Academic science writing is famously kind of terrible. It deliberately removes any notion that a human was involved in its creation, usually leading to a mix of passive voice and jargon that’s a chore to get through. Part of the job of the science communicator then is to take this writing and turn it into something that a person who isn’t trained in science can understand. In these terms, I often hear academic science writing pitched as a very distinct entity from popular science writing. The former has nothing to offer the latter except for science. What could the dry, technical language of a scientific paper teach you about how to communicate with a wider audience?
But when I look at my own writing today, a lot of it was shaped by lessons I learned in graduate school about writing and presenting for an academic audience. It seems counter-intuitive because the writing I get to do now is trying different things with structure and voice. That’s not really something you can do with academic writing, where structure and voice are fairly standardized. The writing and presenting I did in grad school inherently stripped the “fun” out of writing and presenting, though that’s not to say that there isn’t any creativity involved. In fact, there’s actually quite a bit of opportunity for creativity in ensuring the language and visuals are both effective and striking to the audience. It’s just that the form is so constrained that the opportunities for creativity are much more narrow.
But I think those extremely narrow constraints were actually a really valuable way for me to learn how to communicate science. I came into graduate school as someone who had done a double degree in English, and who had done pretty well on her research presentations in undergraduate. Which is to say, I came in kind of arrogant about my writing and presenting skills. But the thing about writing in college is that my audience was always effectively just “school.” The lab reports and summer research presentations gave me some of the background I needed in writing technical language, but they didn’t actually teach me how to write for an academic audience because writing for an academic audience is more than just technical language. Writing for an academic audience is fundamentally the same as writing for a popular audience: you have to think about what the audience needs, and how you’re going to use the tools you have to meet those needs. Removing the “fun” parts of writing forced me to focus entirely on the functional aspects of communication, and those lessons have translated over to the work I do now.
I have a lot more thoughts and specific examples related to this idea, so my plan is to expand on them in upcoming newsletters. As always, if you have any thoughts/questions, just reply to this newsletter or e-mail newsletter@debokic.com.
quick notes
- This article in the New York Times asking 100 scientists about unsolved questions in their fields is my favorite thing I’ve read lately. Thanks to my friend Hannah for sending it to me!
- I just finished Bodies of Magic by Freya Marske. I loved it so much, it has the “ragtag team forced on an adventure” vibe of Six of Crows, with the absolute horror of qualifying exams and a lot of thoughts about biology and medicine told through magic.
