Good Prose

I think the hardest part of writing the Mod 1 report – besides fitting our wildly incorrect data into a coherent narrative – was preventing myself from getting bogged down in needlessly scientific and dense writing. I’m taking a CIH in the Media Arts and Science department right now about how to make your writing accessible, and it has made me aware of how easy it is to slip into an obtuse and abstract style of writing. Consider the following paragraph I drafted for the Background + Motivation section of the Mod 1 report:

Through the use of Small Molecule Microarrays, this project aimed to test potential FKBP12 ligands so as to narrow down the characteristics that a ligand must have in order to effectively bind FKBP12. The ligands found to be bound to FKBP12 should undergo compound affinity characterization with FKBP12 determined through differing the concentrations of ligand used in Differential Scanning Fluorimetry.

This paragraph is a complete mess. Passive verbs and backwards sentences obscure the investigative purpose of the experiment, leaving the reader befuddled and bored. An overuse of scientific lingo and a lack of vocabulary consistency similarly prevent the reader from easily understanding the message of the paragraph. Consider the revised paragraph below as a counterexample:

We used Small Molecule Microarrays to identify ligands that likely bound to FKBP12. Then we calculated the strength of the bond using Differential Scanning Fluorimetry. We compared the ligands’ chemical structures and strengths of affinity for FKBP12 to try to identify trends across thousands of different molecules.

The revision is direct, making it clear that the interactions between the ligands and FKBP12 were the subject of the project. Action verbs emphasize the work we did, and the simpler syntax makes the explanation flow logically.

The piece of advice that has helped me improve my writing the most is: Write for your audience, not for yourself. Especially in an academic setting, where there’s no threat that your professor will just put down your essay and stop reading, it’s easy to forget that your reader deserves your respect. Oftentimes, it’s easy to write something that’s accurate, but that isn’t easy or fun to read. Scientific writing is notoriously indigestible, I think a lot of the time because researchers are more concerned with making their work seem rigorous and significant, rather than trying to make it easy for their readers.

Cracking open a journal article is never really as fun as reading a book, but if my writing class and 20.109 have taught me anything, it’s that good writing doesn’t have to be confined to fiction. Just like a detective novel, a good paper should have a narrative that makes the reader want to continue, want to find out what happens, what to flip to the next page. Anyone who thinks scientifically rigorous writing can’t be compelling should check out "Concussion Injury Rates in Various Models of Football Helmets..." by Moran and Covassin, Food Lab by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt (an MIT grad!), or “Consider the Lobster” by David Foster Wallace. Each piece tackles a different topic with voice and emotional energy without sacrificing rigor or quality of thought.

Now every time I feel the urge to beef up my writing with a bunch of long clauses and big words, I remind myself why I’m writing. It’s not to prove to myself that I’m smart, it’s not to elevate myself above my reader by making them feel dumb, it’s to engage my reader, to make them excited about what excites me, and maybe even to make them want to continue the work I’ve begun.

- Joe Faraguna