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Did anyone else browse the current issue of Nature, spot this article’s title, and think it was going to be a self-help piece for addicts?
Just me?
Carry on.

During the last few months of my postdoc, I found myself writing three papers simultaneously. One of the papers contained results contributed by two students I’d supervised, so I decided that this would be the perfect time to let the graduate student dip his toe into the shark-infested waters of academic writing. I provided him with an outline of the whole paper, and we discussed which of his results to include and how they might fit into the discussion. He came back to me a couple of weeks later with drafts of partial results and discussion sections.

The discussion was hilarious. It began with the phrase “The human genome is a motley harlequin”, and became even more eccentric as it progressed. It was wonderful stuff. I loved it.

But I knew I couldn’t use it.

A little part of me died as I took out my red pen and rewrote his words in a more conventional academic style.

The student’s second draft was much less interesting, and required less red ink.

Jenny’s recent post about “the untold narrative behind the precise dryness of scientific papers”, and the discussion in the comments, brought back memories of this episode. With perfect timing, I went on to spend the next couple of days editing two new graduate students’ funding applications, and encountered further red pen fodder.

Cath prepares to crush another student’s soul

“Motely [sic] crew” (what is it with motley students?) was transformed to the more conventional “multidisciplinary team”. “Erudite shrewdness” was deleted entirely.
My exact feedback to one of the students was as follows:

On a more general note, I found that both sections had the wrong tone and style for a funding application. Part of the process of submitting this proposal is to learn grantsmanship skills, something the panel will take into account when reviewing your application. I suggest that you use a more scholarly tone that better reflects the conventions of academic writing; they are there for a reason. Specifically, phrases such as “erudite shrewdness” and “motley crew” are out of place and inappropriate.

Yeah… deadlines were approaching, and patience was in short supply. Not wanting to be a total bitch though, I followed up with “I would be very happy to review a revised version of these sections. And don’t worry, this is all part of the learning process that is grad school!”

The version that came back was much more boring conventional, and was accompanied by a rather dejected-sounding email. Man, I felt evil. I replied with “Always remember that no-one is born knowing how to do this stuff! The more high quality research proposals and reports you can read, the faster you will pick it up”.

The conventions of formal academic writing are there for a reason. And students need to learn to (mostly) conform to them. It’s almost a code, a language that helps to convey the necessary information in as concise a way as possible. There is room for individuality (and good and bad writing) within these conventions – but not much.

Assimilation is inevitable.

Thank goodness scientists have alternative outlets (such as blogs) for whimsy and jollity idiosyncratic and eccentric writing!

My husband and I bought our first house just over three years ago. We were complete newbies at this “proper grown-up” thing, and set up the mortgage in a way that makes our biweekly payments 100% predictable. We knew at the time that this might not be the optimal way of doing things, but agreed to go this route until we got used to the concept of fiscal responsibility and adjusted our budget to match the size of the payments.
So, fixed rate it is, despite the bank trying to persuade us to go variable. We no doubt missed out on some savings there. And we also decided to break our property tax payments into installments that get added to the biweekly mortgage payment, to avoid the scramble to find a big lump sum to pay to the city every six months (we were planning our wedding at the time and knew we’d be completely broke until that was over).
We had been planning to renegotiate all these factors when our initial five year fixed term ends in 2011, but the letter we got yesterday might accelerate that schedule. Here’s the first snippet:
We remitted a total of on your behalf for your property taxes due this current year. On Jun. 19, 2009, the balance in your Mortgage Property Tax Account was a surplus of .
This has happened before. I called to ask whether the surplus would be taken off our next mortgage payment, off the principal, or be transferred to our current account. They told me it would stay in our Property Tax Account, but they would not be reducing our future property tax payments. I told them this was not acceptable, and made them transfer the surplus into our current account (we used it to pay the wedding caterers). This necessitated a visit to my local branch, and the signing of a couple of forms. It took more paperwork to get them to reduce our property tax payments to avoid having a surplus the following year.
Back to yesterday’s letter:
Currently, we collect bi-weekly toward your Mortgage Property Tax Account. Effective Aug. 28, 2009, that amount will be + 9. As part of our annual review of the tax portion of your regular payment, we assume that next year's taxes will be the same as this year's taxes.
Erm, what? We have a surplus at the current level of payment (a surplus that I’m going to have to work to get back into an account that we can access), the total sum needed will stay the same, so you’re going to increase our payments??!! (And no, this isn’t to offset lower interest rates – I looked back at our original paperwork and that’s not how they calculate it).
Are you just sitting there in your offices, collecting interest on our money and laughing at us????!!!!
We’d already planned to see a financial adviser some time this year to discuss mortgages, savings, pensions, and investments, but I think that after reading this letter we’ll be making some calls this very weekend.