After training many scientists on our courses, we know this is a common fear. But making your work accessible is not the same as dumbing it down. It means writing for the right audience – and that means your work can have the practical applications that it should. And doing this may also mean increasing the size of the audience your work is exposed to, as NYU scientific writing lecturer Philip Rodenbough explains in this article. As he puts it, ‘All technical writing is improved by making it more accessible – as long as we’re not completely re-explaining the very basics.’