Clarity/Introduction

Introduction

Despite needing to communicate at least some technical information to non-specific audiences when writing about science, you should always aim to be as concise and succinct as possible, and limit the use of complex language to ensure that your work is easy to understand.

One golden tip that you should try to put into practice is this: Read your sentences individually and ask yourself whether every single word is necessary. Then ask whether a friend with no science background could read your work without being confused. Often, when thinking like this, you will be able to reduce the length of your sentences and replace certain words to make things flow more smoothly.

When editing your work, you will often find that you can make things more concise by writing in the active voice (rather than the passive). For more information on this, see the Active versus Passive Voice resource on our site.