Hello Reader,

This was my first week of regular posting on the topic of science writing. I have tried to vary the post types and ensure maximum value. Please let me know what you thought about my posts and share any topics you would like to see covered.

If you want to write science well, adopt this mindset

The most important advice I can give after over 25 years of writing science and helping hundreds of students write science is this:

As a writer, your job is to make the reader’s job easy.

This mindset will help you solve most writing problems

1. It will help you structure your text in a logical fashion: you will take the readers by the hand at the beginning and walk them through your reasoning, step by step.
2. It will help you write clearly: if your only objective is making your writing easy to read, you will avoid complex structures or ambiguous phrasings.
3. It will help you write more engagingly: if you want your readers to remember what you wrote, you will use words to paint vivid pictures with moving parts that they can visualise easily.

With this mindset, you will make choices while you write, without second guessing yourself.

You will choose simple language over jargon because that helps a reader understand you even if they are not from your field. You will choose the active voice over the passive voice so the reader learns not only that an experiment was performed but also who performed it. You will know where to place that pesky citation so that it doesn’t stop the logical flow of the sentence yet still attributes the idea correctly for the reader.

So next time you sit down to write, don’t think about yourself or the subject matter, instead put your reader first.

3 Scientific writing skills early career researchers should develop to publish better papers

If you want to improve the quality of your manuscripts and reduce the stress and aggravation that comes with writing them, these are the skills you should focus on developing:

1. Identifying the core problem around which you build your scientific story. This is the notorious problem statement that should be found in your introduction. Without it, the reader will not know why they should spend their precious time grappling with the rest of your text.
2. Communicating complex information clearly in text, tables, and figures. The easier your message is to understand, the more likely the reader is to remember it and re-use it appropriately.
3. Organizing information logically. This applies to sections within your manuscript, to paragraphs within each section, and to sentences within each paragraph. Make it easy for the reader to follow your arguments.

Practice these skills every opportunity you get, whatever the format or topic you are writing about.

3 Books that helped me write as a graduate student

I have been interested in the art of scientific writing for a while now, but I owe a lot of the progress I've made to these books:

The elements of style - W. Strunk and E.B. White.

A tiny book with a great influence. My thesis advisor gave me a copy when he told me it was time to stop analyzing data and start writing. Its concise and direct language reframed the way I approached putting ideas into words.

On writing well - W. Zinsser.

The title says it all. Also a short book, it contains many tips and frameworks to write texts with which readers will wish to engage. It is written in a more conversational style than Elements, so will appeal to those who prefer to be convinced rather than follow orders.

Writing Science - J. Schimel

Before books about « how to write scientific papers » invaded Amazon, this book taught me that scientists need to spend as much time learning the craft of writing as traditional authors do.

Read and re-read them at your leisure - I do so about once a year...

3 Quotes by William Zinsser on writing science that every early-career researcher should take to heart

Here are three of my favorite quotes on writing science by William Zinsser, in On Writing Well:

1. About 98 percent of people who hold a doctorate in physics can’t write their way out of a petri dish, but that’s not because they can’t. It’s because they won’t. They won’t deign to learn to use the simple tools of the English language—precision instruments as refined as any that are used in a physics lab.
2. Scientific and technical material can be made accessible to the layman. It’s just a matter of putting one sentence after another. The “after,” however, is crucial. Nowhere else must you work so hard to write sentences that form a linear sequence. This is no place for fanciful leaps or implied truths. Fact and deduction are the ruling family.
3. Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly can write clearly, about anything at all. Science, demystified, is just another nonfiction subject. Writing, demystified, is just another way for scientists to transmit what they know.

Writing science is as important as doing science.

Practice the simple tools of clear writing to ease the work of publishing your first papers or completing your thesis.

Other content published this week

• First post on natural hazards: A simple framework for understanding natural hazards and risks​