Science writing tip #2: Academic does not mean long and complicated

Although you must maintain an academic style when writing  journal articles and grant applications, you should aim to express your ideas clearly and concisely. When you are writing about technical procedures in a specialized field, it is easy for your writing to become overly complicated. Writing in a straightforward manner will make your work easy to understand and put the emphasis on the content rather than the style.

Why does it matter?

If you write long, convoluted sentences or overuse technical jargon, your reader may have a difficult time understanding your point.

Failure to present your ideas clearly could lead a funding agency to reject your application or an editor to return your submission without thorough review.

How to apply this tip

Express yourself in simple, direct terms.

Example:

The sentence

In order to confirm and extend the results of our previous experiments, we then proceeded to isolate primary thymic stromal cells.

could be more concisely written as

Then, we isolated primary thymic stromal cells.

Using fewer, shorter words is generally the best method for expressing your ideas.

There are a couple of exceptions.

Do not start a sentence with ‘But’, ‘And’, or ‘Because’. It is inappropriate to start a sentence with these terms in academic writing. The longer substitutes ‘However’, ‘Furthermore’, or ‘Given that’ would be appropriate.

Do not use contractions in your academic writing. In casual writing and speech, contractions such as ‘can’t’, ‘don’t’, ‘won’t’, ‘haven’t’, ‘couldn’t’, and ‘we’re’ are common. However, in academic writing, you should use the full, expanded form of the phrase (e.g., ‘don’t’ should be ‘do not’).

Wondering how to make your writing clearer? Ask questions or share your experience below!