style

quotation marks

Use double quotes in text, captions, etc. Single quotes for headlines, and quotes within quotes. See quotes.

Do not use quotation marks to soften headlines. 

Higgs boson "found" does not mean anything. The quote marks render the headline ambiguous and confuse the reader. Has it been found or not?

CERN physicists spot tantalising hints of Higgs boson is more elegant and gives more information, without the need for quotes. 

quotes

Readers are entitled to believe that anything appearing within direct quotes are the actual words used by the speaker.

  • Remove ums and aahs and correct for grammar 
  • If you are unsure of the exact wording use reported speech 
  • Open quotes with a colon, and close them after the punctuation mark
  • Use says, not said (though said is permissible for famous historical examples)

"I really enjoyed the part about the accelerators," says Joe Bloggs. "It got me interested in physics again."

scientists

Think before you use this word. Can you be more specific? What kind of scientist are they? A physicist? A theorist?

Avoid empty phrases such as "Scientists have learned in recent years that..." Such a construction doesn't convey any useful information.

See words to avoid in web texts. 

shutdown

no hyphen

In 2013, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will start its first long shutdown for maintenance.

Do not confuse the noun with the phrasal verb:

The research project was shut down due to lack of funding.

sigma

Number, no hyphen (except as a compound adjective), lower case "s"

Particle physicists describe the certainty of a result on a scale that goes up to 5 sigma. One sigma could be a random statistical fluctuation in the data, 3 sigma counts as evidence, but only a full 5-sigma result is a discovery. By definition, the probability that a 5-sigma result is wrong is less than one in a million.

1 sigma

3 sigma

5 sigma, etc. 

The certainty of the result was given as 3 sigma.

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