Sharing Our Science

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.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"It should be required reading for scientists at any stage of their career."
—Nature Physics

"Straightforward, funny, endlessly practical, and simply a pleasure to read, Sharing Our Science might just deserve to become the Elements of Style of the STEM crowd."
—Civil Engineering magazine

"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
“This book will make you laugh, learn, and become a more effective science communicator.”
—Jeff MacGregor, Vice President of Communications for Science, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
 
"The recommendations Brown offers for writing scientific content are not only insightful and practical in their own right but are made all the more memorable through his use of autobiographical anecdotes, expert stories, and striking metaphors."
—Bodo Stern, Chief of Strategic Initiatives, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

“Sharing Our Science provides great insights and practical tips and techniques for scientists in a fun and informative way.”
—Jayshree Seth, Chief Science Advocate, 3M; author of The Heart of Science: Engineering Footprints, Fingerprints, & Imprints and The Heart of Science: Engineering Fine Print
 
“I wish I had read this book 30 years ago.”
—Douglas Koshland, Biology Professor, University of California, Berkeley; President, The Science Communication LabBrandon 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.