If you want to learn more about the ideas presented here, there are lots of books and articles.
Books
- Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, by Joseph Williams. This is the last version authored solely by Joseph Williams. There is also a new version of this book that costs about 3 times as much, co-authored with Gregory Colomb.
- The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. The timeless style guide.
- Expectations, by George Gopen. The priciest of the three.
Articles
- Bad Writing and Bad Thinking, by Rachel Toor, The Chronicle of Higher Education
- Scientific Literacy: Clear as mud, by Jonathan Knight, Nature
- Dancing With Professors: The Trouble with Academic Prose, by Patricia Nelson Limerick
- The Growing Inaccessibility of Science, by Donald P. Hayes, Nature
- How to write consistently boring scientific literature, by Kaj Sand-Jensen, Oikos
- How we write about biology, by Randy Moore, The American Biology Teacher
- The infectiousness of pompous prose, by Martin W. Gregory, Nature
- Writing a clear and engaging paper, by Leslie Sage
- The science of scientific writing, by George Gopen and Judith Swan, American Scientist
- Using the Passive Voice in Scientific Writing, by Charlene Soreson, Gallaudet University
- What is the scientific literature?, by John Maddux, Nature
- Whose literature is science?, by Judith A. Swan, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
- Writing intelligible English prose for biomedical journals, by John Ludbrook, Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology and Physiology
