The Writing Process

• Set writing goals based on output not input (e.g., I will type 3 double-spaced pages rather than I will work for 3 hours)
• Edit your work over and over, and have other people look at it. Push past the fear of criticism or rejection-nobody’s first drafts are good!

Writing for Different Audiences

• Public and scholarly writing are not the same thing, but people should not be limited to one or the other.
• Because many STEM fields are largely funded by governmental agencies (e.g., NSF, NIH, etc.), the public has a right to know where their tax money is going. It’s up to these scientists to succinctly convey the importance of their work and earn ongoing support.
• Ask yourself these questions so that you can tailor your information to your reader
• • Who will read the document?
  • How much experience do they have of the subject?
  • How much do they know about it?
  • What is their likely attitude towards it?
  • How involved in the subject are they?
  • How interested are they in the subject?
• Avoid jargon!
• • A good activity to help identify jargon is: 1) Print out a sample of your academic writing, 2) Give it to a reader from outside your own discipline, and 3) Have them highlight every word they don’t understand
  • Read your drafts out loud; clunky sentences sound even clunkier when you listen to them

• Avoid cushioning statements with hedges that make it seem you are not willing to stand behind what you say (e.g., nearly, somewhat, relatively, etc.)
• Use “for example, as in, such as;” illustrate your explanation with an example. Add a few words of explanation following common technical terms
• Look for forms of “to be,” “this,” “that,” “there,” and get rid of as many as you can without making the sentence worse
• Omit junk phrases such as “In the event that,” “on the grounds of,” “under circumstances which,” etc.
• Scan for words that end in -tion, -ism, -ty, -ment, -ness, -ance, -ence and change them to a strong verb & concrete noun
• • e.g., investigation → investigate, applicability → applicable

Explain in clear simple prose why your proposal is aligned with the organization’s goals and mission statement. Craft a proposal that matches what they want to fund; you want to recruit support for your proposal. Someone on the reviewing panel needs to read your grant and be genuinely excited about it so that they step up and support your grant before the group. Explain and emphasize why you are the perfect person to complete the project. Provide concrete evidence that the project is feasible, by you.

Workflow

• Identify general topic of wide interest that anyone would identify as important
• Identify 2 bodies of literature relevant to your own training that dealt with this topic (no more than 3 sentences long)
• Identify the gap in knowledge and why it is urgent to fill
• “However” sentence-the axis on which your entire appeal for funding rests
  • e.g., “However, none of these works have addressed the central question of…”
  • Your view of what is most essential to an accurate understanding of the big topic which has never to date been studied by anyone else
• Clearly and explicity state your overarching research question, then the specific hypotheses you plan to test and your predictions for these
• Methodology
• Include a timeline outlining the different stages of the project
• If possible, add preliminary data (from the literature, or your own) to corroborate your methodology/theory
• Budget (add justification for each line item)

Tips

• Keep verb tense consistent within section of the document
• Minimize novel abbreviations (only use 1 or 2)
• One idea per paragraph
• Don’t start sentences with long modifying clauses
• Start paragraphs with strong topic sentences
• Avoid using weak intensifiers such as “fundamentally, basically, very, interestingly, etc.”
• Write in simple, short sentences that are readable to someone outside your field

More resources
Grant Writing Tips
Grant Template Infographic
Hemingway App: analyses your writing for spelling, grammar, awkward sentence structure, etc.

Sample Workflow

• Write an outline with separate headings for Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion, listing the main points under each.
  • What is the narrative you are trying to convey? Keep this consistent throughout the sections
• Identify the journal you will submit to and look up their formatting requirements before you start writing a draft. Adhere to these as you create figures and tables and begin writing. 
• Create figures and figure legends.
• Write the methods section: be clear and succinct, but thorough enough that the reader understands what you were doing
• Write the results section
  • If you used sub-headings or numbers in your hypotheses and methods, keep them consistent in the results (and discussion)
  • When writing statistical output, include sample size, test used, test statistic, and p-value in parentheses at the end of a sentence
• Write the discussion
  • First, summarize main findings
  • Then, interpret these findings and relate them to previous work
  • Identify any surprising results and possible reasons for them
  • Include any limitations to your study (e.g., small sample size) 
  • Discuss future directions based on your findings
• Write the introduction
  • Explain why the study is addressing a gap in the literature and why it is important that gap is filled
  • Provide enough information regarding previous studies to make this point
  • The last paragraph should be an explicit breakdown of your study aims, hypotheses, and/or predictions. It may be helpful to number them
• Show the draft to your advisor, co-authors, colleagues, cohort-members, etc. and go through cycles of editing
• Put references in-text and in a Literature Cited section
• Carry out final edits and submit to the journal.

Figures

The same principles that govern scientific writing apply to figures and tables you include in a manuscript or presentation. You want simple, easy-to-understand graphs that are not too busy and use aesthetic color palettes. Don’t use red and green in the same figure, otherwise color-blind people will not be able to read it. Make sure the lettering or numbering on axes and legends is large enough to read.  

Responding to reviewer comments

Take a few days after receiving revisions on your manuscript. No one enjoys being critiqued and it is important not to take the comments personally. After a few days, come back to the edits with fresh eyes and an open mind. Address each comment! State how you changed the manuscript in response to the comment or provide further explanation as to why you did not.

The National Association of Science Writers and Council for the Advancement of Science Writing have many helpful resources on their websites.

SciLine: Run by the AAAS, SciLine is an editorially independent, philanthropically funded, free service connecting journalist with scientific experts around the world. SciLine as a database of scientists (which you can sign up to be included in!) that journalists can consult if they have questions about a particular topic for a story. SciLine also hosts workshops and “boot camps” to build links between scientists and journalists, and to help scientists become better communicators. Scientists can also submit a “tip” (a story idea) that is shared with reporters on SciLine if they need ideas for scientific content.

The Center for Public Interest Communications at the University of Florida maintains a list of publicly available articles, podcasts, and videos on strategies to improve your science communication skills.

ComSciConversation: The blog of ComSciCon (Communicating Science Conference), which has articles about science communication strategies, upcoming events, interesting podcasts, etc. A good all-around resource to consult if you’re looking to increase your involvement with SciComm.

The Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science has free online workshops and webinars. You can also read more about the Alda Method, a communication strategy utilizing “improvisational theater techniques to train scientists to pay dynamic attention to the needs of their listener and learn to spontaneously adjust those needs.”  

The Elsevier Researcher Academy provides e-learning modules in research preparation, writing for research, the publication process, navigating peer review, and communicating your research.

The Research4Life Training Portal contains free, downloadable resources on how to read and write scientific papers, understanding intellectual property rules, and has hands-on activity workbooks. It also teaches you about different reference managers such as Mendeley, Zotero, and Endnote. 

• These are really helpful tools to keep article PDFs organized (i.e., papers you have read, papers you want to read, papers to include in different manuscripts you’re writing, etc.). 
• They all typically have a Microsoft Word plugin so you can automatically export a reference list from the manager to your document.