Balance Your Style

Abstract

Style, or register, refers to the degree of formality of writing. Styles of writing range from the very informal, such as a text message to a friend, to the very formal, such as a legal document. Traditionally, science writers have used a highly formal style. Writers, editors and even readers expected text to be filled with abstract nouns, passive verbs, ornate sentences and unnecessarily dry descriptions. But this is changing—and for the better. Scientific writers and publishers now recognise that such a style is not appropriate for most of their readers (A.E. Greene, Writing Science in Plain English. Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2013), K. Sainani, C. Elliott, D. Harwell, Active vs. Passive Voice in Scientific Writing. [Online presentation] (2015), https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/acs-webinars/professional-development/active-passive.html [1, 2]). The most appropriate writing style depends on context, purpose and audience. Certainly, an overly formal style is inappropriate for L2 readers. But so too is an overly informal style. Such a style tends to be full of casual language that L2 readers do not normally encounter in an English classroom setting. This chapter provides guidelines for finding the appropriate balance, a ‘Goldilocks’ style that is neither too formal nor too informal.