

Gary Bortolotti, Biology Faculty

Writing in Sciences

Is there a difference between writing in the sciences and writing in other disciplines?

In general if I were to, sort of, compare sciences to other disciplines, I find actually that science writing is a lot easier to read than reading in the humanities, because I find that in the humanities sometimes people will use big words. I don't like using big words because not everybody understands big words. Writing simply is an important skill. It's not intuitive how a paper puts together, so you have to write simply, concisely, and everything, but it's not as intuitive as I think people think. There is something to learn, in other words. There is a skill to learn.