Presented by Dr. Sonal Jhaveri
Dr. Sonal Jhaveri of the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department at MIT talks about Manuscript Writing for scientists: the do's and do not's of how to write a scientific paper or grant proposal. Dr. Jhaveri makes the distinction between popular science writing (for newspapers, books, and magazines) and scientific writing, which is "A precise, concise, objective report of research data according to the scientific method." Jhaveri speaks about how the formulaic model of scientific writing belies the importance of the reporting aspects of how to present data to your audience. Good writing, rather, takes a long time, must ""incubate,"" so to speak, and can't be done overnight.

Jhaveri discusses where to get started with scientific writing and how to get good feedback from colleagues along the way (note: go to someone whom you know is a good writer, not just someone you admire!) Techniques ranging from word choice to sentence structure to different ways of titling your paper are also discussed.