The word style may assume different meanings depending on the context which it is used, but two are especially relevant to the writing and publishing of scientific articles, books and monograhps. The first one refers to a manner of expression in language (1). It is hard to define or describe. Perhaps reading what masters of the English language have said about style might give you some idea.

Have something to say and say it as clearly as you can. (Mathew Arnold). Proper words in proper places make the true definition of style. (Jonathan Swift).

If any man were to ask me what I would suppose to be a perfect style of language, I would answer, that in which a man speaking to five hundred people, of all common and various capacities, idiots or lunatics excepted, should be understood by them all, and in the same sense which the speaker intended to be understood. (Daniel Defoe).

What appears to be a sloppy or meaningless use of words may well be a correct use of words to express sloppy or meaningless ideas. (Anonymous diplomat) (2).

You will observe that the language of all four quotations is simple, clear, concise and precise. Every word is telling, and there is not a single superfluous word in any one of them. They are not merely definitions of style or advice about style of language; they are in themselves perfect examples of style. Let me give you a few more. Shakespeare's description of how the morning sun transforms enchanting English meadows and streams would be hard to beat as the most elegant and effective use of a few English words in all of English literature (2).

Kissing with golden face the meadows green

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.

Another example of the deft use of a dozen English words to clarify what must have been a singularly vexing dilemma for both office staff and customers is the following notice that used to be displayed in English post offices (2). Its author is unknown.

Postmasters are neither bound to give change nor authorised to demand it.

A lad of ten years produced this oft-quoted gem in response to a question in a test that invited children to write an essay titled, "A bird and a beast".

The bird that I am going to write about is the owl.  The owl cannot see at all by day and at night is as blind as a bat.

I do not know much about the owl, so I will go on to the beast that I will choose. It is the cow. The cow is a mammal. It has six sides - right, left, an upper and below. At the back it has a tail on which hangs a brush. With this it sends the flies away so that they do not fall into the milk. The head is for the purpose of growing homs and so that the mouth can be somewhere. The homs are to butt with, and the mouth is to moo with. Under the cow hangs the milk. It is arranged for milking. When people milk, the milk comes and there is never an end to the supply, How the cow does it people have not yet realised, but it makes more and more. The cow has a fine sense of smell; one can smell it far away. This is the reason for the fresh air in the country.

The man cow is called an ox. It is not a mammal.  The cow does not eat much, but what it eats it eats twice, so that it gets enough. When it is hungry it moos, and when it says nothing it is because its inside is full up with grass.

This little author has achieved style for he had something to say, and said it as clearly as he could. But why do we write when we are ten years old, "so that the mouth can be somewhere", and when we are writing a thesis at the age of thirty, "in order to ensure that the oral cavity may be positioned appropriately for ingestion and deglutition..."? And why do we write when we are ten, "How the cow does it people have not yet realised, but it makes more and more", but when we are thirty years and writing a monograph, "The multifactorial physiological mechanisms that determine the apparently prolonged lactational period in farm-bred ungulates are not definitively known"?

Have a look at these sentences and see whether you can improve them.

51. The Minister will give his active and careful consideration to the trade union proposals.

52. Since July there are several unfilled vacancies in the legal division.

53. An essential and prerequisite condition for appointment is a law degree.

54. The shortage of trained nurses has created a real crisis situation.

55. It is very obvious from many of the articles that are being published that standards of writing have undoubtedly dropped.

Many authorities on English style tend to regard adjectives and adverbs as the twin enemies of style. The best writers use them sparingly, allowing nouns and verbs to do most of the work. In the sentences you see above superfluous adjectives and adverbs abound. Sentence 51 may give the impression that the Minister sometimes give passive and careless consideration to proposals placed before him if he gives consideration (unqualified by adjectives) to any other proposal. Both active and careful are verbosities.  If vacancies are filled then they cannot exist (sentence 52). Essential and prerequisite (sentence 53) are synonyms, yet it is common to see them used in tandem. But do we need either adjective to qualify condition? If your answer is "yes", then in the following sentence, you may ask whether condition is really a condition after all.

56. A condition for appointment is a law degree.

Must every crisis (sentence 54) be supported by adjectives such as real, serious or grave? Use of the last two may be defended as giving some quantitative definition of the crisis; the objection to their use is that they have become cliches. But real is indefensible here, and invites comparison with those popular phrases from the USA that Time and Newsweek regularly have on offer, such as real smart and real great. Real cool, no? And why situation?  If you were afflicted with "an unwillingness to venture outside a small vocabulary of shapeless bundles of uncertain content" (2), you might describe the misuse and over-use of the word situation as a "real headache situation". Here is a much improved version of sentence 54.

Sentence 55 should be shorn of very, being produced and undoubtedly.

58. It is obvious from many of the articles that standards of writing have dropped.

In scientific communication, where precision and consistency are essential, style, in the sense of a proper manner of expression in language, matters much. Other things being equal, an elegant style distinguishes the best from the merely good, and style matters for its own sake. Attention to style will be rewarded when it comes to getting an article accepted for publication.

The other meaning of style relevant to my subject is easier to define as "the custom followed in spelling, capitalisation, punctuation, and printing arrangement and display" - in short, house style (1). Most famous journals have their own printed stylebooks. Subeditors and editors regularly use stylebooks to improve authors' articles for clarity, brevity and precision. Others, such as the CMJ, follow one or more of the leaders. The guidelines given to intending authors in various journals is only a small part of a journal's house style.

The foreword to the JAMA Stylebook quoted in reference I asserts that "...a scientific journal should have a consistency of style and an accuracy of reporting on which readers have to come to rely. The few rules a journal adopts should be simple, inviolable and encourage clear unambiguous writing". (Emphasis mine).

Stylebooks nowadays tend to be expansive. The American Medical Association manual of style (3) has 640 pages of text, a comprehensive index and an extremely valuable catalogue of resources for medical authors and editors. The WHO editorial style manual (4) (80 pages of text) and The Economist pocket style book (5) (90 pages of text) are of more modest proportions. I intend to examine some of their recommendations in the next few issues of the CMJ

It is time now to sum up. Emily Flint, managing editor of the Atlantic Monthly for well over two decades in the 1950s and 1960s, opined that, "The principles of good writing and good editing are the same - clarity, organization and style" (6).  M Therese Southgate, Senior Contributory Editor, JAMA, in her Foreword to the American Medical Association manual of style (3) has achieved what must be the ultimate in succinctness in defining style when she issued this "final injunction to authors": Be clear.

References

1. Pearce N. Style - what is it, and does it matter?  In: Hall GM, ed. How to write a paper. London: BMJ Publishing Group, 1994: 102-6.

2. Gowers E. The complete plain words.3rd edition. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. 1986: pages 38, 3 and 4.

3.  Iverson C (Chairperson of editors) et al.  American Medical Association manual of style. 9th edition.  Baltimore and Philadelphia, USA: Williams and Wilkins 1998.

4. WHO editorial style manual.  World Health Organization, Geneva.1993.

5. The Economist pocket style book. London: The Economist Publications Ltd. 1986.

6. The Editors. Atlantic Monthly, July 1996: 6.

Colvin Goonaratna, Joint editor, CMJ.