Communications Tips

Ten Tips to Improve Your Science and Technical Writing

Here are ten general tips to help you improve your science and technical writing.

Try to use a summary or introductory topic sentence to begin each primary paragraph. A topic sentence introduces the main idea of the paragraph, often summing it up. The rest of the paragraph should explain the first sentence with definitions, examples, and other writer's tools.
Sometimes it helps to use a topic paragraph. Follow this topic paragraph with others that explain or elaborate on the first with short or expanded definitions, analogies, quotes, examples and other explanatory techniques.
Keep sentences to an average of 18 words. Reserve long sentences for those that must contain long technical words and combinations of words, such as polychlorinated byphenols and Environmental Protection Agency. Stick to one idea per sentence.
Keep paragraphs to about four or five sentences that are all related to the same idea or concept.
Use everyday words. Avoid technical jargon. Prefer short words to long words. Write "use" for "utilize," "start" or "begin" for "initiate." There are hundreds more.
Avoid vague words, particularly pronouns. Banish the pronouns this and it, particularly as the first word in a sentence unless their antecedent, the word or concept being referred to, is clear. Usually the antecedent is not clear, so the pronoun becomes vague and readers don't know what it refers to. Use specific words rather than vague words that leave decision making (called guessing) to the reader. Injured arm means nothing. Broken wrist is meaningful.
Avoid "dog puppies;" words and expressions that create redundancies: free gifts, set of twins, period of two weeks, 5 p.m. in the afternoon.
Avoid weasel words because we have a suspicion, based on some preliminary tentative studies that are possibly correct, that such words don't make comprehension easy.
Avoid roundabout expressions. When you write "in order to," stop and say the sentence without it. If it makes sense with only "to," omit the rest. Banish "due to the fact that" in favor of "because." Say "remember" instead of "it should be noted that." Many books on technical writing include lists of such expressions.
As much as possible, place the "do-er" at the beginning of the sentence. This is called "active voice" and results in a subject-verb-object order. The "do-er" performs the action described by the verb.
- Active example (four words): Mike threw the ball.
- Passive example (six words): The ball was thrown by Mike.
Active voice cuts two or more words from sentences and tells readers immediately who or what is performing the action. Active voice also helps you avoid many common grammatical errors.