The 'impact' of climate writing
The problem begins simply enough. A journalist finds a word that seems to fit almost everything. It might be "crisis", "pivot" or the ever-convenient "impact". It's c…
science writing
16 posts
On Somanath withdrawing his autobiography
Excerpt from The Hindu, November 4, 2023: S. Somanath, Chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), told The Hindu that he’s withdrawing the publication of his memoir, Nilavu Kudicha Simhanga…
The passive voice is political
Eric Martinez, Francis Mollica and Edward Gibson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Edinburgh won an Ig Nobel Prize for literature this year for their work on what make…
The circumstances in which scientists are science journos
On September 6, 2019, two researchers from Israel uploaded a preprint to the bioRxiv preprint server entitled 'Can scientists fill the science journalism void? Online public engagement with two sc…
Good writing is an atom
https://twitter.com/HochTwit/status/1174875013708746752 The act of writing well is like an atom, or the universe. There is matter but it is thinly distributed, with lots of empty space in between. Re…
Ruins of the Sutlej avulsion paper's coverage
Reporting on the new Indus civilisation study out of IIT-K and Imperial College London was an interesting experience because it afforded an opportunity to discover how the technical fields of sediment…
By the way: the Chekhov's gun and the science article
"If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." (source) This is the principle of the Chekhov's…
Talking scicomm at NCBS – II
I was invited to speak to the students of the annual science writing workshop conducted at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, for the second year (first year talk's notes here…
Do your bit, broaden your science menu
Don't judge the best science journalists in India after having read only the worst science journalism.…
Talking about science, NCBS
On June 24, I was invited to talk at the NCBS Science Writing Workshop, held every year for 10 days.…
Stenograph the science down
Is it that we're paying no attention to the science and instead reproducing statements line by line because they're made of gold?…
The downward/laterward style in science writing
As a science writer, I don't like the inverted pyramid but prefer the pyramid: starting with a slowly building trickle of information at the top with the best stuff coming at the bottom.…