The Grainger College of Engineering
Physics

Research Highlight Writers’ Resources

 

Entering the Research Highlight Science Writing Contest will improve your science-writing skills and and enable you to more effectively share the substance of your ideas. Here are some resources and guidelines to help you avoid common pitfalls in science writing.

Constructing Your Narrative

  • Don’t “bury the lede.” Introduce your findings and their significance succinctly within the first or second paragraph, while capturing your reader’s interest.
  • Be concise. You only have 800 words.
  • Provide the reader with a framework for understanding how your research fits into the field as a whole, but exercise brevity—don’t spend too much of your word count on context.
  • Write for an audience of people with a background in physics or related fields who are not specialists in your specific research area. Define all terminology specific to your field that this audience would not understand.
  • Include links your reader may reference to learn more.
  • Reach out to our Research Highlights editor Dmitry Manning-Coe (dmitry2@illinois.edu) at any stage of your writing process. He is eager to help you conceptualize your story, organize your ideas, tailor your writing to a non-specialist audience, and polish the final draft.

Polishing Your Writing

  • Ms. Particular addresses common usage errors and frequently confused terms in technical writing.
  • The Writers Workshop offers detailed written and in-person feedback on your draft.
  • We’ve put together a useful cheat sheet to reference as you edit your work.
  • Generative AI can be prompted to focus solely on grammatical issues—this is a helpful way to catch common mistakes.
  • Ask your advisor, mentors, and peers if your article helped them to better understand the big picture of your research. Besides the helpful suggestions you’ll get, this is great practice for giving a research talk.

Submitting Your Highlight

Once you’ve submitted, our editor will offer you rounds of detailed in-person feedback. When your article is ready to be published, you will receive a final round of professional proofreading before your article is posted on the Illinois Physics website.

After your article is posted, let family and friends know so they can vote for your article! The earlier you submit your article, the more time you have to accrue votes toward the People’s Choice Award.