- A Recipe Gone Haywire (ARGH)
I don’t have a lot of time to cook, so I am always looking for new sources of easy and at least somewhat healthy recipes. Recently, I bought a cookbook titled Mediterranean Every Day (MED) by Sheela Prakash. This cookbook is great because the recipes usually have a short list of ...
- Make It About the Science
Always percolating below the surface of biomedical science is the ever-important quest to distinguish ourselves and our research through the art of publishing. Inevitably our efforts lead us to the same gateway: passing muster with the dreaded Reviewer, who lurks in the shadow wo...
- Don’t Wait Until You’re Motivated to Write. Take Small Actions!
Like one of my earlier posts, the musings below were inspired by a tweet. Sara, a PhD student, asked, “Anyone with tips on how to stay motivated while writing your dissertation?!“
Anyone who has ever written a manuscript, funding application or PhD thesis knows that writing is a...
- Writing Science in Plain English: Clarity Rules
As one might expect from the title, Writing Science in Plain English is clear, concise, and very easy to understand. In fact, it's one of the best books on writing I've come across. If you only read one book on science writing, make it this one.
In short, digestible chapte...
- Helping Students Find the Focus of Their Manuscript
Learning how to write a research paper is difficult and takes time, yet it is an integral part of a PhD in STEM. Teaching your students and postdocs how to write good papers is an essential part of being a good supervisor and mentor.
Loose keys from a rainbow coloured comp...
- The Guiding Principle in Scientific Writing
Many scientific authors think that effective writing is based on a set of rules, such as proper grammar or word usage. But writing well is not simply about following rules. Writing well is about using a collection of skills and principles to write in a way that engages and inform...
- One Minute Writing Tuneup: Readability
While helping a brilliant scientist revise her abstract to a 10th grade reading level for a foundation award application, I wrote down some tips for converting writing intended for audiences with a scientific background to readers with less formal education:
Smaller words. Hal...
- Writer’s Toolbox: Creating Sentences That Flow
Have you ever had a high-tech remote control that has multiple features but you only use the off and on button? Or a computer application like Excel (guilty) that can perform many functions and you only use it for addition? Using words and sentences can be akin to using tha...
- 5 Things That Help Me Write
I remember a seminar that I organized when I was a postdoc. The speaker was a science communicator with a PhD in biomedical science, who also had published a novel. She started the seminar by asking the audience “Who considers themselves a writer?” A few hands went up. Next, ...
- Becoming a More Productive Writer
#AcademicTwitter:
I used to be a horrible scientific writer. I was paralyzed by writing anxiety & it took me FOREVER to write papers. Last year I published 14 scientific articles (8 first, 2 second, 2 senior-author) & 2 book chapters.
A thread ⬇️ on how I becam...
