A personal, practical, and inspirational guide to written and oral STEM communications for scientists and technical professionals.
A personal, practical, and inspirational guide to written and oral STEM communications for scientists and technical professionals.
In Sharing Our Science, scientist-turned-writing teacher Brandon Brown offers an eminently useful guidebook for STEM practitioners looking to communicate their technical work to either a technical or a broader audience. Professionals are increasingly required to communicate their work through blogs, podcasts, and newsletters and to submit to traditional media. After seeing his colleagues struggle to find a writing guide that tackled the unique challenges of writing and speaking about scientific topics, Brown set out to write the definitive handbook to assist STEM students, scientists, engineers, and tech workers alike.
In this practical and relevant book, Brown uses his experience as a proven science communicator to cover three levels of writing- fundamental craft considerations, such as narrative tension, structure, sentences, and audience; unique scientific considerations, such as conveying numbers and utilizing metaphors; and finally, social considerations, such as public speaking and writing inside and outside of silos. In place of a reference manual, Brown's engaging narrative guide clarifies the fundamental principles that impact all scientific communication tasks, from white papers and slide decks to Zoom meetings and emails. Sharing Our Science represents the culmination of a lifetime of writing, research, and teaching that will enrich scientists' careers and illuminate the ways in which science is done and conveyed to the world.
By:
Brandon R. Brown,
Julia Schaletzky
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 203mm,
Width: 133mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9780262546959
ISBN 10: 0262546957
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 03 October 2023
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Foreword by Julia Schaletzky ix 1 Me, You, and This Book 1 2 Tension 15 3 Structure: Mapping the Reader's Path 4 Audience: For Whom the Keys Click 49 5 Improving Sentences 67 6 Science-Specific Considerations 87 7 Numbers on the Brain 117 8 Details and Anecdotes 139 9 The Pros and Cons of Metaphor 153 10 Speaking Science 169 11 STEM Phenotypes 197 12 Communicating at Different Social Scales 211 13 Communicating Calamity 243 Acknowledgments 267 Appendix: Fixing Example Sentences 269 Notes 275 Index 287
Brandon Brown is a biophysicist. He is Professor of Physics and communications specialist at the University of San Francisco. The author of Planck- Driven by Vision, Broken by War, Brown has written for Slate, Smithsonian, and Scientific American and served as Deputy Director at the Green Science Policy Institute and a Senior Writing Coach for the Strictly Speaking Group.
Reviews for Sharing Our Science: How to Write and Speak STEM
"""It should be required reading for scientists at any stage of their career."" —Nature Physics ""Brown is a gifted and creative writer . . . much more than just another reference book whose fate is to languish beneath the piles of papers on your desk. It is an engaging read that will help scientists achieve a richer and more rewarding career."" — Physics Today ""This book is a practical and entertaining guide to communicating science . . . It outlines the personal benefits to researchers of improving their writing — not only that readers will get a better grasp of their work, but that it also will open more doors in their working life."" —Medium.com"
