is called ‘cell senescence’.
The Handbook of the Biology of Aging has serious flaws if its purpose is to communciate with non-experts
What makes an effective sentence for transmitting academic information to a newcomer to the field?
Information has to be intelligible to the reader
Wordcount, word complexity, and sentence complexity should minimal
Information has to be important
Let’s ignore the issue of trustworthiness, as well as the other purposes academic writing can serve.
With these three criteria in mind, how does the first sentence of Ch. 3 of the Handbook of the Biology of Aging fare?
There are several problems with unimportant information or verbiage.
“Replicative” qualifies “cell senescence,” but we never hear about any other kinds of cell senescence in this paragraph, so it seems redundant.
“was first described in 1961 by Len Hayflick as” is not important to the reader at this stage.
Does “reproducible” mean “scientifically reproducible?” Isn’t that a criteria for any scientific phenomenon.
“of human primary fibroblasts during in vitro culture” OK, but this is definitely not what we are talking about when we discuss cell senescence in human aging, so is this really the most relevant definition with which you could have kicked off the chapter? Plus, can’t non-human cells senesce?
“(Hayflick & Moorhead, 1961)” we should replace inline citations with a footnoted summary (or better yet a hyperlink or hovertext).
I want to single out a verbal pattern I hate: Z of Y of X.
“reproducible, permanent loss of the replicative capacity of human primary fibroblasts”
Z: “reproducible, permanent loss”
Y: “the replicative capacity”
X: “human primary fibroblasts”
A sentence should be like a movie. Every word lets you picture something new.
Z of Y of X prevents this. It tells you the things to picture in the wrong order. There’s nothing to picture until you get all the way to X. Then you have to fight your impulse to read on, because you still have to construct your mental picture.
Here’s the same phrase in the improved form, X of Y of Z:
“Human primary fibroblast replicative capacity is reproducibly, permanently lost.”
This still isn’t great as an introduction, because it’s almost all jargon words. But the form is a big improvement.
Better still:
“Animal cells permanently stop being able to replicate.”
Here’s how I might rewrite the sentence as a whole:
When animal cells permanently stop being able to replicate, this is called ‘cell senescence’.