Editing Guide to technical writing (section)

==Tone==
The tone of your writing is important in order for it to be acceptable to a technical journal. Aim for your writing to:

* be formal
* be dispassionate
* avoid the passive voice, except when needed

===Formal versus informal word usage===

In scientific writing for journals and your thesis, you need to avoid informal words and use a formal equivalent. If you are writing a popular magazine article, then these requirements can be ignored.  Here is a list of words to watch out for:

* Remove all contractions, as they are informal. For example, don't → do not, doesn't → does not, can't → cannot
* Avoid the use of the first person, "I" in technical writing, or "my."   "We" and "our" is okay. The first person is considered a little too informal by many reviewers and examiners. The objective is not to annoy the reader.
* Avoid the possessive form for technical words:  "the voltage's magnitude" → "the magnitude of the voltage"
* Amazing → significant
* Beautiful → elegant
* Big → large
* Bigger → larger
* Cheap → low cost
* Do → carry out; perform; conduct
* Done → carried out; performed; conducted
* Enormous → very large
* Fantastic → significant
* Get → obtain
* Great → significant
* Happen → occur
* Help → assist
* Huge → very large
* Humungous → extremely large
* Like → such as
* Marvelous → significant
* Seems  →  appears
* Some → a number of
* Splendid → significant
* Tiny → small
* Try  → attempt
* Wonderful → significant

Note: Whilst we should avoid the above informal words there are some rare exceptions.  From example the word "big" is informal, but it has now become a special scientific phrase when we talk about ''big data''.  In a specific case such as this "big data" has become an acceptable phrase in the literature. 

===Dispassionate tone===

Of course you must be completely passionate to be successful at your PhD. You need to be passionate about your research and passionate to share your exciting results by publishing. When we do technical writing the ''tone'' must be dispassionate, but you as a person can still be passionate!   So what do we really mean by a dispassionate tone?  We simply mean that you must remove emotional words from a scientific description.  The science is about logic not emotion.  So the emotional words have no place in your thesis or papers. You can use a little emotion in an acknowledgement section, because that is not the scientific part of the paper. When replying to reviews of your paper always remove any emotive words, even if you feel like strangling the reviewer. And when you become a reviewer, your report should also be dispassionate.

Another exception is grant applications. A grant application has two parts:  (a) a technical project description that is objective, and (b) a part that wants discussion about national benefit and significance, which is partly subjective.   You must not use emotional words in the technical part.  But in the subjective part you can get away with a few words that convey excitement, but don't overdo it.

Here's two examples of emotion in a technical paper and how to write them correctly:

* '''Positive emotion:''' "This is an exciting development."    '''Dispassionate version:''' "This is a significant development because..."
* '''Negative emotion:''' "The measurement procedure is frustrating."  '''Dispassionate version:''' "The measurement procedure has difficulties due to..."

===Passive voice===

If you overuse the passive voice your writing can sound cumbersome.  When you minimize it the writing sounds more dynamic. To see a number of examples to understand the passive voice, see [http://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/grammar/passive here].

*Example when to avoid the passive voice

::'''Passive voice:''' 	"The current is amplified by a transistor."
::'''Active voice:''' 	"A transistor amplifies the current."

As you can see, the second option is much smoother and shorter.

*Example when the passive voice is useful

::'''Passive voice:'''   "The current is increased through the motor."
::'''Active voice:'''    "I increase the current through the motor."

Here the passive voice is useful because in a technical paper it is unimportant who actually increased the current.  The passive voice keeps it general.