Writing in Astronomy

Writing in astronomy will have some different workflows to other fields - in particular, almost every paper is written in the formatting language LaTeX, rather than (say) Word, and we have to use specialist tools to work with this. It has a bit of a steep learning curve but because it makes it so easy to format citations and equations, it's actually a really helpful part of the workflow.

Writing Papers

Knapen et al have an excellent paper on general advice for publishing in astronomy.

LaTeX Guides

There is a good LaTeX guide on astrobites.

Overleaf

People have strong views about LaTeX environments, but my preferred go-to for ease of use is Overleaf, which like Google Docs allows people to collaboratively work on the same document.

Writing for the Public

It is really important not just to learn to write papers - a lot of an astronomer's job is actually writing proposals, reviews, lectures, and public engagement material. It is a great idea to practise this! One good place to start is to pitch an idea to astrobites as a guest post. For a more substantial and public facing piece, you might like to pitch to The Conversation.