Writes and Write-nots

Writing is inherently difficult. In his recent essay Paul Graham argues that in about 20 years not many people will possess strong writing skills delegating the job to AI in professional and educational settings. This will divide a world into writes and write-nots without the middle ground. Will it be a world of thinks and think-nots bearing in mind that writing requires clear thinking?

Essay

With the festive period over, we can happily go back to our work!

We hope you feel your workplace and your colleagues are your second home and your family. May 2025 bring you interesting and promising projects that will keep you motivated and enthusiastic to go forward and meet the deadlines. And of-course we expect you to have your outstanding research findings published! We are always there to help you with editing and proofreading your texts.

You can always apply for a free consultation via awl@itmo.ru

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Some words and phrases have become red flags for research writers as they pop up as AI-generated content.

Why did it happen?
The answer lies in the way AI models are trained. They are mostly fed on the texts from books, articles, and websites that feature the same formal vocabulary and patterns. Consistency is the AI strength and weakness. Interestingly, some research writers share this feature sticking to what they know to work, and  repetitively use certain words and phrases.

What to do?
Avoid predictability by diversifying your language. Overused repeated patterns result in an AI detector's educated guess that a text might not be entirely human and in the text becoming almost meaningless.

Hyphen (-) joins two or more words to show that they have a combined meaning.

Examples: three-digit, low-to-middle-income, real-world, self-correction, school-like environment, charge-discharge efficiency

Голос автора: тише воды, ниже травы

Дмитрий Щербинин, кандидат физико-математических наук, старший научный сотрудник лаборатории нелинейной оптики конденсированных сред МНОЦ Физики Наноструктур, и Юлия Рябухина, доцент, кандидат филологических наук, обсудят, как изменилось отношение к голосу автора в современном научном тексте

В последнее десятилетие в повествование в научном письме перестает быть обезличенным, и присутствие автора в тексте все более заметно - автор активен. Вспомните, еще совсем недавно все гайдлайны говорили, что надо избегать личных местоимений, что надо использовать фразы в духе "было показано, что…”, "В работе исследуется...", "Впервые демонстрируется.... ". Сейчас же в рекомендациях для авторов мы видим, что следует избегать чрезмерного использования страдательного залога, громоздких сложных предложений, и обезличенных конструкций. Начался период когда автор получил право на голос. Но это только первые шаги. А может ли автор привносить в научный текст цитаты из популярной культуры, строить аллегорические образы для лучшего понимания работы, напрямую писать, что нечто произошло волею случая, а что-то так до сих пор и осталось за гранью его понимания, или даже шутить в тексте научной статьи? Не приводит ли это к размыванию научного результата?

Разберем и обсудим эти вопросы на реальном примере статьи Butterflies and bifurcations in surface radio-frequency traps: The diversity of routes to chaos
опубликованной в журнале AIP CHAOS, с одним из ее соавторов

➔ 24 февраля, 19:00
➔ Формат: онлайн
➔ Форма регистрации

Начнем через 10 минут!
https://itmo.zoom.us/j/82993823522

Dash (—)/(–) separates or connects words or groups of words to introduce a clarification or a range.

Further effects must contribute to the dominant nature of this mutation — only one of the two copies of the gene needs to be mutated to cause the disease.

Dipole disorder has been reported to enhance the piezoelectric effect — the conversion of strain to electrical charge — in a nonlinear dielectric.

Where will you use the dash and where will you use the hyphen?

Lithium … ion batteries, for example, can store a lot of energy, but their energy-delivery speeds … their power densities … are limited by the slow kinetics of the electrochemical processes that control discharge in these devices.

Lithium-ion batteries, for example, can store a lot of energy, but their energy-delivery speeds — their power densities — are limited by the slow kinetics of the electrochemical processes that control discharge in these devices.

Roman Zakoldaev invites you to talk about possible ways for a researcher to communicate in the global scientific community. You will discuss:

▪ what impact on a scientist's career publications have
▪ what formats of publications are effective
▪ how to make your synopsis work for you
▪ how to balance your research and other activities

Registration

Em Dashes (—), En Dashes (–)
Why are they em dashes and en dashes?

The em dash is about the same width as the letter M, and the en dash is just about the same width as the letter N.

En Dashes (–) are mainly used between numbers, dates, or other notations to signify “(up) to and including.” When an en dash is inserted, it does not have spaces on either side.

✔️World War II (1939–1945) significantly changed the balance of power worldwide.
✔️The university main hall will be closed August 1–August 31.
✔️The review spans pages 128–34.


Em Dashes (—) are used to emphasize additional information that elaborates on some details and are spaced on both sides.

✔️Gu and colleagues hypothesised that the characteristic oscillation period is proportional to the size of the system — the space to which people are confined — and that there are no intrinsic reasons why the oscillations should spin one way or another.

✔️The authors disrupted the antiparallel dipole arrangement of lead zirconate by introducing regions of non-polar dielectrics — materials that host dipoles much smaller than those of antiferroelectrics, but only under an applied electric field.

✔️Techniques such as atomic layer deposition — in which atomically thin sheets of a material form from reactions of gaseous precursors at the surface of a substrate — have enabled antiferroelectric capacitors to be prepared across silicon wafers at low temperatures compatible with processes used to make modern microelectronics.

Strong Verbs

Verbs denote actions, states, or occurrences, and they make sentences strong and powerful. The appropriate use of verbs helps express ideas accurately. Therefore, to give a sentence its full strength and keep it short, do not bury the action, state, or occurrence in a noun + weak verb phrase.

Compare!
▪The catalyst produced a significant increase in conversion rate.
▪The catalyst significantly increased the conversion rate.

make an examination of …
✅ examine

present a comparison of …
✅ compare

be in agreement …
✅ agree

perform an analysis of …
✅ analyze

produce an improvement of …
✅ improve

make measurements …
✅ measure

make an impression …
✅ impress

Somewhere in 1830-ies, at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Cambridge, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge made his point. He insisted that men of science should not be referred to as philosophers since they were typically digging, observing, mixing or electrifying – that is, they were empirical men of experimentation and not philosophers of ideas. Science was everyday labor, whereas philosophy was lofty thought. In response to Coleridge’s challenge William Whewell, the polymath, invented the term – “in analogy with artist we form scientist”.

Curiously, this perfect linguistic accommodation of workmanship and inspiration was n'ot readily accepted. It took about thirty years and scientist first came into popular use in the US before being adopted by GB.

❓❓❓
What were all of them called - from the times of Aristotle and including Newton, Galileo, Mendel, Galen? All those who we would refer to as scientists today?

Natural Philosophers