Page 169 - English for Writing Research Papers

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S2 is much more concise (41 words rather than 75) and clear:

S2. Our results highlight firstly that Panama disease is unlikely to infect sound fruit, and that

secondly wounds make fruit susceptible to infection. It is thus critical to handle bananas
carefully so as to prevent wounds that are conducive to this disease.
In S2 it is clear that the findings are those of the author ( our results ). The long sen-

tence has been divided into two shorter sentences. Much of the redundancy has been
removed along with abstract nouns that add no value ( tendency , process, phenome-
non, strategy etc. ). Readers can now understand that there are two key fi ndings
( fi rstly, secondly ). The same key terms have been used, i.e. just wound , rather than
wound and lesion (which both have the same meaning, but readers may think they
are used to mean different things).

However, the findings and implications could be made even more explicit:

S3. Our results highlight that Panama disease is unlikely to infect sound fruit, but rather it is
wounds that make fruit susceptible to infection. Thus the best way to avoid infection is by
ensuring that the fruit is handled carefully and not wounded. This is clearly critical for
those involved in picking, packing, transporting and displaying bananas.

S3 can be much more easily understood by non-experts, for example by those who
have just begun to do research in this area, and those who are not researchers but can
benefi t from the research (e.g. banana producers, handlers, retailers). The relation-
ship between the effect of the disease on sound fruit versus wounded fruit is now
even clearer through the use of but rather . The third sentence in S3 contains infor-
mation that was not given in S2, but makes the management implications mentioned
in S1 explicit i.e. careful handling during picking etc.

In fact, the term management implications has little meaning for the readers, even
though it may be obvious for the author. This is a very common problem: the author
has an idea, and he / she expresses it in a very generic way and expects the readers

to understand how this generic way might be specific in this particular context. It is
much better to be explicit and to give examples of what you mean.
Finally, S3 is written in uncomplicated English that anyone can understand. I am not
suggesting that this user-friendly style should be adopted in every sentence of the
paper. In fact, you might be criticized for being ‘too informal’ or not suffi ciently
‘scientific’ if you used this style throughout your paper. However, when you are say-

ing something of critical importance, then it helps to use such a direct style. This
will make your message 100% clear to everyone – to the referee, to the expert
reader, and to the inexpert reader.