By using a more simplified writing style, the writer is able to communicate better with his or her audience.

Scientific  papers are known for being hard to read. The only reason that is so is because writers the lack the knowledge on how to communicate to the reader.

G. Gopen and J. Swan, who wrote “The Science of Scientific Writing” explain how to structure a sentence for communication purposes. They explain that though every person may be reading the same sentence, each person will interpret it differently, therefore the writer needs to learn how readers read.

• It has been proven that people like to read from left to right, expecting the context to be given in the beginning of a sentence and the new information to be at the end.
• Readers also look for a verb after the subject of a sentence and tend to disregard any information between that space as unimportant. By doing so it is easy to misconstrue the meaning of the sentence and get confused.

Knowing these expectations, writers can write in such a way that will put the right information where the reader is expecting to find it, allowing them to interpret it correctly.

We can begin to revise sentences by ensuring the following for each sentence:

1. The backward-linking old information appears in the topic position.
2. The person, thing or concept whose story it is appears in the topic position.
3. The new, emphasis-worthy information appears in the stress position.

References:

Gopen, G., & Swan, J. (1990). The Science of Scientific Writing If the reader is to grasp what the writer means, the writer must understand what the reader needs. American Scientist, 78(6), 550-558.