Undergraduate’s guide to writing in the sciences
This writing guide (download link below) began in 2009 as a series of handouts designed for the Intensive General and Quantitative Analytical Chemistry courses at Boston University. The goal was to present students beginning college with all of the guidance and support that they would need to start developing as scientific writers, without too much excess information. Over the course of the decade that followed, the scope and material in those handouts was expanded until they evolved into a full writing guide. Fast forward to 2018, the writing guide helps support all of the chemistry majors at the university as they work through their major. Most of the chapters remain designed to stand alone for use in specific courses; as a result, there are places in this guide where information is repeated by design. In each of those cases, the content being repeated is of particular importance and relevance.
While there are structural and stylistic differences in the writing among the science disciplines, the vast majority of STEM communication is based on a common set of broad principles and skills. In 2019, Dr.~Kathryn Spilios of the Biology department joined the project with the goal of extending the guide from a chemistry writing to guide to one that would meet the needs of all undergraduate science students at Boston University. Throughout the guide, we remain focused primarily on the overarching principles that are common to all scientific communication. In cases where distinctive, discipline-specific differences are important, specific mention is made to the ways in which the different fields approach the subject and the reasons behind the differences. You should view this guide as a tool to help you be a better scientific writer in general, rather than an expert in your specific field — after all, the goal of writing is effective communication, regardless of discipline. Examples of good (and bad) writing are brought from several scientific disciplines throughout the writing guide. While the chemistry examples are highlighted in purple and the biology examples are highlighted in red, we encourage you to focus on context of the examples rather than content.
The current version of the writing guide is a pre-print of the first edition of the guide (version 0.9) and provided with a NonCommercial, NonDerivative Creative Commons license. We are still hard at work editing, refining, and adding material. To that end, we would be grateful for your help! Please let us know if there is anything you find confusing or missing. Similarly, while we don’t expect you to be our copy editors (we’re looking into finding one now), we are grateful for reports of any mistakes, typographical errors, or omissions. Please direct your comments to STEMwritingguide@gmail.com
Download the guide: click here