Page 118 - English for Writing Research Papers

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To clarify S11, you just need to replace them with branches (if it is just the branches
that were burnt), or with both of them (if both branches and logs were burnt).

In my experience as an editor, pronouns cause more ambiguity than all the other
sources of ambiguity combined. This is also due to the way we read. You as the
author expect your readers to read every word, sentence and paragraph. However
few readers will have the time or energy to do this. Thus if you refer to something,
let's call it X, that you mentioned a few sentences before, or in the paragraph before,
and you refer to X using this, these, it, them, which, the former etc , then you risk
losing your reader who simply may not have read the original instance of X.

It makes life much simpler for everyone if, where ambiguity could arise, you replace
pronouns with the noun that they refer to.

6.4 Avoid replacing key words with synonyms and clarify

ambiguity introduced by generic words
When you were at school learning your own language, your teachers probably
encouraged you not to use the same word in the same sentence more than once, and
maybe not even in the same paragraph. Finding synonyms was good. Consequently,
like many researchers you probably now suffer from monologophobia – the fear of
using the same word twice!

Monologophobia can cause ambiguity or confusion for the reader. For example, do
the three words in bold in S1 have a different meaning?

S1. *Companies have to pay many taxes. In fact, occasionally enterprises fail because of
over-taxation. Some fi rms resolve this problem by moving their headquarters to countries
where the tax rate is lower.

For the author, they probably have the same meaning, but not necessarily for the
reader. The reader cannot be sure and may try to work out what the difference
between the three terms is. The author is thus forcing the reader to make an unnec-
essary mental effort.

If you decide to use words that have similar – but slightly different – meanings, then

you should define these differences for the reader. In S1 you would need to defi ne
the difference between a company, an enterprise and a fi rm.

A very important rule in scientific English is: never find synonyms for key words –

avoid synonymomania!