{"id":1843,"date":"2016-06-22T08:08:07","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T08:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/?p=1843"},"modified":"2018-05-21T18:00:03","modified_gmt":"2018-05-21T12:30:03","slug":"why-you-should-avoid-purple-prose-in-academic-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/why-you-should-avoid-purple-prose-in-academic-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Why You Should Avoid Purple Prose in Academic Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Authors are understandably excited about the results of their research and aren\u2019t always modest about trumpeting it. A finding is often described as novel, unique, the first such result\u00a0ever published. Results may not be merely interesting, but remarkable, intriguing, and unprecedented. Words alone may fail to do justice to the occasion so <a href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/should-you-italicize-latin-terms-in-scientific-writing\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">extra emphasis is added by italics<\/a> and exclamation marks: &#8220;<em>Our study is the\u00a0first example of &#8230;!<\/em>&#8221; Although this tendency is understandable, it\u2019s not appropriate\u00a0form. Whenever you find yourself writing purple prose, resist the urge and stick to black and white. Too much enthusiasm not only looks bad, it can prevent your paper from being published.<\/p>\n<p>Most journals discourage the use of \u201csubjective evaluation language\u201d in manuscripts and sometimes forbid it. Here is what the <em>Journal of Organic Chemistry<\/em> has to say on the subject: \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/writing-title-page-part-1\/\">Manuscript <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/writing-title-page-part-2\/\">titles <\/a>should not make claims of priority, originality, convenience, effectiveness, or value. For example, the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/commonly-confused-english-words\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">words<\/a> \u201cconvenient,\u201d \u201cefficient,\u201d \u201celegant,\u201d \u201cexpedient,\u201d &#8220;facile,&#8221; \u201cfirst,\u201d &#8220;new,&#8221; \u201cnovel,\u201d &#8220;practical,&#8221; &#8220;simple,&#8221; \u201cunique,\u201d \u201cunprecedented,\u201d and &#8220;versatile&#8221; should not be used. In addition, editors may ask authors to moderate or remove what they judge to be excessive use of subjective evaluative language elsewhere in manuscripts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Why do journals discourage this sort of enthusiasm? Partly because it is a waste of space. Journal articles are long enough already without the addition of what are essentially filler words. Most publications contain something that is new, so why state it in the title? This only serves to make the title \u201cread long.\u201d The goal of scientific writing should be clarity and conciseness. If an aspect of the work is really novel it may be appropriate to state this in the text, but the bar should be high\u2014not just run of the mill new, but startlingly unexpected.<\/p>\n<p>I find it annoying\u00a0to have an author tell me something is interesting or remarkable. Isn\u2019t that for me to determine? Writers should bear in mind that the readers are pretty smart. If your results are remarkable, the readers will know it without any coaching.<\/p>\n<p>For <em>Journal of Organic Chemistry<\/em> author guidelines on subjective evaluative language see page 6 of the following link:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/paragonplus\/submission\/joceah\/joceah_authguide.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" class=\"broken_link\">http:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/paragonplus\/submission\/joceah\/joceah_authguide.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"display:flex; gap:10px;justify-content:\" class=\"wps-pgfw-pdf-generate-icon__wrapper-frontend\">\n\t\t<a  href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1843?action=genpdf&amp;id=1843\" class=\"pgfw-single-pdf-download-button\" ><img data-src=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-content\/plugins\/pdf-generator-for-wp\/admin\/src\/images\/PDF_Tray.svg\" title=\"Generate PDF\" style=\"width:auto; height:45px;\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\"><\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Authors are understandably excited about the results of their research and aren\u2019t always modest about&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[747,2],"tags":[1452],"ppma_author":[1895],"class_list":["post-1843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content-structure","category-academic-writing","tag-manuscript-drafting-tips"],"better_featured_image":{"id":1844,"alt_text":"Writing Research 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The team, which comprises subject matter experts, academicians, trainers, and technical project managers, are passionate about helping researchers at all levels establish a successful career, both within and outside academia."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1843"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}