Reasons why you might want to follow jet another newsletter about writing, or academic writing to be precise.

Welcome to About Academic Writing & Zo, a sister newsletter from Plant & Zo. You see what I did here 😊While at Plant & Zo I talk about the latest papers in plant science – go on have a look, I’ll be right here when you’re done – in About Academic Writing & Zo I talk about how to write those papers in a better and clearer way. Helping you to write papers that people actually enjoy reading.

We all have been there, at the receiving end of a badly written paper. Struggling to get through the damn thing. Or as Science with Serena here on Substack noted

“I am tired of scientific papers that read like eating cardboard.”

But I also get it: writing is hard. And writing really well is even harder. And to be honest, scientists are not trained to write well. They are trained to do the experiments well. As a trainee scientist, a.k.a. PhD student, you learn how to come up with a hypothesis, design experiments, execute them, and draw conclusions. But when it comes to communicating your hard obtained results to the world the training seems to fall away.

Nobody is really taught how to write readable papers and even forget about how to write a readable thesis. You don’t get told what sets apart a well written paper from a badly written one. Forget even about how to produce such a feat yourself.

But here is the thing. You can learn how to write well. And it is not even as complicated as rocket science, or whatever topic you are diving into. But it requires effort. It is not a thing you can pull off last minute.

So, if you put in the effort, you also, can write a well written paper that other scientist enjoy reading. But that is not all you get out of it. Writing better and more, helps you think and gives you clarity, which in turn helps you to develop you research project into new directions. Being able to write well creates opportunities. Like having the skills to become an (assistant)editor for a scientific journal. Enables you to write better grands. Or find careers outside academia.

Now I can hear you think “all good and well, but why do I need to read your newsletter?”

Well, this one is specifically aimed at academics. In it I combine my knowledge of academic and journalistic writing. Showing you how to write better, followed with prompts or little exercises so you can practice yourself.

So here is the deal, if you subscribe to this newsletter, I help you to put in the effort to become a better scientific writer. I will tackle one subject a week, each finishing with a writing prompt or exercise aimed to get you writing, if only for five or ten minutes.

Prompt

Set your timer at 2 minutes and write why you became a scientist. Don’t worry about spelling mistakes and so on, you can fix those afterwards. Don’t stop till the timer goes off, although you might want to keep going once it does.

Paste your results in the comments.

Happy writing