Emulating the best - How to write for the public - Doing other writing for publication

How to write and publish a scientific paper - Barbara Gastel, Robert A. Day 2022

Emulating the best
How to write for the public
Doing other writing for publication

Further guidance in writing for the public about science appears in The Open Notebook (www.theopennotebook.com), the book The Craft of Science Writing: Selections from The Open Notebook (Carpenter 2020), and Science Blogging: The Essential Guide (Wilcox, Brookshire, and Goldman 2016). A variety of other books and articles (for example, Blakeslee 1994; Blum, Knudson, and Henig 2006; Gastel 1983, 2005; Hancock 2003; Stocking et al. 2011; Writers of SciLance 2013) also provide such advice.

In addition, good popular science writing, like good writing for scientific audiences, benefits from following good examples. Where can you find such examples? Major newspapers and magazines contain much good science writing. So do the bestseller lists. Fine pieces of popular science communication in various media have won AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards, National Association of Science Writers (NASW) Science in Society Journalism Awards, NASW Excellence in Institutional Writing Awards, Pulitzer Prizes, and awards for communicating about specific fields of science; the websites for such awards list recipients and often include links to the winning pieces. Other sources of excellent examples include the annual anthology titled The Best American Science and Nature Writing. Consume good works of popular science communication. Whether or not you explicitly analyze them, you are likely to assimilate much about writing skillfully for the public.