Ethan George

Writing 2

Smith

April 24 2020

WP1: 1st Draft

In light of the fact that a biochemistry undergraduate major does not have much

experience with professional writing conventions outside of the STEM field. The

discipline of analysis for this project will be chemistry. Chemistry is a complicated

discipline in terms of its general writing conventions. Professional chemists, and many

scientists in general, lack sympathy for those uneducated on their subject of discourse

and make this known in their reports and articles. For the most part, their writing is

simply a generalization of experimental procedures and results that are very

informative, to-the-point, and meant to be understood by those in the same field of

study. With that being said, I, a first-year biochemistry undergraduate student with

elementary understanding of sophisticated chemical principles, lacked any true

understanding of the experimental processes, principles, or applications of any of the

scientific reports I encountered.

However, I was, in fact, able to determine them as chemistry related and found

significant parallels in writing structure, citations, and use of visual representations.

These simple similarities mixed with practical expressions of chemical knowledge in

different fields make up the jargon1 we, colloquial speakers, couldn’t imagine

understanding. This same jargon is the basis of writing in the discipline of chemistry.

As previously stated, each lab report or discussion in the chemistry discipline is

straight to the point and very literal. Unlike historical writing or other complex forms, the

choice of wording to title the document refers to a very specific chemical reaction and

how it applies to the real world.

For instance, an analysis of how a specific catalyst can speed up the transition of

a harmful greenhouse gas into a clean, eco friendly substance would be created in

professional terms relating definitively to the experiment, its procedure, and the

chemicals used. It is inferred that the person studying this experiment knows the

applications to the real world such as how this particular study aims to reduce air

pollution in automotives.

This is something I would define as passive specificity (yes, I came up with this

myself). Professional chemists speak with the inference that their audience has gone

through the same years of “basic” preliminary undergraduate and graduate school

prerequisites as themselves. With this in mind, they feel no need to “sugar-coat” or walk

through elementary steps of concepts that should already be mutually understood. This

passive specificity is prominent in many other scientific research and makes it easy for

someone seeking specific information to find exactly what they are looking for.

The writings are very concise and condensed with information relevant to that

specific experiment or study. There is no exposition or context outside the very specific

1
Referring to “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)” by Janet Boyd and her definition of “Jargon” in terms of
genres
experiment being analyzed or described. The complex scientific language and lack of

thorough explanation makes it known that the rea

der is expected to have an advanced prior understanding of the specific reaction

and that the reports promote alternative solutions or perspective to whatever the conflict

of study is.

Visual figures and candid descriptions are necessary when presenting the

information in the reports. These include different graphs and tables that correlate with

the experimental results. Visuals don’t require much explanation other than simple

labels and graph titles. Researchers are expected to see the trends and be able to read

the data and determine its relevance by themselves.

“Good” lab reports are often between one and four pages and only include

important aspects of experimental data without disruption. The most important trends

and discoveries are presented early and are followed by developed reasoning then

worldly applications, steps on how to duplicate the experiment, or ways that made

results specific to a single experiment or study.

In a way, these reports are similar to the first few paragraphs of a news article.

The early sentences are loaded with the information most relevant to the reader. In the

case of chemistry, the early pieces of the writing includes what happened, how it

happened, and why it happened. Depending on the study, scientists may go on to relate

these results to clinical or physical applications, however, these aren’t really necessary

in an experimental lab report because the interpretation of an experiment by a single

scientist is not really important until that interpretation is considered valid by the science

community.

Discourse is fact-based and only supported through experimental trends. The

title and abstract allow a researcher to know exactly what conflict or study will be

discussed and how it was achieved. The simple goal of virtually all scientific reports and

analyses is to inform other scientists that are studying in similar fields of recorded

experimental results in a way that can be checked and/or recreated.

The only forms of evidence accepted in the chemistry discipline are experimental

data trends or previously confirmed trends justified and accepted by the chemistry

department. The evidence presented is checked by multiple scientists through

experimental replication before any new idea or theory can be considered proven fact

by the science community. The writing structure makes it easy for other scientists to

understand test variables and reproduce results.