The Null Hypothesis guide of how to write good.
It's important to be aware that good writing skills are paramount in the scientific world. Our guide will help you get more from your manuscript.
- Always avoid alliteration.
- Prepositions are not words to be used to end sentences with.
- Avoid clichés like the plague, they’re so last year.
- Employ the vernacular.
- Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
- Bracketed comments are unnecessary (no matter how relevant).
- Don’t repeat yourself.
- It’s wrong to ever split an infinitive.
- Contractions are simply not necessary.
- Don’t repeat yourself.
- Foreign words and phrases should not be treated with a laissez faire approach.
- One should never generalise.
- Avoid quotations, as Richard Kemph said, ‘quotes are nothing but inspiration for the uninspired’.
- Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
- Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than are really absolutely necessary; it’s highly superfluous and looks rather irritating and is tiresome to read.
- Be more or less specific.
- Understatement is always best.
- One-word sentences? Remove.
- Analogies in writing are like a clock with no hands.
- The passive voice is to be avoided.
- Go all around the houses to avoid colloquialisms.
- Even if a mixed metaphor leaps out at you, it should be struck down.
- Be concise.
- Rhetorical questions, do you really need them?
- Understatement is a billion times better than exaggeration.
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