The linguistic wall
- Vinoy Vijayan
- Dec 18
- 6 min read
On April 25, 1953, a short paper appeared in the journal Nature that changed the world.1 It was barely a page long and contained a single, simple diagram. But what stands out today isn’t just the discovery of the DNA double helix; it is the quiet, unassuming confidence of the opening sentence: “We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A).”
There is no jargon, no passive voice, no desperate attempt to sound important. It is simply two people showing us something they have seen.
Compare that to the average paper published today. If a modern researcher were announcing the secret of life, they would likely begin with: “A novel structural configuration for the saline derivative of the deoxyribose nucleic moiety is herein proposed.” The science has advanced, but the writing has retreated behind what researchers call the linguistic wall.2
