They Don't Write Good (and why you should) The craft of science communication

Writing Done Right Rule 1: Keep related words together You can call your sister in Brussels and tell her all about your boss taking you out to dinner for just a pound. For just a pound you can call your sister in Brussels and tell her all about your boss taking you out to dinner. Simon Makin, in this article, writes about writing. In this article, Simon Makin writes about writing (Exception: Karen, Simon's sister, is also a writer.)

Writing Done Right Grammatical subjects should be followed as soon as possible by their verbs (syntactic closure). This often involves a change from passive to active voice. Prefer active voice as a rule of thumb – it's stronger, and tends to be briefer. The levels of gene expression were measured by the researchers. The researchers measured gene expression levels.

Writing Done Right Sometimes, passive voice is appropriate: Genes encode proteins Proteins are encoded by genes If writing about genes use 1, about proteins use 2. Rule 2: Put the thing/person whose story the sentence tells at the beginning. The “topic” position. Readers expect a unit of discourse (sentence, paragraph) to be a story about whatever shows up first. Information in the topic position provides both context (looking forward), and linkage (looking back). should be old information the reader has encountered before.

Writing Done Right Readers put emphasis on information that appears at points of syntactic closure. Rule 3: Put the information you want the reader to emphasize at the end. The “stress” position. “Save the best for last”. Semi-colons can be used to add more stress positions by providing syntactic closure without ending the sentence.

Style Rules Put statements in positive form. He was not often on time → He usually came late Not honest → Dishonest Did not pay any attention to → Ignored Use definite, specific, concrete language when possible (not vague, general, abstract). Avoid passives (“It is thought that”), tautologies (“Best ever”, “complete monopoly”), cliches, and save conditionals (may, would, can) for real uncertainty. Omit unnecessary words. The question as to whether → Whether This is a subject that → This subject Owing to the fact that → Because

Style Rules Make the paragraph the unit of composition. The start of each para should be a new step in the development of the subject or argument. Make one point. Paragraphs and sentences can be any length. But paragraphs must hold together. A sentence is too long if it has too many good candidates for stress than it has stress positions. Vary sentence length. To create rhythm and variety. To best represent the actual relations of ideas and information.

Transitions Sometimes, paragraphs begin with a concise statement that holds together what follows. The analysis revealed a series of paradoxes. Concise summaries of what's gone before can help guide the reader through the piece. This can be the first sentence of a paragraph. Or a short paragraph by itself.

Writing For The Public Ledes Vs Intros. Feature structure. Intro (“Grab”) Nutgraf (“Billboard”) Backplot Development Conclusions Types of grabs. Anecdote (Narrative) Question Quote

Writing For The Public “One bad apple spoils the barrel, so the saying goes. But what if the barrel itself is rotten? Research suggests that seeing a peer behave unethically increases people's dishonesty in lab tests, but a problem facing social psychologists “is to understand how behaviors at the individual level translate into behaviors at the societal level, and vice versa” says behavioral scientist Amos Schurr of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. Recently, economic psychologists Simon Gächter of the University of Nottingham, U.K., and Jonathan Schultz, of Yale University, Connecticut, tackled the question in a study published in March 2016 in Nature. Their findings imply that corruption not only harms a nation's prosperity but also shapes the honesty of its citizens. The results have implications for interventions aimed at tackling corruption”

Some Advice “Writing is rewriting” Rules are for breaking. Assume the reader is exactly as intelligent as you, but has absolutely none of your knowledge. “Writing is rewriting”