George Gopen Press Kit
CONTENTS
- Press Inquiries
- Forthcoming Books
- Author Bio (short)
- Client Roster/ Full CV
- Author Bio (long)
- Reader Expectation Approach (description)
- Head Shots
- Bibliography
- REA in Peer-reviewed Literature
- REA Promo Videos
- Media Appearances
PRESS INQUIRIES
Robyn Wagoner
press@georgegopen.com
(212) 202-5619
New York, USA
Forthcoming Books
From Anthem Press
The New Science of Scientific Writing is an update and expansion of Gopen’s acclaimed 1990 American Scientist article credited with reshaping scientific writing. Seventeen (17) translations are scheduled.
RELEASE DATE: June 2026
The Shape of English is 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: SEPT 2026
Mr. Lincoln’s Music: How Elegance Leads to Eloquence is an exploration of a new, musical method of writing to go beyond clarity and power to achieving elegance. Gopen calls it Colometrics. The speeches of musician Abraham Lincoln will be deeply considered.
RELEASE DATE: SUMMER 2027
Author Bio (short)
George David Gopen, JD, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of the Practice of Rhetoric at Duke University. He is known as the creator of the Reader Expectation Approach to Writing in the English Language. His influential 1990 article, “The Science of Scientific Writing,” published by American Scientist, leads that journal’s citation index and was selected as one of 36 “Classic Articles” from the first century of the publication. Dr. Gopen has published five books and 80 articles. In 2011, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Legal Writing Institute. His client roster of over 200 organizations includes tens of thousands of professional writers around the world.
Author Bio (long)
George David Gopen, JD, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of the Practice of Rhetoric at Duke University. He is known world-wide as the creator of the Reader Expectation Approach (REA) to Writing in the English Language.
He was born September 26, 1945 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. From 1957 to 1963 he attended the Roxbury Latin School, founded in 1645. Gopen received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Brandeis University where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1967. His undergraduate education included a year at the University of Reading in England. He simultaneously earned his Juris Doctor (JD) from Harvard Law School and his PhD in English from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 1967 to 1975.
Dr. Gopen taught at Duke University for 30 years in the English Department, part-time at the Law School (16 years). From 1980 to 1990, Dr. Gopen partnered with Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb of University of Chicago to build a writing consultancy called, Clearlines.
In 1990 his influential article, “The Science of Scientific Writing,” was published by American Scientist. The article leads that journal’s citation index and was selected as one of 36 “Classic Articles” from the first century of the publication. The article has been credited with reshaping scientific writing.
Since 1990, he has been working independently as a professional writing consultant. His client roster of over 200 organizations includes tens of thousands of professional writers around the world. Dr. Gopen has published five books and 80 articles. Forty-two of these articles were published in the American Bar Association’s Litigation journal.
In 2011, Dr. Gopen received a “Golden Pen” lifetime achievement award from the Legal Writing Institute for his lifelong efforts to improve legal writing.
Dr. Gopen is also a classical musician and composer, a championship golfer, and founder, MC, and judge of the Great Durham Pun Championship.
George Gopen’s Reader Expectation Approach (description)
Dr. George Gopen is Professor Emeritus of the Practice of Rhetoric at Duke University. Over four decades, he has developed the Reader Expectation Approach (REA) to professional writing from the reader’s perspective. Consistent with observations in cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics, REA is based on how readers of English look for critical information in specific structural locations within sentences and paragraphs. Misalignment between writer placement and reader expectation is a primary cause of miscommunication. Gopen estimates that readers derive approximately 85% of their interpretive clues from the structural location rather than from word choice or word meaning. REA has been applied in peer-reviewed medical and scientific literature and was discussed by actor and science communicator Alan Alda in his 2017 book If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?
Head Shots by Paul D’Andrea
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Bibliography
- Writing from a Legal Perspective (West Group, 1981) ISBN 978–0829921236
- The Moral Fables of Aesop (translated from 15th-century Middle Scots, with introduction and notes; University of Notre Dame Press, 1987) ISBN 978-0268013615 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0268013622 (paperback)
- The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader’s Perspective (Pearson Longman, 2004) ISBN 978–0205296323
- Expectations: Teaching Writing from the Reader’s Perspective (Pearson Longman, 2004) ISBN 978–0205296170
- Gopen’s Reader Expectation Approach to the English Language: A New Tweetment (THINKaha, 2016) ISBN 978–1616991746
- The New Science of Scientific Writing (Anthem Press, June 2026)
Audiobooks
- Peter Sterling, What is Health? Allostasis and the Evolution of Human Design (narrator; Author’s Republic, 2023; print edition MIT Press, 2020)
Book chapters
- “The State of Legal Writing: Res Ipsa Loquitur” in Writing in the Business Professions, ed. Myra Kogen (National Council of Teachers of English, 1989) pp. 146–173 ISBN 0-8141-5900-1
Reader Expectation Approach in Peer Reviewed Literature
Reader Expectation Approach Promotional Videos
Introduction to REA
Clients Tell Their Stories
Media Appearances
Interview: “Meet Your Neighbor Dr. George Gopen.” Southerly Magazine, October 2019.
Listen: Pundemonium: The Great Durham Pun Contest. Host Frank Stasio talks to the judge of the contest, George Gopen, about how it works and what makes puns great.
