Conservation Biology. Our audience is the general and international conservation biology reader, so clarity in language and syntax is important, especially for readers who do not speak English as their first language. For Contributed Papers, Reviews, most Essays, Conservation in Practice, and Research Notes informal language is not acceptable. And, consider that [L]iterary devices, metaphors and the like, divert attention from the substance to the style [and] should be used rarely in scientific writing" (Day 1998). In general writers (and speakers) should avoid the use of jargon. But because we have a broad and international readership, it is even more important for authors to avoid it.