There is a great essay, titled ‘The Science of Scientific Writing‘, which was published in American Scientist way back in 1990. Yet I believe it is timeless and completely relevant today.
In this essay, authors Gopen and Swan wrote that “most people assume the difficulties many people have in reading medical writing are born out of necessity. Out of the extreme complexity of scientific concepts, data and analysis.”
They then went on to argue a very important point.
Improving the quality of writing improves the quality of thought. This, in turn, results in reader clarity.
It’s a simple yet often overlooked principle when you’re thinking about how to write well.
If you focus on improving the quality of your writing – not only on producing work that is factually correct – your readers are more likely to engage with your work.
How to write well: strong vs weak writing
Strong, convincing writing involves:
- Writing with the intended audience in mind
- Writing clearly, with focus and direction
- Making a great first impression
- Showing an understanding of research and the body of evidence
- Correct spelling, grammar and punctuation
- Writing compliant health promotional materials (if applicable)
On the contrary, weak health and medical writing tends to be:
- Hard to read – formatting/display as well as content and spelling/grammar
- Difficult to understand – lack of focus and direction
- Unclear – lacking confidence or overall positioning
- Unnecessarily complicated – vocabulary, long sentences, complex terminology
- Misleading – not representing the research or context adequately
- Misrepresentative of the facts
How to write: Quality = Clarity
So how can you improve the quality of your writing?
- Learn how to write complete, grammatically correct sentences
- Study your own writing and know your strengths and weaknesses
- Know your intended audience
- Read other people’s writing
- Listen to feedback and criticism, and learn from it
- Become an expert in your subject matter
- Quote health experts in your writing
- Be confident
- Be original – focus on producing unique health content
- Study the craft of writing
- Stick to the typical formula of the type of content you’re writing (eg medical news, health feature, patient handout)
- Use evidence to back up your points
Writing coherently and concisely
Sharpen up your writing during the editing process. Consider:
- Tense use
- Present – generalisations, scientific facts, statements made by you as a writer
- Past – used to report/describe past research findings
- Present perfect (a past event that has present consequences), ie “Studies which have explored xxxx include … “
- Avoid vague words
- Nouns (issue, thing, situation)
- Replace phrases with single words
- “The medical writers ate their lunches” not “The group of medical writers ate their lunches”
- Use fewer words
- “Because” or “as” instead of “due to the fact that”
- Avoid groups of words which mean the same thing
- “Separate” instead of “separate out”
- “In retrospect” instead of “looking back in retrospect”
- Avoid saying the same thing twice
- “Evaluating these hypotheses would require further testing
and additional research”
- “Evaluating these hypotheses would require further testing
- Avoid awkward phrasing
- “There are several theories, all of which have been put forward by …”
- “Several theories have been put forward by…”
