Josiah Willard Gibbs and Pierre Maurice Duhem: two diverging personalities, and scientific styles.

In this essay, I will compare the character, scientific style, and writing style of the American physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs and the French physicist Pierre Maurice Duhem. I begin with biographical notes to portray some significant moments of their lives. I will contrast their characters and scientific styles as manifested in their social and scientific activity influenced by the cultural traditions of their countries and the social and scientific milieu of their time. Also, in these sections, I will discuss features of their familial relationships that affected their youth, their psychology, and the shaping of their characters. I will compare their writing styles emphasizing the differences observed between Gibbs's dense and austere style, unlike Duhem's detailed and informative way of writing his essays. I will further examine the way by which each physicist used Mach's doctrine of the economy of thought in shaping their writing style. A final contrast is reserved for their pedagogical styles. In this case, I will let their students and colleagues speak for them, while I comment on why they did not leave behind a school of thought.

The style of scientific communication. / El estilo de la comunicación científica.

CONTEXT: Writing skills and the importance of drafting quality are often disregarded. Just as there are guidelines on what each part of a scientific article should comprise (introduction, material and methods, results and conclusion), there are 'norms' as to how to draft the article. Novel results can only be appropriately reflected in a formal and structurally correct text. OBJECTIVE: To raise awareness on the correct use of language in all professional areas, and to provide some practical recommendations to avoid the most common errors in our environment. EVIDENCE ACQUISITION: We performed a search of the terms 'scientific style', 'scientific language' and 'how to write an article' in the databases of the search engines Medes, Dialnet and Índice Bibliográfico Español en Ciencias de la Salud (IBECS). We also consulted books on the subject. We then analysed the characteristics of scientific style and the most common errors observed in scientific texts. EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS: The characteristics of scientific language are: clarity, precision, brevity, conciseness, fluidity and simplicity. Scientific style avoids: long sentences, a lack of connectors, syntax errors, redundancies, barbarisms, foreignisms, false friends, colloquial expressions, cacophonies, slang, too many gerunds, too many abbreviations, too much use of the passive voice and spelling mistakes, etc. CONCLUSIONS: The principal characteristics of scientific style are clarity, precision and brevity. When we write articles, we learn through practice, reading and the help of experienced writers.

Proper use of medical language: Main problems and solutions. / Utilización adecuada del lenguaje médico: principales problemas y soluciones.

Medical language should be characterized by its precision, emotional neutrality and stability. The effective communication of results of scientific studies depends on compliance with current standards of drafting and style; texts with defects can hinder interest in the findings. In this study, we discuss some of the most common problems and errors in medical language, including the abuse of abbreviations and foreign words, the use of improper words, syntax errors and solecisms, the most common errors in titles and the abuse of capital letters and the gerund. Investigators have effective tools for dealing with these problems, such as quality texts, critical dictionaries of questions and difficulties with the Spanish language and various drafting and style manuals.