Editing Guide to technical writing (section)

===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..."