Transferable Skills: Science Writing

Nyssa Landres

Science writing is a genre that may not usually be on a technical writer’s radar. But it should be. As technical writers, our job is to convey specialized concepts to specified audiences. When we write technical documents, we regularly use concepts to make information accessible to new audiences by creating content that is understandable and usable. Scientists share similar goals. Both genres begin with complex information to be translated into a format that is usable for their readers.

Technical writing and science writing are parallel genres, meaning we can employ concepts we use in technical writing in similar ways. As a result, science writing is a form of technical writing and, as a technical writer, you already know how to be an effective science writer.

Consider a few concepts we regularly use:

Audience analysis
Readability
Information design

We use these concepts in technical writing because they make information accessible to our readers. They convey the information in a legible and logical way that helps the reader develop an understanding of the material they can use in a meaningful way. These same concepts apply to effective science writing, and as a result, our skills are directly transferable.

Considering Your Audience

Technical writers and science writers create usable documents for their specific audience by: 1) understanding who their audience is and 2) understanding their audience’s goals in reading the document.

As in technical writing, you probably didn’t choose your audience or the type document—someone else did when they asked you to write it. However, make sure you understand who your audience actually is, not who you (or your employer) wish it is. When we incorrectly perceive our audience, the document’s usability usually plummets for our real readers. Sometimes when we sit down to write a mental image of our audience, a wizened PhD with Einsteinian hair appears. More likely than not, this man is not your true audience and if you write to him the usability of the information for your real reader—the patient in Minnesota evaluating treatment options—declines.

Likewise, even our real readers are not homogeneous. Readers with varying amounts of previous knowledge will be reading your document. While many of them may stand to benefit from reading your document’s background content, many readers already know the information. One way to accommodate a variety of user levels is by using micro-content. Micro-content is the headlines, subheadings, and other short descriptions that describe a section to your reader. Good micro-content is usually short, concise, and explanatory.

In technical writing, your reader can skip to step 7 if they already know steps 1 through 6; in science writing, your reader can use micro-content in a similar way. Effective micro-content in science writing is written with your specific audience in mind and helps them meet their goals in reading the document. Effective micro-content can also bridge the gap between user levels because of how it guides readers through the document. If micro-content says “Gene therapy: How it works,” chances are that readers will know that the following section will describe how gene therapy works and, if this is information they want to know, then they will correspondingly know they want to read that section of the document.

In science writing, the same technical writing principles apply. Your audience guides your decisions in the same way that it does in technical writing. You’re still working to help them understand concepts and, when doing so, the words you use matter.

Choosing Your Words

Science and technical concepts are littered with jargon and opaque ideas. Our job is to make them understandable and usable for people who don’t live in worlds where terms like “inductive loads” and “moduluses of elasticity” come up in everyday conversation. We make these concepts understandable, and since words are the primary form used in technical or science documents, word choice matters. Consider jargon.

Jargon serves a purpose within a specific field, but outsiders can find the words alienating. Sometimes, and in limited quantities, jargon can be helpful to your audience, but be careful. Before including it in your writing, consider your audience and ask yourself:

Would they benefit from my use of the term?
Would they benefit from understanding the term?
Do I understand the term?

If the answer to all of those questions is unhesitatingly yes, then including jargon may serve a clear and beneficial purpose for your audience. Even after deciding to incorporate jargon, how you include it matters. Here are two tips for using jargon well: 1) explain terms thoroughly, and 2) provide adequate space between new terms. You’re filtering the information for your reader so they get the pieces they need to interact with the information. This is the same process you go through in technical writing.

Word choice extends beyond how you use technical terms and includes every word on the page. Technical writers know changing one word impacts what the reader gleans from a step of instructions. Science writing also comes with word choices to that can clarify, or obscure, information for your reader. When you write, think about how the words will be interpreted. For instance, saying “global warming” versus “climate change” has different meanings, and how you use them will affect how your audience understands the content.

Related to this are the denotations and connotations. Certain words have different meanings or implications within a field. These words are not jargon and are used every day, but mean something different to your audience. For instance, the word “volatile” in chemistry means to the tendency of a substance to change from a liquid to a gas. But when most people refer to something as “volatile” they mean that it is unpredictable or tends towards violence. The two meanings are related, but have different implications on the written page. Choosing the right words to convey information is imperative in both genres.

Conveying Information

Information design plays a key role in making content as clear as possible in science writing and technical writing. Information design is easy to do poorly, but it’s just as easy to do well if we take a little time to think about how we arrange concepts. Information design includes a lot of features, but some to consider are front-loading, bullet points, and chunking. Which of these you use and how you use them will depend on your audience.

With science writing, most readers pick up your document because they’re curious to see what you have to say. So if your reader skims through the beginning and doesn’t understand what you mean or know where you’re headed, they’ll probably stop there. Solution: front-load. Arrange information in a way that is meaningful to your audience and therefore they will want to keep reading.

Science writing is optional reading material for your audience in their initial cognitive state and they likely see the information as supplementary to what they already know. But if they do read the content, it can change their end cognitive state because of their new knowledge. Consider this as similar to how a user typically dives right into using their new dehumidifier instead of reading the instructions first. After all, the only thing you need to do is plug it into the wall … right? If the user doesn’t read the instructions, he or she probably won’t learn how to use the full capabilities of their dehumidifier, which, while not the end of the world, sells your audience short. What often determines whether your audience actually reads your document is whether it is easy to glean information from, so make your document scannable. By giving your reader access to your points without requiring much effort, your reader will likely want to sit down and read more carefully, or at the very least will know why they don’t.

Two great ways to make information scannable are through bullet points and chunking information, which guide your reader’s attention to your main ideas. Think of bullet points as a highway sign that lists the upcoming towns and how far away they are. Bullet points are a road map for your audience so they know what they will get out of the document and can be ready. Bullet points show your main points but also allow you to weave in your own goals for the document. This way your reader not only knows what you’re going to say, but also knows how or why. When you’re writing your bullet points, also think about how you phrase them because they becomes another signpost for your reader.

Chunking puts information into bite-sized pieces that are easy for your reader’s brain to digest. Chunking also helps organize ideas and can simplify complex concepts into a chain of straightforward ideas. You can use chunking in most aspects of your document, ranging from individual sentences, to paragraphs, to the overall structure of information. Consider how we create modules in instructions: you break down the larger whole into more, but simpler, modules to create a document that is more usable for your reader. This idea applies in exactly the same way to science writing by making each concept manageable and understandable.

At the end of the day (or the document), you really want your reader to understand your information. That’s why you’re writing! But how you convey that information matters. So think about how you design your information and the resulting document will be easier for your reader to understand and use.

Conclusion

In today’s world, science is becoming more available and more widely applicable. Yet science writing often remains opaque to many audiences. We read interesting headlines but are shown articles with incomprehensible first sentences. This shouldn’t be the case and it doesn’t need to be. We already have tools to make science understandable and usable. We use them everyday.

Parallels between technical and science writing are everywhere. Considering your audience, choosing your words, and designing your information to make your document usable are only the beginning. You already use these skills, plus a host of others every day as a technical writer. You know how to translate conceptually difficult information into a form that readers understand and use in their lives, so apply these same concepts to science writing. Technical writers are science writers-to-be, and the genre, writers, and audience all stand to learn from each other in the process.

Nyssa Landres is a graduating senior at Westminster College in environmental studies. She will be working as a Wilderness Fellow for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service after graduation and volunteers as a grant writer for local nonprofit organizations.

Transferable Skills: Science Writing

Considering Your Audience

Choosing Your Words

Conveying Information

Conclusion

Suggested Reading

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