On Writing Well: Chapter 15 Summary & Analysis

Liberal arts students often learn to fear science, and scientists often learn to fear writing—but both of these fears are misguided. Writing is just “thinking on paper,” and science is “just another nonfiction subject.” Despite his fear of science, Zinsser has become an effective science writer by learning to give clear, linear explanations of technical processes. To practice this skill, Zinsser makes his students explain how a common object works (like a sewing machine, a pump, or the human eye). Science writers have to assume that the reader knows nothing at the outset, then present information clearly and sequentially. But this is the key skill in all nonfiction writing: teaching unconfident readers about a subject they don’t understand yet.

Zinsser compares good science writing to an inverted pyramid: it starts with a single important fact and then expands to describe why that fact matters. To illustrate how this structure works, Zinsser examines a front-page article by Harold M. Schmeck, Jr. The article first describes an experiment in which scientists used brain scans to predict a monkey’s mistakes in a game of tick-tac-toe. Then, Schmeck explains why this experiment is significant: it shows that brain scans can measure mental states, which has important applications and relates to broader trends in brain research. After this introduction, he describes the experiment in more detail and then explains its consequences for human medicine.

Like all nonfiction, science writing benefits from highlighting the human element. For instance, Will Bradbury recalls his own earliest memories to introduce his article about scientists’ attempts to understand the human memory. In his “Annals of Medicine” series, Berton Roueché treats mysterious illnesses as detective stories. In one such story, several men collapse and turn blue in New York, and doctors set out to find the medical culprit.

When science writing has to deal with unfamiliar and difficult topics, it can be helpful to start with something readers already know. For instance, in Beyond Habitat, architect Moshe Safdie uses examples from nature to show why certain architectural forms are better suited to solve certain problems. Similarly, Diane Ackerman explains how bats use echolocation by giving precise yet relatable details, like the fact that bats can detect “a beetle walking on sand” and “spend their whole lives yelling.”

Science writers should be themselves and write in clear English, like the naturalist Loren Eiseley describing his love for octopuses in The Immense Journey or Lewis Thomas describing microbes in Lives of a Cell. These writers are compelling because they show readers how a curiosity and love for nature drove them to become scientists. In fact, scientists often make the best science writers—Zinsser lists some of the best, then gives the example of physicist Robert W. Keyes writing about transistors. In all these cases, science writing is effective when the writer comes across as a real person and shows the reader why science should matter to them.

Zinsser ends with one last example of excellent science writing, Glenn Zorpette’s award-winning article about the Iraqi nuclear program. Zorpette clearly explains the complicated electromagnetic isotope separation technique, why it’s so difficult, and how the U.S. government realized that the Iraqis were using it. He describes how atomic bombs work in great detail, but without using technical jargon and without straying from the underlying detective story that makes his article so compelling.