Interlude: Writing Voice, Latin Abbreviations, and Retraction Reporting

A common mantra among editors is to "maintain the author's voice."

I've been thinking about this mantra a lot and what it really means.

When we think of an author's voice, we often think about an author's personal style in writing, or how their personality comes through on the page.

Some people even refer to an author's voice as their natural voice.

But I would argue that this voice is the author's habitual voice.

This habitual voice is created as an author picks up a series of writing habits based on the writing they've read or been inspired by.

So if you were inspired by good writing, you picked up good writing habits. And if you were inspired by poor writing, you likely picked up poor writing habits.

So if you happened to read a lot of articles that had inspiring science but were written poorly (which is all too common in the literature), then there is a good chance you picked up poor writing habits.

The good news is that this means that your writing voice isn't a reflection of your personality or personal style. And it isn't permanent. Like any behavior, it can be changed.

So as an editor, I think that the mantra of "maintain the author's voice" needs updating. Maybe instead, we need to "enrich the author's voice."

What do you think?

Now onto this week's round-up...

💌 Round-up

🎉 Featured

An idea to explore: Student-centered scientific and medical writing project and workshop for undergraduate students​
I was delighted to learn that my website was highlighted in this article about a scientific writing project for undergraduate students to learn to write for lay and expert audiences.

💻 From My Desk

How to Use Common Latin Abbreviations in Scientific Writing​
Latin abbreviations are a great way to condense your text. But some scientific and medical authors interchange them or use them incorrectly. With this list, you can ensure you use the correct Latin abbreviations in your writing.

👓 Reading

Using GPT-4 to write a scientific review article: a pilot evaluation study​
“In this study, we evaluated the capabilities of the language model GPT-4 within ChatGPT for composing a biomedical review article. We focused on four key areas: (1) summarizing insights from reference papers; (2) generating text content based on these insights; (3) suggesting avenues for future research; and (4) creating tables and graphs. GPT-4 exhibited commendable performance in the first three tasks but was unable to fulfill the fourth.”

​NISO Publishes Recommended Practice for the Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern (CREC)
​“The NISO Recommended Practice establishes best practices for the creation, transfer, and display of retraction-related metadata, ensuring that participants (publishers, aggregators, full-text hosts, libraries, and researchers) can communicate retraction information quickly and enabling readers who discover a publication to readily identify its status.”

✅ Action

Take a moment to think about your writing voice. Do you want to change it in some way? If so, write down what you'd like to do differently on a sticky note, and place the note where you will see it while you are writing.

Thank you so much for reading.

Warmly,

Crystal