Basic Scientific Writing in English Lecture 7

Professor Ralph Kirby Faculty of Life Sciences Extension 7323 Room B322

Active and passive voice for verbs

Inter-converting tenses between English and Chinese has many problems

Past, present and future can rely solely on context in Chinese. In English, it must be specified Whether the action has been completed or is intended to be completed is central to Chinese and has no real equivalent in English The passive voice of a verb has no real equivalent in Chinese

Active and Passive Voice

He studies the book. He studied the book. He will study the book.
These are all active voice as the person is directly involved

The book is studied by him. The book was studied by him. The book will be studied by him.
These are all passive voice as the subject of the sentence, the book is acted on by someone

 Classically in science:
The following results were obtained . . . . . We obtained the following results . . . . . Which is active and which is passive

British English scientists tend to overuse the passive compared to American English scientists. Chinese 1st language speakers very rarely use the passive when writing a paper Grammar checkers will highlight all passives as wrong? Is the passive voice always wrong. No!

 Some scientists would say that you should never use the passive voice. I disagree You should avoid using the passive unless you have a reason to use it because it uses more words and can make what you mean more confusing

When to use the passive

When you cannot avoid it
The baby was born in the Maternity Hospital The mother bore the baby in the Maternity Hospital
The 2nd sentence means the same, but is longer and reads poorly

The Petri dishes were made of plastic The manufacturer made the Petri dishes out of plastic
Not the same meaning. Better still, Plastic Petri dishes

Why have I used Petri rather than petri in the middle of the above sentences? The word petri is highlighted by the spell-grammar checker!

 Emphasis
When you want to make the action rather than the agent of the action the most important
Streptomycin, the first effective antibiotic against tuberculosis, was discovered by Waksman Waksman discovered streptomycin, the first effective antibiotic against tuberculosis.

When the agent is unknown or unimportant

Darwin most important work was published in 1859 X published Darwins most important work in 1859

Rules for tense in scientific papers

1) When referring to previously published work, the results have become knowledge and are true. Use the present tense
Streptomycin inhibits M. tuberculosis

2) When referring to your own work, in general use the past tense because it is not yet published
Under the conditions described earlier, streptomycin did not inhibit M. tuberculosis

3)

Except!
Because the abstract refers to the published paper

In the Abstract When presenting results as figure or tables

Because these are visible to the reader at the present time

When presenting calculations or statistics

Because these results do not change

When stating a known truth

Water is wet

Rules for using the person in scientific papers

Which should you use?
We showed that streptomycin inhibited M. tuberculosis
Personal. More common than it used to be. Some journals use it more than others. Can be very repetitive if used to much

It was shown that streptomycin inhibited M. tuberculosis

None specific impersonal. Used a lot in many papers. Disadvantage, does not say who it was shown by and when was this shown

The results showed that streptomycin inhibited M. tuberculosis

General impersonal. Say where the information came from in general. Disadvantage, not highly specific

From Figure 1, it can be seen that streptomycin inhibits M. tuberculosis

Specific impersonal. Say exactly where the information can be found.

 Use the personal we, I, this research group etc. when drawing an important conclusion.
Do not use it in the Materials and Methods. Use it very rarely in the Introduction. Use it sparingly in the Results. Use it most in the Discussion

Do not use none specific impersonal Use general impersonal if you have made clear what results or experiments you mean. Use specific impersonal as much as necessary

 Examples. Change from active to passive

We examined the Southern blots for radioactive bands Our research group used radioactivity to detect the protein I detected a virus in the meat sample by PCR

Examples. Change from passive to active

It might be expected that the treatment would be effective Inoculation was performed on 25 chickens A trip for the purpose of collecting insects was made in July 2002

More real examples Convert them, passive to active and let us decide which is better
In this study a non-equilibrium approach was used to discriminate between sequences The binding of the Lac-GFP fusion protein to tandem lac operator repeats was exploited to detect the origin of replication Extensive genetic variation among strains was identified using DNA microarrays DNA microarrays have been used to compare interstrain and interspecific variation in bacteria

And even more real examples Convert them, active to passive and let us decide which is better
We have conducted a survey of nine Shewanella species and assessed their relatedness to Shewanella oneidensis We discuss both the size and the nature of the contents of the Sodalis genome and it is compared to E. coli Most obligate intracellular bacteria are strictly vertically transmitted to the progeny Kuipers et al studied pairs of isolates of H. pylori, obtained 7-10 years apart, using RAPDS