THE MANUSCRIPT 227 



so firmly established in the literature that their use is acceptable. Almost 

 everyone knows ATP even it they do not remember that it stands for 

 (A)denosine (T)ri(P)hosphate. A few standard abbreviations of this 

 sort are likely to be perpetuated, but certain ones should be avoided. 

 TCA might be "trichloroacetic acid" or "tricarboxylic acid"; whereas 

 DPN is an essential coenzyme in metabolism, DNP (dinitrophenol) 

 produces profoundly abnormal metabolism. Most editors now recommend 

 a minimum of such abbreviations and insist on their proper identification 

 the first time they appear in the paper. Some jargon originates in the 

 foreign languages with which the scientist must be familiar. If biological 

 materials are finely ground with water, the resulting thin paste might be 

 called a "brei" (German), a "gemisch" (German), "soup" (English), 

 or "melange" (French). Jargon probably cannot be avoided in laboratory 

 speech, but it should not be allowed to creep into formal scientific writ- 

 ing. 



A fault which is like jargon, in a way, is the use of technical terms 

 where they are not needed. You might say, "It is immediately obvious 

 to the observer that this specimen of Canis familiaris L. exhibits a pre- 

 dominantly melanistic pigmentation pattern," or you might say, "This 

 dog is black." Think of yourself as the reader and take your pick. 



Some Technical Details: You will need to refer to several earlier 

 papers, and the actual form of the citations depends upon the journal. 

 Some journals place all references in a list at the end of the paper, but 

 others use footnotes. References are identified in the text material by 

 Arabic numerals (superscripts or enclosed by parentheses) or by the 

 name of the author and the year; for example, "Green (1958) showed 

 . . . ." The references at the end of the paper might be listed in order 

 of their appearance in the text, alphabetically by author, by year, or in 

 some other order. 



The citation itself also depends upon the journal. The following im- 

 aginary example illustrates one system: 



Drake, P. D., and P. A. Mason. 1959. Effect of gamma rays on the 

 yield of peaches. J. Agr. Biophys. 43: 17-28. 



Only the first word and proper nouns in the title are capitalized. Com- 

 mon variations include inverted order for all author names, placing the 

 year in some other position, omission of the title, and different systems 

 of punctuation or different type styles. The abbreviations of the titles 

 of periodicals should follow a system, preferably that used by Chemical 

 Ahstracts. Generally, examining a few recent issues of the selected jour- 

 nal helps one to learn the proper form for citations. 



