Nicholas Mamo

✍️ New: The big list of academic #writing resources

A list of books, blogs and tools to hone your scientific writing. I've tried to cover the basics of academic writing, deeper dives on style and even data #visualization.

#datascience #science #academia #AcWri

@academicchatter

📖 Read the post here: https://nicholasmamo.github.io/posts/big-list-academic-writing-resources/

The big list of academic writing resources

This blog post will be updated regularly. Academic writing is a craft. Like all crafts, it requires practice, but it can also be learned. Unfortunately, resources to learn academic writing are somewhat scattered. In this blog post, I lost some of my suggested resources, including books and blogs, tools to help you write better, and other resources to improve your visualizations. Accompanying this post is The Big List of Academic Writing Tips.

Aug 12, 2023 at 5:58pmWeb
Show threadNicholas MamoAug 12, 2023

The list is a companion article to another list of easy-to-consume tips on the narrative, grammar and style of academic writing.

📖 Read that post here: https://nicholasmamo.github.io/posts/big-list-academic-writing-tips/

The big list of academic writing tips

This blog post will be updated regularly. When I started my PhD, I hated writing academically. I love writing, and I have freelanced as a writer for years, but I hated writing academically. I hated the process and I hated the end-product. It is a common feeling, but I decided to study scientific writing and, more specifically, how to lend my character to it while staying within the norms. This blog post contains tricks that I learned to take control of the story, the grammar and the form of academic writing.

Show threadJohannesAug 12, 2023
@memonick
Terrific summary. Similar to the Elements of Style your post uses stylish writing to illustrate how one can write stylish - with interesting quotes to illustrate what works well and why.
I disagree with the suggestion that academic writing should take the shape of a story. To quote Mike Eisen: “the narrativization of science is often the fictionalization science”. But nearly all your other tips would work well irrespective of the overarching structure.
Show threadNicholas MamoAug 12, 2023
@johannes_lehmann Thank you! I think the word 'narrative' works better than story. For example, most literature reviews describe what X and Y did, like a shopping list. There are usually better ways of tying the literature review with the subject of the manuscript. That's what I mean by narrative.
Show threadNicholas MamoAug 12, 2023
@johannes_lehmann It all depends on the subject, obviously. One time, I was writing a paper about domain understanding. Instead of writing how other researchers used domain understanding, I narrated the evolution of domain understanding through the years. It's a small shift, but it makes for a much more pleasant read.