On Whimsy, Jokes, and Beauty: Can Scientific Writing Be Enjoyed?

This article, published in The Atlantic, describes the unnecessary complexity of much academic writing. The author explores why this is a problem, why it happens, and what might be done to improve the readability of academic work. She focuses on a small number of readability “champions” who have spearheaded the effort to improve academic writing. The article paints a vision of a future with a clearer academic writing style, allowing academics to better understand each…

This opinion piece, published in BMC Opinion, presents a former medical journal editor’s view on the importance of clear writing in academia. The author describes a common style of writing in medical journals: “decorated municipal gothic”, which he deems “long, tortuous, opaque, uninteresting”. He suggests that this unreadable style stems from academic writers who are not concerned with readability. Rather, they are focused on extending their list of publications and conforming to established norms of…

This article, published in Effective Clinical Practice, provides a framework for writing academic manuscripts. Themes from the framework include: 1) start writing before your project is completed; 2) focus your attention on what readers are most likely to look at: the title, abstract, tables, and figures; 3) develop a systematic approach to the introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections; and 4) improve the paper by learning how to get and incorporate useful feedback.