The latest Twitter phenomenon is FakeAPStylebook, an amusing take on guidelines to proper journalistic writing. Some tips include:
- STAR WARS Episodes IV-VI are to be referred to as “The Original Trilogy.” Episodes I-III are not to be referred to at all.
- Always capitalize Satan. You don’t want to get dead goats from those people.
- The correct spelling is “Rocktober,” not “Roctober,” which is the month of giant birds.
- Replace “situation deteriorated/worsened” with “shit [just] got real.” Ex: On day three of the hostage crisis, shit got real.
Amusing enough, but I have to admit that I originally read “Fake AP Stylebook” as “Fake APS Stylebook,” as if it were the (fake) American Physical Society rather than the (fake) Associated Press that was handing out advice. After all, the real APS is quite a bit quirkier than the AP; they insist that no article title begin with “The,” and for a while there they were insisting that “Lagrangian” be spelled “Lagrangean.” (Everyone has their quirks; Nature has banned the words “paradigm” and “scenario” from its pages entirely.)
So I’m sure we can do better. Any good suggestions for improved physics style? I promise to tweet anything sufficiently amusing.
Personal annoyance: ban the expression ‘spectacular signature’ from phenomenology papers.
As in ‘We propose a scenario in which 14TeV pp collisions lead to resonant pair production of fire-breathing unicorns. Our model has various spectacular signatures….’
So Albion, you would prefer “shit just got complex”? Or “shit picked up a small imaginary part”? I like “throughout the process, shit remained holomorphic.”
“Currently” can almost always be omitted.
Open papers with gratuitous and pedantic references of dubious relevance to obscure Greek philosophers: “According to Hippon of Samos, the universe was created in a water-born conflagration, but we now know from detailed observations of large-scale CMB anisotropies…”
“Single author papers are not permitted to use the first person plural, except if the author is actually the Queen of England.”
Phys Rev D actually has that policy. Take a look over there to see how ridiculous that looks. “I find that…..I have computed that….” It’s like reading Facebook.
Sentences of the ilk of “It is widely, but erroneously claimed that…”; “Some authors have maintaned that…”; “It is an apparently intuitive, but erroneous supposition that…” must be immediately followed by one of the form: “I’m looking at you, Blague, Schnortz, and Weasle.”
Whoops, forgot to sign off with “Cheers”.
With me, it doesn’t mean I’m thanking the recipient, it means I’m going to follow the email with a glass of wine. What’s that? No, I don’t mean you’re about to get a glass of wine in your inbox…
Cheers,
Howard
Abridged abstracts should be strongly discouraged. Whats the point of witing a very long abstract
that gets cut down in the editorial process. Have seen these in some astronomy journals.
Sean — I have to confess, the holomorphic line is great.
Pieter — I think I’d reserve “pimped out” for sufficiently flashy and ornate models. SJGR should work for 3-loop calculations or data, in the right context.
I’m pretty sure that “we’d like to thank your sister *and* your mother” is forbidden by APS style rules, but allowed in JHEP.
Well, we can start by distancing ourselves from all the black/dark references in physics.
For black hole, call it a relativity quagmire
For dark energy, call it universal compensator
For dark matter, perhaps exotic matter with pasties (ok, you can leave the pasties part out of it if you really insist)
As for brown dwarfs, well, d-list stars might be more apt as a name
Scientific papers could use more “dude”. For instance, we could replace QED with
“Duuuude!”
Also useful as a single word caption for a particularly pretty picture for which you cannot otherwise find a true use.
What a pity, then, that ‘dude’ was removed.