How well you can put words together to formulate the idea in your head is part of how impactful your paper will be when you’re a researcher. This is your voice, and it’s unique to you. The importance of a professional voice in academic writing helps you to be distinguished from the many other scholars out there, some of whom are writing on the same topic you are.

When your writing voice is natural but would be considered unprofessional by journal editors, you need to revise what you’re doing. If your work is constantly getting rejected because of “style,” “tone,” or “voice,” you might be engaging in enemies of academic writing such as purple prose. It’s the editor’s job to keep your work professional; it’s your job to learn the writing styles to stay away from before your work is rejected.

The Job of the Editor

The editor of any reputable journal has an intensive job. They read through piles and piles of manuscripts, skimming each one as a start to see if any stand out from the crowd, rejecting or passing on every paper as they deem appropriate.

Some of the things that the editor looks for in the process of approval for further review or outright rejection includes factors such as the ethics involved in the study, how well the author has put together the paper on the surface, and their grasp of both the English and scientific language.

Unprofessional voices that use subjective evaluation language, making claims that their paper is the best, original, valuable, or other opinionated terms will quickly get a paper thrown into the “reject” pile. It’s unnecessary verbiage, and journal editors and readers don’t want “filler” words in a paper that is typically already lengthy. You’re the expert. The information you include is already important enough to warrant publishing and reading; it’s not necessary to add in subjective evaluative language, such as purple prose.

Staying Away from Purple Prose

There is a time and place for everything, including “purple prose.” However, the time and place for this type of language is not a scientific paper.

Purple prose was popular centuries ago and still serves a purpose in fictional literature and poetry. It’s a type of writing that is ornate, embellishing, and ultimately fluff. Instead of focusing on the clarity and conciseness of the topic, it extends a sentence or paragraph into unnecessary detail. Since scientific papers are academic in nature, flowery words and sentences are not applicable.

Read your paper through and watch for these red, or “purple,” flags. If your content doesn’t advance the steps in your research that take you to the outcome, serve to clarify a point, or address the intentions you had behind a step, it is probably unnecessary. Watch for big words, too, that could be clarified with a simpler term. Remember that readability is a large part of how your paper is seen through search engine optimization crawlers.

Other Unprofessional Styles to Avoid

In addition to purple prose, there are a couple of other unprofessional styles you should avoid as a scientific scholar. One of them is “beige prose.”

With beige prose, the writing does add descriptions, but they are simple, brief, and to the point. While clarity and conciseness are the aim, beige prose, like the color, can be simply boring to the reader. Imagery does have a purpose when it comes to catching the attention of the person reading your paper. You can use beige prose when you want to make a simple point direct and clear, but using it throughout your entire paper can make for a very dull read, reducing the impact you could have made.

Finally, avoid “blue language,” too. There is no place for blue language in academic writing. It’s an engagement in dialogue in which obscenity, profanity, and taboo language is used.

You might be tempted to include a “blue” term to make a point, but you are a professional. There are other, better, ways to get your idea across than to use blue language, both in your writing and aloud.