Plain (adjective\ ˈplān \):
1: lacking ornament 2: free of extraneous matter 3: free of impediments to view
According to Merriam Webster, ‘plain’ is that which is more common, understandable, and simple. Following, one would expect that plain style is more accessible and more easily understood than official style. Within fields that use lots of jargon, thereby becoming unfamiliar to the general public, this can be harmful in its exclusivity and non-accessibility. Plain style makes scientific writing more accessible for the public, while still maintaining language that aids in learning. With issues such as vaccinations, evolution, and climate change becoming more polarized, plain style serves as a way of providing the public with accurate, unbiased, and easily-digested information. Through this essay, I seek to understand in what ways the plain style is used, in what ways it is manipulated, and it what was does it function in different spheres of communication? And, perhaps most importantly, can plain style be good, bad, or both in its influence? What sort of conflicts or tensions does this produce in readers in this use of the plain style interspersed with fragments of official style? Through a case study of Scientific American’s “Oumuamua, First-Known Interstellar Visitor, Likely Born from 2 Stars” by Mike Wall (referred to as “Oumuamua” as an abbreviation for the rest of this analysis), we can better understand how internal and external contexts influence the impacts of the plain style in this forum.
Regarding internal information on the article (textual analysis), “Omuamua” presents itself statistically as an article that may be daunting to the general public. At 603 words, the article is not an excessively long one, yet it contains some aspects that may make it differ from what one would expect of plain style. With the overall readability of the article at a grade level of 15.3 (or a junior in college), this clashes with the general public’s average reading level of the 7th grade (Readable.io 2018; Clear Language Group 2018) and the plain style expectation of a lower grade reading level. The paper starts off using more language that would qualify it as using official style, and yet it gets more plain as the article continues. Longer words are used, more complex sentence structures are followed, yet this shifts to shorter, more common words and simple sentence structures. Following this trend of complex to a relatively simpler text, the readability of the article goes from very unreadable to readable. Opening sentences include lines like this: “The mysterious, needle-shaped object “Oumuamua which was spotted zooming through Earth’s neighborhood last October, probably originated in a two-start system, according to the study.” This may make this article unappealing to the general public, for who would willingly choose to read a quick, informative article that is complicated when a short, easy one would do? So, though the article goes from complicated to easier in nature, it may isolate readers that seek out less complicated articles, and may solely draw in readers that read at a higher level than average. This slip into official style could make papers such as this more accessible to an academic audience, while making it less accessible to everyone else, thereby creating tension between this article and the assumed intention (inclusion) of plain style.
While graded at a reading level of 18.8th grade by a readability generator, I believe that this assertion is a bit lofty. The generator, for example, may have taken the word “Oumuamua” as being a jargonistic word. Long sentences and complex adverbs are prevalent at the beginning of the article, as well: “Astronomers could tell that the 1,300-foot-long (400 meters) ‘Oumuamua wasn’t from around here based on its hyperbolic orbit, which showed that the object wasn’t gravitationally bound to the sun.” Several choices within sentences such as this one are important linguistically for the use of the article within the plain style. Walls chose to use words that were challenging, such as ‘hyperbolic orbit’, but he immediately defined them, thereby making them accessible to the general public. This is later seen in “...’Oumuamua displayed no cometary activity-no long tail, no cloud-like “coma” around its core…” in which cometary activity is defined in an accessible manner without being condescending. In this sentence, we also begin to see a reduction in the sentence grade level, where it clocks in at 14.7th grade. The descriptive words in sentences such as the first one mentioned (“The mysterious, needle-shaped object “Oumuamua which was spotted zooming…”) this one make it more accessible to the audience: ‘mysterious’ makes it more exciting and attention-grabbing, and verbs such as ‘zooming’ are used for the same purpose when words such as ‘moved’, adverbs such as ‘trajectorally’ or other jargonistic physics or astronomy-based terminology could have been used. ‘Zooming’ gives it a sense of purpose, direction, and movement, and repeated language like this pushes the ‘story’ forward in the reader’s mind, thereby making it more accessible. This sort of word choice makes this article more accessible to the public, as it relies on familiarity and simplicity; no familiarity with official style is required as the language suggests that it is intended for everyone. Following this, even the name of the comet itself is defined for clarity’s sake: “‘Oumuamua means “scout” in Hawaiian; the object was discovered by researchers using the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), at Haleakala Observatory on the island of Maui.” ‘Defined’ words are then used throughout the article to make it more understandable, though other jargonistic words could possibly be used in place of the ‘defined’ words. Following the trend of becoming more simple from beginning to end, the article comes close to conclusion with this grade-level 10.6 sentence:
“Nobody knows for sure where ‘Oumuamua came from or how long it’s been voyaging through deep space.”
This trend of defining more unfamiliar words and moving from more official to less official (in style) makes the article more accessible and much less confusing.
Other internal, textual analyses determine that use of prose strategies and active/passive voice aid in the plain style and accessibility of “Oumuamua.” Sentence styles and prose strategies are easily digestible throughout. Very few sentences have complex structure, and consistent sentence strategies are used, the most common being the appositive and coordination/subordination. Appositives are particularly useful in plain style as they give additional information to the reader that is necessary for making complex scientific ideas accessible and understandable:
“The mysterious, needle-shaped object ‘Oumuamua, which was spotted zooming through Earth’s neighborhood last October, probably originated in a two-star system, according to the study.”
“But the odds are good that it was born into a binary system that harbors at least one big, hot star, according to the new study.”
“But ‘Oumuamua displayed no cometary activity—no long tail, no cloud-like “coma” around its core—even after getting relatively close to the sun, so it was soon reclassified as an asteroid.”
According continually reaffirms that this information is from a published scientific article, making peer-reviewed science more accessible to the public, whereas no long tail, no cloud-like “coma” around its core gives us more necessary information about the composition of the comet. Additionally, coordination/subordination allow the reader to follow the argument being made and to determine the important information to retain. For example:
“It’s really odd that the first object we would see from outside our system would be an asteroid, because a comet would be a lot easier to spot, and the solar system ejects many more comets than asteroids...”
But ‘Oumuamua displayed no cometary activity—no long tail, no cloud-like “coma” around its core—even after getting relatively close to the sun, so it was soon reclassified as an asteroid.
Because tells us that we know how we see objects from outside of our system, thereby supporting the article’s conclusion, whereas so links the defined ‘no cometary activity’ to the comet’s reclassification in an easily followed manner. Additionally, the article uses a mix between active and passive voice throughout, with most of the sentences being passive. This mix between the two is an interesting style technique. The passive makes it more ‘official’; the style is less forward and less ‘connected’ to the reader. However, in the passive sentences the subject, their action, and what it means is clearly defined: in other words, ‘who kicked whom’ is abundantly clear. For instance, in the sentence below the scientists are clearly defined as thinking about the comet.
“Initially, scientists thought the body was probably a comet.”
This gives the article a sense of motion forward and contributes to the readability of the story. First and second person voices, however, are little used. Combined with the definitions of jargonistic terms, the actions, actors, and those acted upon are abundantly clear. Official style gives “Oumuamua” credibility, but plain style gives it accessibility.
The external, contextual analysis of “Oumuamua” tells us about its reach, intended audience, faults, and highlights. The publisher is “© 2018 Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Scientific American is a trademark of Scientific American, Inc., used with permission,” which is a subsidiary of Springer, a widespread publisher of scientific journals and articles. “Oumuamua is available for free through online access, while the magazine Scientific American is available in print, as well, for a yearly subscription of $25-29 dollars if subscribed online or for a single magazine $6.99 to $10.99. Their online website is comprised of many articles in many different fields: the sciences, mind, health, tech, sustainability, education, video, podcasts, blogs, and, as they are inevitably a business, an online store. Scientific American has been around since 1845 (and is USA’s oldest published magazine) and, if subscribed, users have access to 150,000 archived articles in addition to the ones already available for public consumption. As for the author, Mike Wall, he is a regular in the public-science sphere of communication. According to The Space Show, he has written for space magazines since 2010 and has background science experience as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. His degrees are in evolutionary biology (PhD, University of Sydney, Australia), a bachelor's degree (University of Arizona), and a science-writing graduate certificate (University of California, Santa Cruz). His experiences and certifications give this article more credibility, as does the extended presence online and otherwise of Scientific American.
This kind of public-science discourse is incredibly important because of who it includes and who it excludes; its likely and intended readers are quite revealing. This writing, as assessed above, makes scientific information accessible to the general public. This understanding of complex ideas is important, and, as most are not educated in how to digest articles with scientific jargon without a degree in a specific, science-based field, necessary scientific information for public progress becomes inaccessible. Take, for instance, vaccinations or climate change: these have been thoroughly supported in the scientific community for decades by the vast majority of science, and yet the lack of accessibility in these fields may contribute to their use in a politicized climate. By allowing the public linguistic access to these concepts through articles like “Oumuamua,” science is not exclusive. Articles such as this may also make this information more readily available to those within the scientific community, who often are familiar with their field and fields like theirs, but to very few other specific fields (ex. An animal biologist being acquainted with the jargon of mechanical engineering used for companies like NASA is unlikely). The use of official style characteristics may give it more credibility and familiarity for these readers, while not making it inaccessible for the public. It is also important to mention that these articles are also physically accessible, unlike most scientific journals, as Scientific American is readily available online, as are many other sites with scientific information (National Geographic, Rolling Stone, etc.). This ability of articles like “Oumuamua” to spread scientific knowledge in a vast amount of contexts and to a vast variety of readers is perhaps an excellent example of the successful use of plain style and a potential key for public-science discourse. However, it is also important to consider how styles like this could be used for manipulative purposes, particularly within politically charged texts. This could be used to sway readers to an extreme, biased, and/or unfactual position, while giving them the comfort of credibility throughout the sprinkles of official style but in a presentation format that is more readily accessible. In this, the accessibility is not the issue: it is the misinformation and discord that it spreads. During politically charged times akin to the present, it is of the utmost importance for people to critically view media sources for techniques such as the ones presented in “Oumuamua.” Ethically, it is also important in journalism for the information available to all to be accessible. While the plain style is masked as such, I would argue that it is indeed not accessible for texts to bias readers; that journalists have a responsibility to make information both accessible and unbiased, rather than one or the other. Official style has the advantage of seeming more credentially-sound, whereas plain style has the advantage of being more accessible. So, while this combination of plain with a bit of official could prove to be extremely useful in bridging the gap between academic, exclusive writing, and public-based writing, it will be important to look at texts such as this (but really, all texts, particularly public ones) with a critical eye to avoid manipulative behaviors.
“Oumuamua, First-Known Interstellar Visitor, Likely Born from 2 Stars” by Mike Wall serves as an excellent case study for the use of plain style as a method of increasing the effectiveness of public-science discourse. Plain style makes scientific writing more accessible for the public, while still maintaining language that aids in learning, and its internal and external contexts prove incredibly influential in its composition. Potentially, an increase in this type of writing within the scientific sphere of communication could aid in disbanding scientific fallacies and in increasing public knowledge and appreciation of science. With luck, time will tell.
-Mari Sweetman
Image 1. The heading and appearance of the article.
Image 2. An artist’s rendering of Oumuamua as provided in the article.
Works Cited
“Measure Text Readability.” Readable.io. 2018. Web. 22 February 2018.
“Plain Definition.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster, Inc, n.d. Web. 1
April 2018.
Wall, Michael. “Dr. Michael Wall.” The Space Show. Dr David M. Livingston and One Giant
Leap Foundation, 2017. Web. 15 April 2018.
Wall, Mike. “Oumuamua, First-Known Interstellar Visitor, Likely Born from Two Stars.”
Scientific American. Nature America, Inc, 20 March 2018. Web. 22 March 2018.
“What is Readability?” Clear Language Group. 2018. Web. 15 March 2018.
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