48 PRS Proofreading and Editing Service PhD Experts • All Academic Areas • Fast Turnaround • High Quality All scholars use specialised terminology at times, and certainly such terminology can communicate with a precision that other words simply can’t manage. If there’s any doubt about your readers’ familiarity with the terminology you use in your paper, you will need to take special care to explain it (and the ideas behind it) with precision and as thoroughly as necessary to allow your readers to understand the significance of your methodology and argument. If you’re writing for a specialised journal, you can assume an editor (and certainly reviewers) familiar with the terminology associated with the area of specialisation, but you still need to use specialised vocabulary carefully, and never use a smattering of scientific or theoretical terms as a substitute for explaining ideas. The best scholarly writing demonstrates not just a proficiency in using specialised terminology but also a deep understanding of the ideas behind the terminology, and it explains those ideas for its readers while taking them (both ideas and readers) in new directions. Any abbreviations of specialised terminology should be used with the same precision as the original terms, and remember that if you use a list to define terms or outline categories of any kind, your readers will likely return to the list (since lists are particularly easy to locate) in order to review and check the terms you’ve used if anything does prove confusing, so be especially careful to use those terms and categories in the exact same forms elsewhere in the paper (see also Section 3.2.2 on formatting lists). Closely related to specialised terminology is the jargon peculiar to a profession or field of study. Such jargon often includes specialised vocabulary, but also tends to use convoluted syntax or awkward word order and can prove to be unintelligible (or very nearly so) to readers. For instance, ‘a low young voter turnout election’ is simply poor English and not nearly as effective for communicating meaning as ‘an election with a low turnout of young voters.’ The word ‘jargon’ is often defined in dictionaries as ‘meaningless writing,’ ‘vague language’ or PARt II: PRePARIng, PResentIng And PolIsHIng YoUR woRk