看见一篇旧文：C. Bowman and A. C. Newell, Naturalpatterns and wavelets. Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 70, No.1 (1998)，开篇读着就舒服：

Natural patterns turn up all over. They show up as ripples in the sand washed by the tide or blown by a dry desert wind. One sees them on the tips of one’s fingers as fingerprints, as well as in the stripes of a tiger or zebra and the spots of a leopard (see Murray,1989). Patterns occur in galaxies and stars, in the atmosphere and in the oceans, in geological formations, and in plant morphology. They turn up in the laboratory as well, in experiments designed to measure the heat transfer of convecting fluids, the strengths of thin shells, the behavior of wide-aperture (‘‘fat’’) lasers, or the nature of flame fronts.

这段文字音韵很美，用词也简单。动词用很生活化的短语，如turn up, show up；几个in-介词短语分开，既区分了模式的场景，更协调了句子的韵律和节奏。这是我们写科学论文应该学习的榜样。在类似的情形，我们常见一in到底的；更多的时候，我们会看到罗列的词组或短语（从句），不讲结构，也不讲节奏，读起来就不舒服——下面是某书前言的一句：

The unifying aimof theoretical modelling and experimental investigation in the biomedicalsciences is the elucidation of the underlying biological processes that resultin a particular observed phenomenon, whether it is pattern formation indevelopment, the dynamics of interacting populations in epidemiology, neuronalconnectivity and information processing, the growth of tumours, maritalinteraction and so on.

虽然也通畅明白，但与前文的后一句比起来，似乎就凌乱了。

   前文还有一点很微妙，就是在atmosphere和oceans前面加了the，而其他名词没有。the也许是为了强调地球上的大气和海洋，但似乎不是必须的；假如天外也有大气和海洋，也该有各种模式。这儿可能主要是习惯问题。看看小狗搜搜的结果：

in the atmosphere and the oceans, 3 360 000

in the atmosphere and oceans, 1 810 000

in atmosphere and oceans, 61 000

那么，作者用的是最通行（最习惯）的表达方式。我们要养成他们的习惯当然不容易，就更应该像这样的作者学习。第一作者C. Bowman信息不明；Alan C. Newell写过很多东西，包括Solitons in Mathematics and Physics（1985）。他研究的东西都与模式有关：光学、海波和湍流。他还喜欢文学，特别是诗歌。虽不能说把这些东西融合起来就行（当然不行），但把它们的精神融化在脑子里，不论对写还是对写的内容，肯定都是大有好处。