Introduction

Pick up this book if you want something designed to meet the specific needs of science students. There are plenty of writing guides for the university audience, but most of them cater to students who spend their whole lives writing essays: students in the arts and the humanities. Scientific degrees don’t work that way, and scientific writing doesn’t look the same as theirs. This book actively works to give you an understanding of scientific writing from start to finish, and an understanding of what your markers want. It’s divided into three sections: Understanding Scientific Writing, Preparing to Write, and Getting Down to Writing. The sections are designed to take you through every stage of the writing process, from understanding the assignment you’ve been set, to researching and planning, right through to drafting and editing. Where relevant, we’ve incorporated example scientific sentences and paragraphs to help illustrate our points and solidify your understanding. Our approach puts you in charge of your writing by explaining why we write in a certain way in the sciences, instead of issuing rules and demands which might seem arbitrary and confusing. A grasp of clear, concise writing is just as relevant and achievable for science students as those in any other discipline. Your preference for scientific simplicity and rigour is what makes you an ideal scientific writer, and we’ll show you how to capitalise on that.