Abstract
IN recent scientific writing there is frequently a tendency to abbreviate to such an extent that a reader not conversant with the subject may be completely fogged. As an example the following quotation from a recent book on sound may be given: “A clamped steel bar electrically maintained is sometimes employed as a rough standard of frequency.” This unfortunate sentence is evidently the result of the general use of the contracted but incorrect expression ‘an electrically-maintained tuning fork’ in scientific publications. The vibrations are maintained, not the tuning fork, and if this idea is to be conveyed in shortened form a word such as ‘operated’ or ‘driven’ should be used instead of ‘maintained’. This is only one example of a tendency which, if unchecked, will produce a scientific slang.
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DARLING, C. Scientific Inexactitude. Nature 126, 725 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1038/126725d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/126725d0
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