Better writing CAN boost your impact – now with data!
This is according to a new opinion piece published in PNAS, at least, but we already agree with them or we wouldn’t be here! The article I am referring to: Benjamin Freeling, Zoë A. Doubleday, and Sean D. Connell. Opinion: How can we boost the impact of publications? Try better writing. PNAS January 8, 2019 116 (2) 341-343 Click here for […]
How to Write Compelling Abstracts (Free gift!)
The abstract of a paper is not an afterthought. Nor is it a summary nor a Frankenstein-like compilation of the first sentences of each section. The abstract serves as the general advertisement for a paper – to journal editors and reviewers making decisions about a manuscript and later to its readers. It has to state […]
How to set a writing resolution that sticks
Writing is a touchy subject in academia. Basically, everyone should be writing, and no one is writing nearly enough. Ask anyone, from a graduate student to a full professor, how their writing is going, and you are likely going to see that deer-in-the-headlights panic. Its also about that time again…the end of the year when […]
Why manuscript writing isn’t like skiing…but probably should be
Living in Switzerland, skiing is a normal part of winter life. Having moved from Los Angeles, it was unfortunately not a part of my life until I got here, and I was therefore woefully behind all of my friends and colleagues when I finally hit the slopes. My first day out, I hired a ski […]
How to best tackle your draft when you have blank-page syndrome
We’ve all been there – staring at the blinking cursor on our all-too-white Word document waiting for inspiration to strike. Blank-page syndrome in manuscript preparation can lead to enormous amounts of wasted time and word-vomited first drafts that require significant editing overhauls. Fortunately, the order in which you draft your manuscript can be one of […]
“So what?” A simple test for concise, interesting writing
The “so what” test can be a powerful tool for making your scientific writing concise and ensuring that it is interesting to your reader. Effective writing and editing in the sciences requires concise and convincing language, but it also needs to be informative. There are lots of tips out there for how to do this, ranging from the use […]
Symbols or formatting words getting you down? Don’t lose your flow!
Anything that continuously interrupts your flow can hinder what you can accomplish each day, and this is no different in writing. I always have to add symbols as soon as I type them, or I am paranoid I will forget to add them later. Constantly stopping to get to the symbols menu, or having to […]
Can we learn what a grant reviewer is thinking based on their language?
Grant deadlines are approaching, and this season, I’m proposing a shift in thinking about proposal writing. For our next grant, lets’s remove all the shoulds and musts we think exist in application writing, like “I need to include all of my preliminary data”, “I should include all of the relevant literature so they can see […]
Without communication, how can we change the world?
As a fledgling graduate student, my inability to convey my thoughts at all, let alone convincingly, was an enormous daily stress. Think up-all-night-cold-sweats-before-lab-meeting level of stress. In talks, I would get no questions. Only blank stares. I would run to my PIs office after a perfect experimental result, blurt out the data, […]