Terrestrial Ecosystem Science & Services

Great Writing to Communicate Your Science

Great writing is invaluable in communicating our science effectivity to diverse audiences. Good writing is concise, accessible, and easy to understand. This guidance summarises some suggestions for powerful writing but should not be considered prescriptive as good writing styles can and do vary between authors and outputs for different audiences.

Structuring Manuscripts

One of our favourite summaries for powerful writing of scientific manuscripts is “The five pivotal paragraphs in a paper” by Brian McGill on the Dynamic Ecology Blog. Brian and many others contend that if authors get those five paragraphs right, they are likely to communicate a story arc in a way that grabs attention. Check out the blog post!

Topic Sentences

Topic sentences can be a very effective tool for powerful writing that works in many different types of output, including dissertations, theses, manuscripts, reports, and cover letters. Topic sentences summarise the main contention of each paragraph, which can then be expended upon and substantiated in the subsequent sentences. Opening each paragraph with a topic sentence helps readers to parse written information more accurately and efficiently. It is usually preferably to open each paragraph with a topic sentence, rather than presenting a ‘summary sentence’ at the end where there is a greater risk they might be overlooked by time-poor readers. This paragraph opened with a topic sentence!

Topic sentences can also help us to write more efficiently, by helping us as writers to create an effective and compelling structure for the overarching narrative we wish to convey. You can write out a series of topic sentences that sequentially convey the key contentions within each sub-section, creating a ‘skeleton’ of evocative prompts that provides a coherent outline for the entire piece. These topic sentences can then be expanded into complete (and approximately balanced) paragraphs. If you find it hard to create an outline written in tropic sentences because you do not yet know what you want to contend in your topic sentences, this might indicate that you need to first further develop your understanding of the subject, for example though further literature review or data analysis.

An easy way to check whether you are using topic sentences effectively in existing writing can be to format the opening sentence of each paragraph in bold, and then read only these bolded topic sentences throughout your document. Do they clearly convey the overarching narrative that you intended? Such bold formatting of topic sentences is usually removed at a late production stage for most documents but it can occasionally be appropriate to retain this visual emphasis where you want to focus the readers attention on your main messages (for instance in reports).

Titles, abstracts and keywords

Titles, abstracts and keywords are the primary marketing components of any scientific paper, and carefully designing these elements is crucial! ([1])

Other Frequent Tips for Formal Writing

Try to minimise the use of abbreviations and acronyms to maximise the readability of the output. A useful rule of thumb is that terms should be used five or more times before being abbreviated if deemed necessary. Check that each acronym used is defined upon first use in the text, in both the abstract and in the main text.

To help avoid misinterpretations of your writing, try to avoid sentence structures where misreading a single word might invert the meaning (For example, “We have also shown that reconstructed canopy heights were not sensitive to sun elevation” versus “We have also shown that reconstructed canopy heights were insensitive to sun elevation”; which is easier to misread?).

Language such as “new”, “novel”, “for the first time”, “unprecedented”, etc, should be avoided, or at least qualified with “to the best of our knowledge” or similar, because it often leads to unproductive controversy. Novelty should be clear from the context.

To help avoid misinterpretations of your writing, try to avoid sentence structures where the last part transforms the meaning associated with the preceding text.

Avoid overly long sentences; as a general rule of thumb, consider any sentences longer then 50 words with an ‘amber warning’, and any sentences longer than 70 words with a ‘red warning’ for excessive length. It is usually preferable to split such long sentences into multiple shorter ones, and reflect on whether everything is essential to include.

Template Manuscript Outline

(This is a generic template for a manuscript outline that can help to speed up getting started. Note that the exact structure, format, and length requirements usually vary between journals, so once your story develops and you develop a sense of which journal(s) you wish to target in discussion with your co-authors, it is worth checking any specific requirements early on).

Links for further resources