Biophysical Society Bulletin | April 2022

Career Development

How toWrite a Lay Summary A lay summary can be an important tool for communicating scientific content to a wider audience. It is a short piece written in easy-to-understand, simple language and style. An effective lay ics, which could inspire them to learn more. A similar writing approach can be useful for such purposes as grant proposals, press releases, media outreach, and more. The first step is identifying an interesting topic. Next, start the summary with an introductory sentence that establishes the foundation and in turn makes the reader curious. One method would be starting with a “Did you know?” question. Other ideas are working in pop culture references or shared experiences to which anyone can relate. One trick I like to use is writing words on small pieces of paper and moving them around until they form an appealing sentence. Now that you have the reader’s attention, you can start giving more details one step at a time. Scientific vocabulary is filled with jargon. It is important to un- tangle that jargon by providing explanations in understandable everyday language. From here, the writeup can become a bit more detailed, using some of the jargon that has been introduced. These summaries are different from writing the summary would be written such that a middle school, high school, or under- graduate student could be introduced to a concept or technique from biophys-

results and discussion sections of a manuscript. It is best to use shorter sentences to make your point, as opposed to more complicated sentence structures you might use in other aca- demic writing. Also, keep the overall tone of the piece positive! You can include the limitations of the research area or tech- nique you are describing, but still promote what is interesting and inspiring about the topic you have chosen. Finally, it is time to zoom out and connect the reader back to the main idea of the summary from the first sentence. This helps the reader to re-contextualize what’s been stated earlier. Once you’ve finished your draft, I recommend finding a friend (preferably a non-academic) to give it a read and let you know whether he or she understood what the lay summary was all about. There are also online tools available that can help you to check your work. There is a popular one called Hemingway Editor (https:/hemingwayapp.com/), which highlights unnec- essarily complex sentences and common errors. Another is called the Readability Test (https:/ thefirstword.co.uk/readabili- tytest/), which analyzes your writing and rates it as to its read- ability, on a scale that includes “Super Simple” (like Dr. Seuss ’ The Cat in the Hat ) and “Challenging” (like John Milton ’s Paradise Lost ). I hope that these simple suggestions are helpful in writing lay summaries that will allow you to share scientific content with a broad audience. — Molly Cule

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