Writing

Academic career usually requires a lot of writing: articles, grant proposals, recommendation letters, reviews, technical reports, etc. Starting to write early in your PhD process can help avoid stress and save time when you are getting close to graduating. Here are some tips for effective writing:

• Efficient writing structure: pre-writing (70% of time), writing the first draft (10%), and editing (20%)
• Strive for good clarity in your writing, not good style
• A short and clear passage is better than a long and vague one
• Suspend your inner critique when writing the first draft: clarity and good style come only after several rounds of editing
• Generally, shorter sentences are more readable
• Subject and verb are better placed close to the beginning of a sentence
• Use strong, concrete verbs
• Use active voice
• Turn nouns derived from verbs into original verbs
• Cut transition words to a minimum
• Avoid repetition of ideas
• One paragraph - one idea
• Vary sentence structure
• Good writing only comes with practice. Write a lot and you will see your writing improve
• If you easily get distracted when writing try some distraction-free editor, like OmmWriter

Here is a good free online course "Writing in the Sciences".