Category: Writing

Writing Course at Karolinska Institute 10-13 March 2025


by Terese Bergfors

This week I am teaching at Karolinska in the Applied Biomedical Communication and Professional Development course.  This is a popular course — 60 masters students again this year. It covers scientific writing, oral presentation skills, and career planning. 

In my workshop this week, the students learn to apply linguistic strategies for improved readability and flow in scientific manuscripts. Specifically, I cover:

  • Creating a structure: introducing the CARS template
  • What makes a text easy or hard to read? The top 3 essentials
  • How long is a too long sentence?
  • Top-heavy sentences: why English hates them
  • Creating flow: the concept of topic-stress
  • The topic sentence and why every paragraph wants one
  • How to give feedback and why we do it

Creative Writing II at Malmö University


by Terese Bergfors

The second semester of this course is over. I turned in my writing portfolio on 3 June 2022. During the spring semester, I created a collection of creative writing, both fiction and non-fiction, but finally decided upon submitting a 4000-word short story for the final grade.

If I am a science writer, why am I taking a course in creative writing? Writing is an art, an act of creation, but it is also a craft. I have learned many useful writing tools in this course. The ability to construct a good sentence is a highly transferrable skill to any kind of writing.

My new book is out now


by Terese Bergfors

If writing a journal article is a like running a 10K race, editing a book is the equivalent of an ultra-marathon.

Or so it felt.

The idea to update the second edition occurred to me in November, 2019. I contacted the publisher of the first two editions and he agreed to produce a third one. So, with his enthusiasm backing me up, I started after Christmas that year.

Then came the pandemic. I almost wanted to call this book the “Journal of a Plague Year”. However that title was already taken, by Daniel Defoe in 1772.

But now, almost two years and one (still ongoing) pandemic later, the third edition is available as an e-book. A softcover version is underway.

I thank my wonderful colleagues who contributed chapters, the publisher, and the many coworkers who assisted in fact-checking, indexing, and photography.

And finally, I thank my grandson Alex, now 7, for being quiet hours on end. Due to the quarantine, he had to put up with me working from home on this book for months.