Geological Jargonese

Abstract

IN some of the elementary books used in learning languages, a short glossary of difficult words is set at the head of each exercise. Will you not follow this practice in your technical articles and reviews? A recent obviously brilliant notice of a geological work of surpassing interest—on partition of the continents—is practically Chinese to us unfortunates who learnt our little geology in days when Lyell and Geikie were current and could be read with ease, pleasure and profit. Only recently, a visitor to my house, who had picked up from my table a number of the Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, remarked to me that he had found the articles entirely beyond him, although he once could master its pages. ‘Prawns in Aspic’ comes home to most of us. Not a few can understand ‘Preserved in Formaldehyde’ written upon a museum label. What a mountainous form ‘preserved in sima’ may be, the Gods may know; no ordinary reader of NATURE can put meaning into the phrase and not a few others like it. Other subjects than geology are often made equally impossible for the average reader of your wonderful journal. I would beg you to help us, if not in the way suggested, by choosing reviewers who will write an English that carries an obvious meaning.