Book Release News & Updates
George is thrilled to announce he has signed multi-book contracts with the distinguished Anthem Press of London. Read More →
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THE NEW SCIENCE
OF SCIENTIFIC WRITING
Using Reader Expectations to
Transform Scientific Communication
A practical guide to scientific writing that applies George David Gopen’s Reader Expectation Approach to help researchers communicate with greater clarity, precision, and reader impact.
For more than three decades, George David Gopen’s Reader Expectation Approach (REA) has transformed how scientists, researchers, and professionals write — not by prescribing rules, but by revealing how readers read. The REA structural framework has been credited with reshaping scientific writing.
The New Science of Scientific Writing is an update and expansion of George’s acclaimed 1990 article “The Science of Scientific Writing,” co-authored with Judith A. Swan and published in American Scientist.
More Books from George David Gopen
Audiobook: Peter Sterling’s
What is Health? Allostasis and the Evolution of Human Design. Narrated by George David Gopen (2020)
Neuroscientist Peter Sterling’s stunning 400-million-year history of the development of the brain.
Gopen’s Reader Expectation Approach to the English Language: A New Tweetment
(2017)
In this volume, George sets out the essences and high points of his discoveries in tweet-length, proverb-like distillations of many of his major insights.
Expectations: Teaching Writing from the Reader’s Perspective (2004)
By exploring and explaining the perceptive patterns that readers of English follow in their interpretive process, this rhetoric approaches the task of teaching writing from the perspective of readers.
The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader’s Perspective (2004)
This book transforms the information of the longer book into a 280-page textbook and includes a chapter on punctuation. Contact George for a free teacher’s manual.
Robert Henryson’s Moral Fables of Aesop (1986)
George has created a prose translation of the wonderful Moral Fables of Aesop, originally written in Middle Scots by legally trained English teacher Robert Henryson, circa 1500. Lauded by Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney.
Writing from a Legal Perspective (1981)
This is Dr. Gopen’s first book book. Since his work has progressed dramatically in the decades that followed, this book no longer represents his current thinking about the English language.
Stay tuned for George’s upcoming book:
Legal Writing & Readers
Out of print
Reviews of Books by George David Gopen
Asst. Prof., University of North Carolina
Gopen’s Reader Expectation Approach to the English Language: A New Tweetment
Founder, The Learning Engine
The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader’s Perspective
Writing Specialist, Highlander Success Center, Radford University Carilion
Expectations: Teaching Writing from the Reader’s Perspective
President, Universal Family Institute
Expectations: Teaching Writing from the Reader’s Perspective
a reference book for the rest of my writing – and audience reading – life.
Author, The Painted Fan
The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader’s Perspective
Turns the act of writing on its head. Forget what you were previously taught.”
Author, Meditations of Liberty
Gopen’s Reader Expectation Approach to the English Language: A New Tweetment
Expectations: Teaching Writing from the Reader’s Perspective
Goodreads Reviewer
The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader’s Perspective
Goodreads Reviewer
Expectations: Teaching Writing from the Reader’s Perspective
maybe because Gopen shows that there are very few hard-and-fast rules.”
Goodreads Reviewer
The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader’s Perspective
Amazon Reviewer
The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader’s Perspective
Goodreads Reviewer
The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader’s Perspective
‘I know this stuff; this is obvious’ and ‘Why didn’t I realise any of this stuff before?’”
Goodreads Reviewer
Expectations: Teaching Writing from the Reader’s Perspective
Goodreads Reviewer
The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader’s Perspective
Goodreads Reviewer
The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader’s Perspective
Whenever you fit the READER’s expectation more, the prose gets better. Highly recommended.”
Goodreads Reviewer
The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader’s Perspective
“I am grateful to […] George D. Gopen’s helpful prose translation of Robert Henryson’s Moral Fables at a moment when I might have been inclined to give up on the job.”
— Seamus Heaney, Nobel Laureate
Acknowledgements in Heaney’s translation of Robert Henryson’s Moral Fables, a 15th-century poem The Testament of Cresseid and Seven Fables.
George David Gopen’s Books Under Contract from Anthem Press
The Shape of English: Understanding the Expectations of Readers
The sum of all that Dr. Gopen has learned of the written language since he began his investigations in 1978. At least two (2) translations are planned.
RELEASE DATE: 2026
Legal Writing from the Reader’s Perspective: Making English Plain
RELEASE DATE: SUMMER 2027
Mark My Words: Punctuation Explained from the Reader’s Perspective
A book that examines punctuation from the perspective of the reader rather than society.
RELEASE DATE: FALL 2027
Mr. Lincoln’s Music: How Elegance Leads to Eloquence
An exploration of a new, musical method of writing to go beyond clarity and power to achieving elegance.
RELEASE DATE: SUMMER 2028
Writing Transformed: A New Kind of Textbook
RELEASE DATE: WINTER 2028