Ai Lin Chun, an editor at Nature Nanotechnology, invited Dr Ennio Tasciotti, a native Italian and author of a paper in the journal’s March 2008 issue, to write about his road to the success of this paper – from the planning of the experiments all the way to the writing. His excellent account is at the Nature Nanotechnology forum, and makes very good reading, especially for scientists for whom English is not their first language.