Ideas into Words: Mastering the Craft of Science Writing Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The author provides many examples of great scientific writing. Such writing involves translating difficult-to-understand abstractions into concepts easy to understand and related to our current knowledge.
Her writing was a delight to read.
"As the article proceeds, it is as if the selected facts are coated in honey, so that they slide down easy, one pill at a time. No reader will go away thinking, Boy was that turgid, I had to learn a new word just about every paragraph - even though she did."
The book is organized into the following chapters:
1 A Matter of Attitude
2 Finding Stories
3 Finding Out: Research and the Interview
4 Writing: Getting Started adn theSTructure
5 Writing: The Nitty Gritty
6 Refining Your Draft
7 When You're Feeling Stuck
What I particularly liked:
+ her ability to use extended similes, metaphors
+ things that make scientific writing different
+ watch out for scientific mavericks
+ how to find scientific story ideas (excellent)
+ don't confuse a topic with a story idea
+ all of her material on interviewing (excellent, particularly the questions to ask)
+ focusing on the most likely reader, but also the other ones
+ her method of writing was unique (lack of exploratory free-writing, don't spill the beans on your story before you write)
+ her recommended use of organic shapes for your writing (excellent)
+ "build the picture before you supply the name" (how to define technical terms)
+ some great tips on putting on a fresh set of eyes before you start to revise and then edit.
+ re-organizing the paragraphs using their "gists"
+ "... in a term paper you tell. In a professional writing, you show."
I highly recommend this book for anyone who writes, but particularly for anyone who wants to write for the scientific or technical markets.
John Dunbar

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