Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in On Writing Well, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Human Element
Simplicity vs. Clutter
Process and Organization
The Gift of Writing
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 yet again argues that schools set writers up to fail by limiting their horizons. Students learn to view science and writing as opposite disciplines, in which opposite types of people are destined to succeed. Instead, Zinsser wants writers to see that science writing is just like all other writing. Its goals are the same: teaching the reader something while telling them an entertaining story. And most importantly, its key principles are also the same: clear thinking, precise language, and logical structure.
Themes
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.
Scientific and technical explanations are actually more straightforward than other kinds of writing, because the writer doesn’t have to worry about what message they want to send or what kind of structure will best serve them. Instead, they have to decide how to present complex information in the right sequence so that it’s easily digestible for lay readers. Schmeck’s article works because he advances one step at a time, starting with a memorable lead—the memorable image of monkeys playing tic-tac-toe—and ending with a compelling story—the experiment’s significance for human beings.
Themes
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.
To do their jobs successfully, science writers have to accurately explain the innovation or discovery they’re covering, but they also have to show their readers why it matters by connecting it to ordinary people’s lives. Bradbury’s lead highlights the common human experience that makes his article significant to readers, while Roueché makes medicine compelling by tapping into his readers’ curiosity.
Themes
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.”
While writers like Bradbury and Roueché explain science and then make it relevant to people’s lives, Safdie and Ackerman explain science by making it relevant to people’s lives. This technique succeeds because the compelling aspect of their stories is the very beauty and wonder of nature, which stretches the human imagination because it is so far outside the realm of normal human experience.
Themes
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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.
Like any other nonfiction writers, science writers have to personally connect with their readers in order to succeed. Scientists can do this effectively because, even if their work is objective and technical, their motives for doing it are deeply human and relatable. Most people either choose to do something they love or wish that they could. So a scientist’s love for their work both introduces a strong human element into a story and helps readers understand why the science itself is so compelling.
Themes
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.
Zorpette’s article is exemplary because it balances science writing’s two competing obligations: its obligation to the truth and its obligation to the reader. It’s extremely technical and detail-oriented, but it also tells a simple, compelling story that has consequences for readers’ lives and connects to a political story they already know all too well.
Themes
