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":http://network.nature.com/forums/nnano/1275?page=1#reply-4105, and makes very good reading, especially for scientists for whom English is not their first language.