Watch out for ambiguous titles in English

This blog could be seen as a love letter to English, but also as a warning or a manual.

Why a blog on the use of English? Because of a combination of things:

• English is the international language of science.
• Science is an international endeavour that involves many non-native English speakers
• Science benefits from clear and precise communication.

Sometimes these realities clash a bit, and we have certainly noticed that in our workshops. As non-native English speakers we have had to learn to deal with this ourselves. The things we say in this blog in English may not only be relevant to English, nor is it a complete dissertation on the English language. This is merely something we’ve written as ‘users’ of English and helpers of those who want to communicate in science. It starts – because we love the language – with a bit of history and characterization of English; later on you’ll find concrete tips for writing.

English has a very mosaic nature

English may be the lingua franca of science, but that doesn’t mean that everyone in science is equally proficient in it. There are about 410 million native English speakers, but twice as many that speak it as an additional language. Even in countries like Canada, Australia or the US it’s the second language for about a quarter of the population. And imagine this: in Nigeria live over 100 million people that speak English as a second language; in India it’s 130 million. (That makes English arguably more suitable for science than Mandarin (for example), which may have more native speakers, but fewer speakers that use it as a second language, and also less geographically distributed.)

The point is: with such a diverse range of speakers, you can expect a wide variety in how the language is used.

The good thing is: English is very flexible, and a lot of things are allowed.

The bad thing is: English is very flexible, and a lot of things are allowed.

This blog tries to navigate these contradictory statements by exploring some of the ups and downs of English’ flexibility. It’s an ode to the beauty and versatility of English, while also making you aware of the risk of unclarities.

How do you become relaxed using English, not worrying about the correctness of it, while also making sure your audience will understand you?

I’ll start with a bit of history of how English came to be this way, but feel free to skip that.

A troubled history is at the basis of this

English is a fascinating language. Over the centuries, it has been battered by ‘linguistic attacks’ from Scandinavia, France, Netherlands, Ireland, India and many other countries. But instead of succumbing it has found a way to enrich itself with it. Because of its power of absorption, English has a huge vocabulary – at least one million words are at your disposal, but probably many more. Compare that to my native Dutch with a mere 400.000 or so.

Some of the historical clashes that English as a language has had have been the result of British colonization (as in India for example), while in other cases it was others imposing themselves onto Britain (as with the Normans, for example). From the interaction with India, English enriched its vocabulary with words like ghoul, cheetah, shampoo and bungalow, while the interaction with the Normans led to the distinction between French-derived meat names from Anglo-Saxon-derived animal names: mutton vs sheep, pork vs pig, beef vs cow, etc.

Of course, the geographical spread of English is also the result of this history, which we also see in Portuguese, Spanish and French, a bit in Dutch. English has had the advantage that it’s a bit more spread out over the world, and that the empire peaked a little later than some of the others (it’s also because of political choices, but that’s too much to get into here). And let’s not forget that the main colonizing power of today is also an English-speaking country.

English has a great foundation for scientific discourse

I just want to acknowledge that this troubled history is there and focus on the resulting language it grew into today. The fact is that English now incorporates and combines a Germanic origin with heavy Latin influences, as well as some Greek and others from all over the world. Arabic scientific words like algebra, chemistry and zenith have also entered via other languages like Greek. It means that English combines some of the most convenient foundations to discuss science, since it’s very easy to construe English words from those classical terms and prefixes. This is very visible in the medical world, where Latin and Greek origins are easily mixed (in mammogram, for example – mammo- is from Latin, -gram is Greek in origin).

The fun of flexibility can flow into anxiety over ambiguity

Whatever the causes, the result is that English is a highly flexible language. Flexibility is nice, but it can result in ambiguity. And ambiguity is at odds with scientific values like preciseness, so it’s something to consider. And if there is one place where this ambiguity has reared its head over the hundreds of workshops that we did, it’s in the titles of academic papers, posters and graphs.

Without trying to be exhaustive, I will show you the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of English ambiguity – so that you can be more conscious of the power of your titles in the future.

Disclaimer: I love the English language and read and think about it a lot, but I’m no linguist and this is by no means an exhaustive list of all ambiguities in English. It’s based on our experience working with scientists from all over who are trying to write engaging yet meaningful and clear titles about their research. I’m a pragmatist, in the camp of seeing language as an evolving tool, rather than a purist who believes that we should stick to a spelling or meaning as defined in a certain century or country – my view is that this is simply untenable in the age of global science.

The good: Ambiguity is the basis for wordplay

English is a very good language for wordplay, and this section is mostly the love letter part – I thoroughly enjoy the possibilities of English. It’s so flexible, and words can have so many meanings and roles, that it’s easy to create double meanings and rhyme. I mean, when you can pronounce the letter combination -ough in many different ways it gives a lot of opportunities for setting up patterns and breaking them – and ones that may be experienced very differently when read or heard.

The dough is transported through Middlesborough and Slough in a thorough enough way to end up in a rough trough though. 

See? Which of these rhymes with bow, toff, Ivanhoe or boo? It’s crazy you can have a doe made of dough, but not roe made of rough..

This meme expertly exploits phonetic ambiguity using homonyms.

One poster on the conservation of fertile lands that we had in our workshop ended up with the title ‘Save our Soils’ – it was too good not to do this phonetically similar version of Save our Souls, and will definitely attract attention at a conference.

Another one of our participants generated an amazing title with alliteration, rhyme and wordplay: Crucian carp’s fin-tastic tactics for anoxia survival. Applause!

Seeing how many comedy sketches, puzzles and quizzes are based on wordplay, I don’t think I’m the only one who enjoys this kind of creativity. It’s effective too: a good, creative title can bring a smile to your reader’s face – and this is the first step to opening your paper or coming up to your poster.

However!

The bad: Ambiguity is not universally noticed – nor allowed

Some words or meanings are just not flexible. Don’t switch lightly between ‘possibly,’ ‘probably,’ and ‘potentially’ for example, because their meanings are slightly different and it will cause confusion if your scientific statement relies on these. A similar situation arises when using words like ‘could,’ ‘may,’ and ‘will’ when discussing risks. When there is no flexibility, there really is no flexibility. But picking the right word in these cases doesn’t make the sentence more difficult.

But what if you can exploit flexibility, should you then do it? It depends. Wordplay is nice, but it’s not for everybody. Some people are just not perceptive to wordplay, some may have trouble reading or find these nuances in English challenging when it’s their second, third or n-th language.

In the worst case, wordplay can be a discriminator between the British and the rest of the world. Not just because the British read in their native language, but also because their daily world is so rich with puns and jokes – just open a random newspaper and you’ll find gems like these:

Residents warned to protect fish and hens to avoid OTTER DEVASTATION.

Underwear bandit caught, admits brief crime spree.

Republicans turned off by size of Obama’s package.

Or this one you should really see in situ:

Some editor will be telling their grandkids about this.

So, using puns and jokes comes at the risk of creating exclusivity, alienating (part of) your audience. If your audience doesn’t understand your title or the joke in it, they may feel embarrassed. When you’re at a poster presentation, this can keep them from coming over and talk to you.

That’s why the pun or the joke should be perfect and obvious – when in doubt, leave it out! – but most of all it should not be essential to your poster. The ‘Save our soils’ title was a second title that supplemented the more scientific one. In this case, the viewer that gets it will appreciate the little sidestep, while it doesn’t necessarily deter those who don’t. It hurts me to say, but, in that light, the ‘Fin-tastic tactics’ title is taking a risk.

But it gets worse. What if you don’t even want to be funny but just clear?

The ugly: Ambiguity actively breeds confusion

Hypermobility in human bodies is a mixed blessing: it creates ballet dancers and contortionists, but also joint pain and ligament injuries. The same could be said of English: the flexibility lets you say both fantastically fascinating and fascinatingly fantastic, but also ‘A ship-shipping ship ships shipping-ships’ and‘The old man the boats.’

English contains many synonyms, homonyms (similar sounding words with different meanings), words that can act as a noun and a verb, as well as words that have collected a number of different meanings (the word ‘set’ has over 400). And this can become significant when you want to write an academic title that is short and to the point, but most of all correct.

Be clear about your words being verbs or nouns

From a newspaper: ‘Lugi Mangione Act Targets Insurers’.

Both ‘act’ and ‘targets’ can be verb and noun, so what is the sentence here? Is it a piece of legislation called the Mangione Act that affects (targets) insurers? Or is Lugi Mangione somehow affecting the insurers of his targets (if Lugi Mangione is a multiple like a team)? The capitalization of every first letter doesn’t help. Or, perhaps, did he come up with a circus act aimed at an audience of insurers? We don’t know, though I secretly hope it’s the latter.

In science we also use a lot of words that can play both verb and noun: impact, support, design, focus, shape, control, signal, transition, highlight, advance are just a few. The problem gets worse if they also have multiple meanings as a noun. So if we build some titles with those words and leave out the ‘a’ and ‘the’ to be succinct, you get utterances like:

Design transition signal impact

Signal design for adaptive transition

Impact signals transition in collective systems

Let me help you: in none of these sentences is it clear who/which is doing or causes what, or even what the message is. Are impact signals transitioning in collective systems? Or is the impact signalling a transition in collective systems? Or is it a command/recommendation to impact signals transition in collective systems? The last one could be read three different ways:

An impact signals the transition in collective systems

Impact the signals transition in collective systems

The Impact signals a transition in collective systems

Which one is it?

It’s not about which versions of these sentences are technically true; it’s to show you that these titles are highly ambiguous. And this ambiguity is exacerbated by the different meanings jargon words can have within science.

You can solve this by adding words that give context, like ‘the’ and ‘a.’ Sometimes a -s at the end of a word will signal that this one’s the verb, but we have seen many titles that have just forgotten to add it.

The gerund doesn’t count as a verb to make your sentence active

In this example it seems there are two relevant verbs: reducing and promoting. But they are both ‘gerunds’ or -ing-verbs. Gerunds don’t make a sentence active, and they create ambiguity. The beginning of the sentence could also lead to something like ‘Reducing HIV vulnerabilities…is very expensive’ (for example). Because the direction of the sentence isn’t clear from the start, you, as a reader, have to keep considering all options until your mind is made up – and that is not very reader-friendly.

Second, because there is no dash between resilience and promoting, the title now suggests that resilience is promoting strategies, instead of resilience-promoting, which would make resilience the effect of the strategies instead of the cause. Small errors like this missed dash or -s can change the meaning of a sentence completely, as indeed happened here. The message: (let someone) proofread!

How to help your readers understand your title

The lesson here is that a title should be as short as it can be, but also as long as it needs to be. And if you’re working on a topic that contains these ambiguous words, make sure to take out that ambiguity when you write your title!

Here’s a few examples of (fictionalized) scientific-sounding titles that become clearer by adding a few words.

Not clear:

Control signals regulate adaptation during development

Ambiguity: are signals controlling, or are they signals from a control system?

Clear:

Specific regulatory signals control cellular adaptation during development

Not clear:

Impact signaling in plant stress adaptation

Ambiguity: is “impact” a cause, an effect, or a property?

Clear:

Mechanical impact triggers signaling pathways involved in plant stress adaptation

Not clear:

Advance signaling in tissue differentiation

Ambiguity: is “advance” a noun (a progress) or a verb (to promote)?

Clear:

Early-stage signaling mechanisms promote tissue differentiation

Perfect English doesn’t exist for anybody

Some regions or professions have specific versions of English, with specific vocabulary or even grammar. That’s okay. Some even have a name, like ‘Frenglish’ for the French-English mix spoken in Brussels amongst EU politicians. MS Word offers an ‘international English’ spelling check setting – it even has an ‘English (Netherlands)’ version, which tells you enough. (I personally can’t see that setting without hearing my own text read out the way Mark Rutte speaks – not a recommendation.)

The comfort we should find is that everybody – even the native speaker – speaks a version of English that isn’t entirely expected or appreciated by all of the rest of the world. There is a different version for everyone, which is also why I don’t believe in a purist view of language. Science is so international that it’s impossible to be strict about what is ‘correct.’ Language, especially in a setting like science, is pragmatic and subject to change. This means that we should all be lenient and understanding towards what we read. Does it really matter if something is gray or grey? As long as we agree that there is such a thing as an area with that colour, I don’t think so. Which leads me to the following call to action:

Let’s make an effort to use a version for all of us in science – call it international scientific English or something. The English you use for your communication should be a version that celebrates the creativity that is so central to English, but that also doesn’t rely on that creativity to be understood to be able to grasp the message.

Make sure your core messaging is unambiguous and clear to all, but feel free to add a flourish here and there to liven it up. This also means that if you’re highly proficient in English, you stick to the words that are more common (so long as they don’t change the meaning), and that if you’re not so proficient yet, you make an effort to be correct without trying to be perfect.