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With the rapid evolution of technology and its impact on society, scientific literacy is increasingly important. This study examines two major genres of scientific writing: academic journal articles and popular science magazine articles. The first aim is to improve the efficacy of writing in the sciences by providing a better understanding of genre conventions and effective linguistic choices. The second aim is to investigate whether there are differences in writing by men and women in these two genres. This question is motivated by observed gender differences in participation in science. Hyland’s 2005 metadiscourse model is used to identify and examine relevant linguistic choices in the sample set. This model considers two types of linguistic markers: interactive (used to guide the reader) and interactional (used to engage the reader). The sample set consists of 60 mono-authored journal articles from physics, biology and chemistry and 60 mono-authored articles from two popular science magazines. The results show greater use of interactive than interactional resources in both genres but more use of interactional resources in popular science writing. Some statistically significant differences in writing by men and women were observed, especially in the popular science sample, including greater use of hedges and engagement markers by women authors and greater use of self-mentions by men authors. These differences occur in academic writing to a lesser extent. Unsurprisingly, academic samples follow academic conventions more closely than the popular science writing, while gender comparison shows that women authors use more qualifying language than men, so their writing is more closely aligned with academic genre conventions. The thesis usefully identifies which linguistic devices are common in effectively written scientific texts, contributing to an explicit understanding of effective science writing. Further, it shows some differences in language use by gender that may trigger unconscious bias.