Michael Alley, Penn State and Virginia Tech
Writing as an Engineer or Scientist
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      • 2: Being Precise and Clear
      • 3: Avoiding Ambiguity
      • 4: Sustaining Energy
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Lesson 3: Avoiding Ambiguity

In addition to avoiding needless complexity, an aspect of being clear is making sure that you do not communicate a wrong message. In other words, you want to be sure that the reader interprets your sentence in a single way--with no ambiguity. Such is the focus of this lesson. The content here arises from Lesson 3 in The Craft of Scientific Writing.

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Lesson

     An ambiguity is a word, phrase, or sentence that can be interpreted in more than one way. Whereas poets win awards for ambiguity, engineers and scientists are sued for ambiguities. The three films of this lesson teach you to be sensitive to four common sources of ambiguity in scientific writing: word choice, word order, pronouns (particularly it and this​), and missing punctuation. ​(16 minutes)

Overall perspective on avoiding ambiguity.

Avoiding ambiguity, particularly with word choice and word order.

Avoiding ambiguity, particularly with pronouns and punctuation.


Comprehension Quiz


​Forthcoming.

References

  1. Michael Alley, The Craft of Scientific Writing, 4th ed. (New York: Springer Verlag, 2018), Lesson 3.
  2. Theodore Bernstein, The Careful Writer (New York: Free Press, 1995).
  3. H. W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965)..
  4. George Whitesides, “Whitesides’ Group: Writing a Paper,” Advanced Materials, vol. 16, no. 15 (2004), pp. 1375-1377.

Sponsors and Editors


​Sponsors
     Leonhard Center, College of Engineering, Penn State
​     National Science Foundation, NSF EAGER Award  1752096

​Faculty Editor
     
Michael Alley, Teaching Professor, College of Engineering, Penn State


Film Editors
​     Elaine Gustus, College of Engineering, Penn State
     Richelle Weiger, College of Engineering, Penn State
     Casey Fenton, College of Engineering, Penn State

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For the academic year 2020-2021, we are collecting comments, questions, criticisms, and suggestions for the films, text, and quizzes of each lesson on scientific writing. To help us understand your input, would please let us know what your discipline is and whether you are a student, professional, or faculty member?
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Michael Alley

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NSF Grant 1752096