Lesson 3: Avoiding Ambiguity

     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. The content here arises from Lesson 4 in The Craft of Scientific Writing. ​(16 minutes)

Overall perspective on avoiding ambiguity.

Avoiding ambiguity, particularly with word choice and word order.

Avoiding ambiguity, particularly with pronouns and punctuation.

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