There are many, many resources out there to help you with your writing.  That's good, because your reputation as a scientist will depend very much on the quality of your writing.  There are numerous skills, tools, and approaches you can use to develop into the best writer you can. Be prepared to work hard on this craft -- it's been said that the secret to writing is rewriting.  

• Read this first!  It's all about the psychology of starting to write.  Similarly, here is a great point about the yin and yang of writing progress. 

• There are no tricks to make writing easier, just practices you can develop to get it done. And here are seven habits to help you do that. 

• Three highly recommended blogs, very much worth checking out: 

  • The Explorations of Style blog is a rich source of advice on writing, for example: Writing as a shifting of identity. Another masterful post about sentence structure (check out the "orienting-informing" pattern. The author of this blog has published her thoughts in book form: "Thriving as a Graduate Writer". 

  • The Writing Science blog is more focused on how to get your work into print. And here is an interesting testimonial to these methods along with a handy 1-page cheat sheet.  

  • Scientific writing tips for papers by Anna Clemens is a goldmine. 

• Two excellent books on writing science (Schimel and Heard) and a comparison of the two. In addition, here is a book on writing specifically for graduate students. 

• Speaking of books on science writing, a former student recommended this one with the observation that many books on writing recommend conciseness but often aren't concise themselves.  With templates! 

• And two more excellent books on writing are 1) Style: Toward Clarity and Grace by Williams and 2) Houston, We Have A Narrative by Randy Olson.  

• Conciseness is more than a virtue, it's a necessity.  

• I've seen myself how much this technique of reverse outlining can help people learning to write. 

• I love the advice here at baconediting on sentences, paragraphs, and rhythm. While we're at it, check out the multi-hued graphic at the bottom of this page. 

• I've heard from others that Grammarly is a highly useful tool for cleaning up grammatical issues. 

• Here is an excellent overview of what editors look for in submitted manuscripts.  It's written regarding one journal, but the messages apply widely. 

• Nature has some very useful tips on writing for them, plus general advice.  

• The structure of a typical scientific paper is distinctive and at first blush, peculiar.  It is there to lessen the time a knowledgeable reader must spend to digest the contents of the paper.  To become comfortable with this structure, besides reading, reading, and more reading, check out these sources: 

  • Ten simple rules for structuring scientific papers.  

  • The five pivotal paragraphs in a scientific paper.  

  • The art of writing science. 

  • The paper "The science of scientific writing" by Gopan and Swan in American Scientist 1990 has helpful suggestions for how writers can structure sentences and paragraphs.  

• Consider moving away from binary statements of statistical significance and toward language based on strength of evidence. 

• Finding your scientific voice. 

  • Clean writing, and setting the right tone.  

  • Searching for the right phrase to use? 

• New to writing scientific bibliographies?  Though each journal or publication outlet is likely to require something slightly different in terms of formatting, the majority of outlets use the "Name-Year" convention as described here.  Note that use of DOIs in citations has rather quickly shifted from "nice to do" to "essential".  

• Reports are a special case of citation and in some ways are the most difficult to deal with.  Here are some ideas for how to properly cite reports.  

• How to respond to reviewers. 

• For tips on writing in groups, see the "Working in teams" link on this site. 

• Personal statements make up only a small amount of the writing that academic do, but they can make you or break you.  Consider this collected advice when you need to write a personal statement.