Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded

236 Pages·2011·3.64 MB·English

by  Joshua Schimel

Writing Science

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Writing Science

How to Write Papers That Get Cited and
Proposals That Get Funded

J O S H U A S C H I M E L

1

1

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schimel, Joshua.
Writing science : how to write papers that get cited and proposals that get funded / Joshua Schimel.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-976023-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-19-976024-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Technical writing. 2. Proposal writing for grants. I. Title.

T11.S35 2012
808.06’65—dc23

2011028465

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

To my father, Jack Schimel, who loved language

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CONTENTS

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii

1 Writing in Science 3

2 Science Writing as Storytelling 8

3 Making a Story Sticky 16

4 Story Structure 26

5 Th e Opening 35

6 Th e Funnel: Connecting O and C 50

7 Th e Challenge 58

8 Action 67

9 Th e Resolution 83

10 Internal Structure 95

11 Paragraphs 104

12 Sentences 112

13 Flow 124

14 Energizing Writing 133

15 Words 145

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C O N T E N T S

16 Condensing 158

17 Putting it All Together: Real Editing 174

18 Dealing with Limitations 180

19 Writing Global Science 189

20 Writing for the Public 195

21 Resolution 204

Appendix A: My Answers to Revision Exercises 207
Appendix B: Writing Resources 212

Index 215

PREFACE

Th ose who can do, also teach.

It came as a surprise to me one day to discover that I was writing a book on writ-
ing. It’s not the normal pastime for a working scientist, which I am — I’m a profes-
sor of soil microbiology and ecosystem ecology. I write proposals, I write papers,
and I train students to do both. I review extensively and have served as editor for
several leading journals. Teaching writing evolved from those activities, and it
became a hobby and a passion. Th is book is the outgrowth — it’s what I have been
doing when I should have been writing papers.
Although I believe I have become a good writer, I got there through hard work
and hard lessons. I didn’t start out my academic life that way. Before teaching my
graduate class on writing science for the fi rst time, I went back to my doctoral dis-
sertation for a calibration check — what should I expect from students? I made it
through page 2. At that point, my tolerance for my own writing hit bottom and my
appreciation for my advisor’s patience hit top. Even the papers those clumsy chap-
ters morphed into were only competent.
My writing has improved because I worked on becoming a writer. Th at doesn’t
mean just writing a lot. You can do something for many years without becoming
competent. Case in point: the contractor who put a sunroom on our house. He
kept insisting, “I’ve been doing this for 20 years and know what I’m doing”; the
building inspector’s report, however, said to reframe according to building codes
and standard building practices.
I have learned to write through a number of avenues: guidance from my
mentors; the trial and error of reviews and rejections; thinking about communica-
tion strategy; working with students on their papers; reviewing and editing hun-
dreds of manuscripts; reading and rereading books on writing; and importantly,
participating in my wife’s experiences as a developing writer, listening to the
lessons from her classes, and watching how real writers train and develop. I have
tried to meld all these lessons into science writing, incorporating writers’ perspec-
tives into the traditions and formulas of science. Th is book represents that

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P R E FAC E

amalgamation, and I hope it will help you short-circuit the long, slow, struggle I
experienced.

PRINCIPLES VERSUS RULES

Many books on writing (notably the bad ones) present a long string of rules for
how to write well. In them, writing is formulaic. In good writing, however, “the
code is more what you call guidelines than actual rules” (to quote from Pirates of
the Caribbean ), a point made strongly by two prominent writers on writing, Joseph
Williams ( Style: Toward Clarity and Grace ) and Roy Peter Clark ( Th e Glamour of
Grammar ). Most of the time, following the rules will improve your writing, but
good writers break them when it serves their purposes. I distinguish such rules
from principles, which are the general concepts that guide successful communica-
tion. If you violate principles, your writing will suff er.
Th roughout the book I try to distinguish between rules and principles, and
I hope to off er enough insight that you will understand which are which, and why.
When following a rule confl icts with following a principle, fl out the rule freely
and joyously.

SOURCES FOR EXAMPLES

I found examples in many places — some from work I know, some from
papers that friends recommended, one from someone I met on an airplane, and
many from randomly fl ipping through journals. Th e examples I hold up as
good practice, I use intact and cite properly, though I remove the reference cita-
tions to make them easier to read. Exemplars of good practice deserve to be rec-
ognized. I sometimes point out what I see as imperfections, but only to highlight
that even good writing can usually be better, and that although we may strive for
perfection, we never reach it. A “good enough” proposal may still get funded,
and an award letter from the National Science Foundation is the best review I’ve
ever seen.
Th e examples of what I think you should not do are closely modeled on real
examples. However, unless they come from my own work, I have rewritten the
text to mask the source. When I rewrote the text, I maintained the structural
problems so that even if the science is no longer “real,” the writing is. In some
cases these examples are from published work; in others, from early draft s that
were revised and polished before publication. If you recognize your own writing
or my comments on it (if I had handled it as a reviewer or editor), please accept
my thanks for stimulating ideas that I could use to help future writers. We learn
from our mistakes, and I need to show readers real “mistakes” to learn from.
I hope I helped with the reviews I wrote at the time.
When I take examples from my own work, it is because only then can I accu-
rately explain the author’s thinking. When I use others’ work, I can assess what

P R E FAC E
xi

they did and why it worked or failed, but I can’t know why they made the choices
they did. For proposals, I use my own extensively because I have access to them.
Proposals aren’t published, so I can’t scan other fi elds to fi nd good examples, as I
could for papers.
I have included examples from many scientifi c disciplines to illustrate that my
approaches and perspectives are broad-based; the basic challenges and strategies
of writing are similar across fi elds. Many, however, come from the environmental
sciences, where I knew where to fi nd useful examples and where I felt that most
readers would be able to understand enough of the content to have an easier time
focusing on the writing.

EXERCISES AND PRACTICE

In most chapters, I include exercises to apply the concepts I discuss. I encourage
you to work through these, ideally in small groups. Writers oft en have writer’s
groups, where typically four to six people get together to work over each other’s
material, discuss what works and what doesn’t, and suggest alternative ways of
doing things. Th is process is helpful in developing successful writers — it provides
insights from diff erent points of view that can stretch boundaries and off er new
ideas. Analyzing others’ work can hone analytical skills. Groups also provide a
supportive environment for learning, analogous to how a lab group helps you
expand your research tools.
Th e exercises fall into several categories. Th e most important is the short arti-
cle I ask you to write (and rewrite, and then rewrite again). I use this exercise in
my writing class, and it is enormously successful, particularly when coupled with
peer discussion and editing. Th e short form intensifi es the focus on the story as
well on each paragraph and sentence.
Th e second important exercise is to analyze the writing in published papers.
How did the authors tell their story? Did it work? Was it clear? How could you
improve the writing? Th is, too, is best done in groups. Th ese papers don’t need to
be the best writing in the fi eld — we can learn as much from imperfect writing as
we do from excellent work. Th e rule in these discussions should be that you may not
discuss the scientifi c content unless it is directly germane to evaluating the writing.
Get in the habit of evaluating the writing in every paper you read or discuss —
the more you sensitize yourself, the more those insights will diff use into your own
writing.
Finally, there are editing exercises that target specifi c issues such as sentence
structure, word use, and language. For those, I provide suggested answers at the
back of the book. Remember, though, that there is never a single way to approach
a writing problem; my answers are not the only approach and may not even be the
best. In working examples in class, students oft en fi nd diff erent and better solu-
tions than any I came up with.
If you really want to become a better writer, do the exercises. Work with
your friends and colleagues on them. You only learn to write by writing, being

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P R E FAC E

edited, and rewriting. You must learn not just the principles but also how to apply
them.

Th e point is that you have to strip your writing down before you can build it
back up. You must know what the essential tools are and what job they were
designed to do. Extending the metaphor of carpentry, it’s fi rst necessary to be
able to saw wood neatly and to drive nails. Later you can bevel the edges or
add elegant fi nials, if that’s your taste. But you can never forget that you are
practicing a craft that’s based on certain principles. If the nails are weak, your
house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your
sentences will fall apart.

William Zinsser, On Writing Well

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I always blame this book on Christina Kaiser and Hildegard Meyer, two graduate
students at the University of Vienna. But the person really responsible, as she is for
most of the best things in my life, is my wife, Gwen. We spent the summer of 2005
in Montpellier, France, at the Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive of the
CNRS, hosted by Stefan Hättenschwiler and Giles Pinay; we took the opportunity
to go to Vienna to visit Dr. Andreas Richter and his research group. Tina and
Hildegard were chatting with Gwen and mentioned that they liked reading my
papers because they were well written. Th at sparked Gwen to suggest I teach a
workshop on writing for the lab group in France. Th e rest is history. So Tina and
Hildegard, little may you realize the power of that off -hand comment, but you
catalyzed this. Th ank you.
My thanks to Gwen are endless — not only did teaching writing come from her
inspiration, but much of what I know about writing and how writers learn their
craft comes from her. She supported and encouraged me through the years I’ve
worked on this, and she has read through most of the book, providing valuable
insights and feedback.
Th e other critical thread that led to my writing this book was becoming a 2006
Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow. Not only was the Leopold program’s communi-
cation training infl uential, but simply being a fellow helped motivate me to take
what I had learned and make it available to the community.
Many of my colleagues have given me ideas, insights, quotes, and good stories
about science and communication. Many of those comments were made in pass-
ing and were not targeted at either writing or this book. You may not realize how
sticky those ideas were, and you may not even remember saying them, but thank
you. I have been privileged to work with as talented, insightful, and generous a
group of friends and colleagues as I can imagine. I am grateful to you all for
enriching my work and my life.
Many of those colleagues have reviewed my work over the years and forced
me to develop my writing and thinking skills to get proposals funded and papers
published. At the time, I may have complained about that “miserable know-
nothing so-and-so,” and I once commented about a good friend who was the
editor handling a paper that “If he accepts this version, I owe him a beer; if he

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AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S

sends it back for more revision, I’m going to pour it on him.” I am, however, grate-
ful to you all for holding my feet to the fi re and forcing me to make my work as
good as it could be. It both built my scientifi c career and taught me how to write.
My Ph.D. advisor, Mary Firestone, taught me the most crucial lessons of how
to frame the question and the story. When I was fi nishing my dissertation, she
also edited my horrible, sleep-deprived writing into a form that was at least mini-
mally acceptable and did so with grace and humor. She set me on this path.
Erika Engelhaupt gave me great suggestions and great text for chapter 20,
“Writing for the Public.” Weixin Cheng provided valuable suggestions on chapter 19,
“Writing Global Science.” Bruce Mahall and Carla D’Antonio, with whom I lead
the Tuesday evening plant and ecosystem ecology seminar, have helped me deepen
my insights into communication strategy. Carin Coulon drew the wonderful
fi gure of the Roman god Janus that appears in chapter 13.
I owe great thanks to the U.S. National Science Foundation. Th e NSF is an
extraordinary organization, due to the talent and dedication of its program offi -
cers. Th e NSF has supported my work and helped me grow to reach the point
where I could write this book.
Many people have participated in the workshops I’ve given on writing and in
the graduate class I teach. Th is book grew from them, and in working through the
lessons in person I have been able to polish them. Th ank you all.
I’ve worked on manuscripts with a number of graduate students and postdocs.
Th ey helped me develop my own writing tools and my analytical understanding
of those tools so I could teach them to others. Th e list is long and grows longer
monthly: Jay Gulledge, Mitch Wagener, Joy Clein, Jeff Chambers, Mike Weintraub,
Noah Fierer, Sophie Parker, Doug Dornelles, Shawna McMahan, Shinichi Asao,
Izaya Numata, Ben Colman, Knut Kielland, Susan Sugai, Carl Mikan, Andy Allen,
Michael LaMontagne, Amy Miller, Matt Wallenstein, Shurong Xiang, Dad Roux-
Michollet, Sean Schaeff er, Claudia Boot, Mariah Carbone, and Yuan Ge. Particular
thanks go to Shelly Cole for her generosity. Th anks also to all the other students
whose dissertations and manuscripts I have read and edited while serving on your
committees.
Finally, I would like to note two books that have greatly infl uenced my think-
ing on writing and communication: Joseph Williams’s Style: Toward Clarity and
Grace , and Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick . Williams’s book is the best book
on writing I have ever read, and I am deeply indebted to him for his insights,
many of which I have assimilated into this book (fi ltered through my own experi-
ences and focused on writing science). I cannot match his insights into the sophis-
tication of the English language, so I recommend that you reread it regularly and
give copies to your friends and students. Made to Stick isn’t ostensibly about writ-
ing at all, and distinctly it isn’t about writing science. Rather, it focuses on adver-
tising, marketing, and general communication. It is, however, a spectacularly
insightful and fun discussion of what makes ideas engaging and “sticky,” a critical
issue for scientists who want their work to get noticed from among the over-
whelming fl ood of papers published every year.