LibGuides: Communicating Science: Write concisely

University of Illinois guides and manuals

Trolling Attacks on Scholars – Faculty Action Nationally, unfair attacks on scholars have increased, often in social media, on message boards, and through other online forums. These “trolling attacks” can be professionally disruptive and personally difficult. The University has resources to assist if you are the target of one of these campaigns.
Writers Workshop The Writers Workshop provides writing consultations, writing groups and writing retreats, and workshops and presentations throughout the academic year.
Writing Style Guide (University of Illinois Public Affairs) Campus communicators should use this guide to prepare print and digital external university communications intended for general audiences. It is based on “The Associated Press Stylebook” and “Webster’s New World College Dictionary.” Follow University of Illinois System guidelines when writing for the system.

Eliminate jargon

King County plain-language writing guide The basics of clear, concise writing apply to all types of documents. Following plain-language principles will improve the readability of letters and memos, reports and newsletters, brochures and presentations, instruction manuals and legal documents, and most other county documents. The principles also apply directly to writing news releases and web pages, and they will aid translating our English documents into other languages.
The Importance of Word Choice: Terms with multiple meanings for scientists and the public Publicly curated list of scientific terms that have different meanings for scientists and the public.
The Measure of Things With the Measure Of Things tool, you can take a physical quantity - like 84 kilograms or 23 cubic meters - and see how it compares to a list of famous or well-known objects. For example, 84 kilograms is the weight of about 17 gallons of paint, while 23 cubic meters is about twice the volume of a cement mixer truck. Using these types of comparisons makes it easier for lay people to understand how large or small something is.
Meta-Research: The growth of acronyms in the scientific literature Some acronyms are useful and are widely understood, but many of the acronyms used in scientific papers hinder understanding and contribute to the increasing fragmentation of science. Here we report the results of an analysis of more than 24 million article titles and 18 million article abstracts published between 1950 and 2019. There was at least one acronym in 19% of the titles and 73% of the abstracts. Acronym use has also increased over time, but the re-use of acronyms has declined. We found that from more than one million unique acronyms in our data, just over 2,000 (0.2%) were used regularly, and most acronyms (79%) appeared fewer than 10 times. Acronyms are not the biggest current problem in science communication, but reducing their use is a simple change that would help readers and potentially increase the value of science.(eLifeScience, 2020)
Plain-Language Summaries: A Vital Ingredient In Knowledge Translation For anyone outside of academia, journal articles can be incomprehensible. Here, Iva Cheung outlines the importance of plain-language summaries and how they are key to effective knowledge translation.
Plain English Lexicon Enables you to make informed choices about the familiarity and frequency of 2,700 words that sometimes occur in public-information documents.
Want other scientists to cite you? Drop the jargon If you want your work to be highly cited, here’s one simple tip that might help: Steer clear of discipline-specific jargon in the title and abstract. (Science, 2021).
What Does 'Scientific Consensus' Mean? Explains what 'scientific consensus' means within the science community.

Write concisely

Clear and Concise Writing Open any book on writing and you’ll find the same advice: Never use ten words where five will do. But identifying what to cut is often easier said than done. That’s where Grammarly’s conciseness checks come in.
Four tips for concise news writing Being concise without giving readers only bare-bones news coverage is important for reporters to master. In a recent Poynter chat, Roy Peter Clark, author of Help! For Writers, offered tips on how storytellers can achieve this difficult balance.
King County guide to concise writing provides concise alternatives to overstated, pompous words; wordy, bureaucratic phrases; and redundant phrases.
The Open Notebook > Writing Clearly & Engagingly
Why use several words when one will do?

Writing guides and tools

Associated Press Style Quick Reference Guide Colorado DPHE quick reference guide to AP style
Difficult & Extraneous Word Finder Identifies difficult or hard to understand words in your writing.
Hemingway App Hemingway App makes your writing bold and clear. Put in text and see where you can simplify your prose.
Improving Your Writing Style Guide from the University of Wisconsin Writing Center on how to make your writing clearer and easier to understand.
Passive Voice Detector Automatically detects passive voice in a block of text.
Purdue OWL Professional and Technical Writing These OWL resources will help you conduct research and compose documents for the workplace, such as memoranda and business letters. This section also includes resources for writing report and scientific abstracts.
Readability Analyzer This Readability Analyzer estimates the readability of a passage of text using the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease, Gunning Fog Index, Kincaid Grade Level, SMOG formula and Dale–Chall Score and Fry Reading Graph metrics.