Writing Science in Plain English

by Anne E. Greene

Scientific writing is often dry, wordy, and difficult to understand. But, as Anne E. Greene shows in Writing Science in Plain English ,writers from all scientific disciplines can learn to produce clear, concise prose by mastering just a few simple principles.
 

This short, focused guide presents a dozen such principles based on what readers need in order to understand complex information, including concrete subjects, strong verbs, consistent terms, and organized paragraphs. The author, a biologist and an experienced teacher of scientific writing, illustrates each principle with real-life examples of both good and bad writing and shows how to revise bad writing to make it clearer and more concise. She ends each chapter with practice exercises so that readers can come away with new writing skills after just one sitting.
 

Writing Science in Plain English can help writers at all levels of their academic and professional careers―undergraduate students working on research reports, established scientists writing articles and grant proposals, or agency employees working to follow the Plain Writing Act. This essential resource is the perfect companion for all who seek to write science effectively.

Genres: Writing, Science, Nonfiction, Academia, Language, School, Academic

136 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2013

Reviews

[Frank Peters · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book that taught me much more than I hoped for. In truth, the book challenged most of what I was taught years ago when I was first learning to write scientific journals. The author systematically breaks down different aspects of scientific writing, from active vs passive through sentence design all the way to design of paragraphs. I have much to relearn. The author seems biased toward the biological fields, which made reading the example more difficult for me. This would be my only personal complaint. However, I understand that there are many more people writing in the biological fields than in those scientific field that I would find easier to read. I recommend the book to anyone who writes scientific articles.

[Abby Day]

had to read this for class and i’m counting it ☝️😁

[Suellen Rubira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quando comecei esse livro, a ideia que eu tinha era de uma reunião de artigos científicos escritos em inglês acessível.

Na verdade, trata-se de um guia de como escrever textos científicos de modo que seja direto e interessante para o leitor.

Embora os exemplos sejam da biologia, dá para pensar qualquer texto seguindo essas dicas.

Além disso, ao longo de todos os capítulos há uma seleção de exercícios para praticar cada aspecto: eliminar voz passiva desnecessária, alternar frases longas e frases curtas, como organizar os parágrafos.

É um ótimo livro pra consultar sempre.

[Kitri Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is actually a good short book for writing better science, with examples to practice. The practice is probably the best thing since there is nothing better to get your mind around the concepts. It being so short means that it gets to the point for everything. It also helps in a way on how to read certain types of writing.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had to read this for school, so obvi it was kinda boring. But, it gets 4 stars solely for how helpful it was

[casey r · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to read this for class, but it actually was a very resourceful book. It also made me realize how bad I am at grammar and writing...

[Saphira Bloom-Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is well-written, helpful, concise, and immediately actionable. I was able to read it in half a week, and feel fairly confident having done the exercises in each chapter that I can now go edit my own writing. Really fantastic option for when you're already in the throes of writing and want a sharp and fast instructional to improve your writing.

[Mills College Library]

808.0665 G7991 2013

[Scott Pearson · Rating 4 out of 5]

My research work is moving from writing code to explaining the software that I’ve written. In general, I enjoy learning about language, and I picked up this book to extend my knowledge as well as to refresh myself on good practices for scientific writing.

Scientific writing is often dry and difficult to understand – but as Greene points out, it doesn’t have to be. By following good writing practices (in the tradition of the famed Strunk and White), scientific writing can be engaging and transformative. Indeed, the best grant proposals (read: funded grant proposals) and the most impactful papers use disciplines of plain English to communicate profound truths about nature.

Greene’s book is organized into eleven short chapters and two appendices. (One of the chapters – on parallel structure – is a measly three pages!) Each chapter is concisely written. This allows the reader to digest a topic quickly, to practice the principle through exercises, and to reenter life more skillful.

So much of good writing is getting one’s own self out of the way so that the truth of the matter can speak for itself. This book teaches small but powerful disciplines to writers of science that they might communicate more effectively. What’s the point of studying to the point of mastery if you cannot communicate your results? Because of this, I say that all scientists should study writing, and this is an excellent vehicle for doing so.

[Geo · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's OK. I don't see how I could do all the things she suggested in one thesis or article at once. But I don't think this was not the point.

It just bothered me a bit how she suggested not using technical terms because it will confuse the audience. Ok, sure. But what the hell? If I write an article that uses t cells and publish it in a proteomics journal, according to her I should avoid terms only immunologists would understand. My problem is: who are these people that look for a t cell paper that don't understand basic immunological terms? This advice makes sense only when you're stepping out of your field completely or you're writing for an audience that doesn't contain only scientists.

Another one is the short vs long words. I get that short words are easier to remember/read/whatever. But don't pretend that "implement" has the same meaning as "put". This annoyed me more than anything, just because of the examples she gives and the tone of the writing that makes it sound as if longer word have no additional value other than "they sound smart". Words have meaning. Long words are fine.

Basically what I didn't like about this book was the first half where all the advices are... ordinary. I mean, she said nothing I didn't figure out on my own. And I'm not a native English speaker or an old wise scientist.

Second half of the book is pretty good and has good advices.

[Sonya · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about writing, not just for scientists, but for anyone who wants practice with seeing the process of revision, and examples of a well structured, informative paragraph. Or not-so-great paragraphs, and then suggestions for improving them based on who the audience is, and also following the rules of grammar, parallelism, and general best practices for writing clearly, concisely, and interestingly.

I found this topic interesting because I have a passing interest in science, and a background in educating about science, and I like to play around with popular science writing. Greene does a good job of assessing the problems in the hard sciences today: scientists are not taught how to write, they in turn do not model good writing to their students or in their published papers, and the next generation emulates the one before--with a lot more dry writing that other scientists might not be able to understand because of all the jargon and obfuscation....

[Melissa Grant-Peters · Rating 4 out of 5]

If this book were about writing in general, I might have given it 5 stars; many points about structuring sentences and paragraphs were very insightful, interesting and easily transferable to any type of writing. I recommend this book for anyone wanting to write and communicate effectively, not only scientists.
My only cautionary statement: for some of the revisions the book recommends in certain science article passages I do not know how effective they would be in peer review journals, both because of tradition as well as accuracy. I can only speak for the passages that are from my field, but while her recommendations are absolutely more effective at communicating, in some cases I thought this was at the cost of accuracy to an extent that I think could be problematic when publishing in a peer reviewed journal. Nevertheless, the book packs very good and practical content in under 100 pages and I still highly recommend it.

[Rui · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's almost funny that the author of such a good book picked probably the worst title.

Do not get misled!!! Do not turn away!!! I genuinely recommend this book to everyone who needs to write non-fiction materials once in their lifetime. Again, this book can help you more than writing science.

It's practical in a sense that you improvement in non-fiction writing gets visible. It's also profound because it will change your understanding about reading and writing as a craftsmanship and an important skill in general.

Still in my first read. I can totally see myself revisit this book and refresh my memory once in a while.

Thank you, Anne Greene!!! I love your book.

[Alanus · Rating 4 out of 5]

The biggest thing I got from this book is that writing a scientific paper does not need to be wordy or long to be considered good. Greene began the book logically from the parts of a sentence and ended with the arrangement of paragraphs. The book was not as dry as I expected either. Greene kept me engaged throughout the book with passages of studies as good and bad examples. Finally, there were exercises that assessed your understanding after every chapter. I would recommend to science and research peeps.

[Lori Palen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated that this book made explicit a bunch of the best practices I’d implicitly known. I also picked up a few new tidbits. But, the examples in the book were more about writing for other scientists than about writing for the public, and the latter was more what I had been in the market for. Relatedly, because the examples were mostly from the hard sciences and used a lot of technical language, they were hard to follow.

[Willow Grimaldi · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a good book for what it is. It breaks down how to write scientific papers for people to understand and enjoy them and yah know, I admire that. Scientific papers are confusing and I think more people looking to write like that should read this.

[Aleksandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, practical, to the point

[Vanessa Fuller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely the best resource for academic writing.

[Jessica Bishop-Royse · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a concise explanation on how to write science in plain english. It is the perfect tome for anyone who has to write about scientific scholarship or teach it.

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really helpful for improving my academic writing!! I'm sharing it with my labmates now that I'm done too.

[Kylla Benes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing little guide that pushes academic writers to write better! Used it for my science writing class.

[Gabrielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it! 1) It's short. 2) Scientists really do need to communicate better.

[Eddie]

my advisor gave this to me for my bachelor's thesis. let's see if i learned something. I'm probably going to buy it myself and read it again for my master's thesis.

[Yisu Z. · Rating 5 out of 5]

对于追求简洁的读者来说非常好，大约30分钟就能读完这本100页的小册子。没有任何花俏的技巧（比方如何让行文更有诗意），简洁、朴实、讲究逻辑和表达的清晰。附带的小练习也可以让普通读者理解不同表达方法之间的差异。大约高中程度的英文就能读这本了。

[aeris wong · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is the other book i had to read for my writing course. tbh it is so true... why do scientists have to make their publications so hard to read when they literally don't have to be

[Tamara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very helpful to transition from an academic writing style to plain English. With exercises to apply each topic. Very useful.

[Madeline Bataille · Rating 3 out of 5]

For class. Pretty good

[ella fontes · Rating 3 out of 5]

forgot to log this book from a class last term… oops

unfortunately, contrary to what this book advises, i don’t think i’ll ever be able to unlearn my tendency to write with fluff & flourish🤷‍♀️

[Hannele Kormano · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked it, even as a software engineer it has super useful strategies for stepping back from overly technical jargon.

[Andreas Lindblad · Rating 5 out of 5]

I give this book to my friends that write scientific papers and reports. Although you do not have to agree with everything in it 100% there is a lot of time saving nuggets in it. The examples are clear and obvious.