Further Reading — Chapter 28: Blog Posts, Articles, and Science Communication

Tier 1 (verified landmark works) and Tier 2 (real, widely-attributed ideas) only. Annotations point you to what each source does for this chapter's skills.

Tier 1 — Verified landmark works

Randy Olson, Houston, We Have a Narrative: Why Science Needs Story (University of Chicago Press, 2015). The single best companion to this chapter, by a scientist-turned-filmmaker whose whole argument is ours: scientists lose audiences because they default to the structure of a study (IMRaD) when they need the structure of a story. Olson's central tool, the "And, But, Therefore" (ABT) template—setup, but a problem/tension, therefore a resolution—is a compact form of the hook → journey → payoff structure in §28.5, and it's the most practical single device in the science-communication literature. Read it for narrative structure above all; his diagnosis of "the curse of the boring scientist" is the curse of knowledge (Chapter 2) seen from the audience's chair.

Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century (Viking, 2014). Pinker, a cognitive scientist, gives the deepest available treatment of the curse of knowledge—why experts can't feel what their readers don't know—and names "classic style" (writing as if showing the reader something in the world) as the antidote. Directly underwrites §28.1 and §28.9: the mechanical defeat of jargon-blindness, and why "translate, don't dumb down" is a cognitive necessity, not just good manners.

William Zinsser, On Writing Well, 30th anniv. ed. (Harper, 2006). The classic on nonfiction prose, with chapters specifically on writing about science and technology for non-specialists. Zinsser's insistence on warmth, clarity, and the human voice—and his hatred of jargon and clutter—is the sentence-level discipline beneath every technique here. His chapter on the lede is the practical foundation of §28.4.

Strunk & White, The Elements of Style, 4th ed. (Longman, 1999). Not about science communication specifically, but "omit needless words" is the engine of the jargon budget (§28.3), and its discipline keeps a blog post to the short length the unobligated reader will actually finish (§28.9).

Tier 2 — Real, widely-attributed ideas

The "curiosity gap" / information-gap theory of curiosity. The idea that curiosity is driven by a perceived gap between what we know and what we want to know is most associated with the economist George Loewenstein's work in the 1990s. The mechanism underlying §28.4's hooks is real and widely discussed in psychology; treat it as an attributed concept rather than pinning it to an exact page.

The "lede" and "nut graf" (journalism craft). Standard newsroom terms and practice—"don't bury the lede," and the nutshell paragraph that orients the reader after the opening. These are real, pervasive craft conventions taught in every journalism program; §28.5 uses them as the working vocabulary they are, not as the invention of a single author.

Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (Random House, 2007). A popular trade book (so: useful and real, not an academic source) that names why concrete, story-shaped, gap-opening ideas stick—and explicitly treats the curse of knowledge with the "tappers and listeners" study Chapter 2 cited. Its "concrete," "unexpected," and "stories" principles map closely onto the analogy, the surprising-fact hook, and narrative structure. A fast, practical read alongside this chapter.

"BLUF" (Bottom Line Up Front) and the inverted pyramid. The journalism/business convention of leading with the most important thing (Chapter 4, Chapter 27). In science communication it shows up as "don't bury the lede." Real, pervasive, no single citable origin.

How to use these

If you read one source for this chapter, read Olson for narrative structure and the ABT template—it's the closest thing to a method for the hook → journey → payoff move. Reach for Pinker when you want the cognitive-science why behind the curse of knowledge and the jargon budget. Keep Zinsser at your elbow for the voice and the lede; keep Strunk & White for the cutting. And read Made to Stick for a quick, practical synthesis of why analogies, surprises, and stories work on human minds—the chapter's three core tools, explained from the inside.

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