Damn the tildes and full speed ahead!
Reader Matt Bunkers raised the issue of the tilde (~) in scientific writing. Some use it for “proportional to”. Others use it for “order of magnitude”. Still others use it for “approximately”. Given the wide variety of uses for the tilde, why not just write out what you mean? Doing so will make your writing […]
Use your middle initial. Appear smarter.
A coauthor on a paper and I ended up discussing whether scientists should use their middle initial on a paper. An article entitled “The impact of middle names: Middle name initials enhance evaluations of intellectual performance” in the European Journal of Social Psychology addresses this issue. The abstract reads: Middle name initials often appear in […]
How to respond to reviewers: When two reviewers say the same thing
My coauthors and I were talking about the responses to the reviewers that we were writing for a paper that was in peer review. Because two of the reviewers raised issues about the same item, my coauthor wrote a thoughtful response to Reviewer #1, then, in response to Reviewer #2, said basically, “See our response […]
“Conclusions and Discussion”? What should you call the last section of your paper?
Astute reader Colin Smith fired the following question my way: I find that many authors call their closing section “Conclusions and discussion”, rather than ‘Discussion and conclusions”. I prefer the latter because, to me, it is logical to first discuss your results in a wider context, and then draw conclusions. However, I also understand why […]
David Byrne: Inspiration for Good Science Writing
About a month ago, I had finished reading How Music Works by David Byrne (formerly of Talking Heads). I was always a big fan of the music of Talking Heads and Byrne, and I found his movie True Stories quirky. I am a huge musicophile, as well, and when I saw the book on the […]
How the Purpose of the Literature Review Affects How You Write It
Which is harder? Assembling the literature review for your dissertation or assembling the literature review for your journal article? Have you ever struggled with trying to assemble a literature review section? For your dissertation, you might be overwhelmed by the large number of papers in your discipline that you feel that you need to address. […]
Effective use of colors in meteorological visualizations
A new paper has appeared in the Early Online Releases at the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. This paper is entitled,
TMA (Too Many Acronyms)
Something’s happening here. Something either has been increasing in frequency recently or has started grating on my nerves more: the tendency of authors to introduce numerous and unnecessary acronyms in their manuscripts. This example comes from George Bryan. Clearly, this one is over the top. “Comparing each composite MLqv to their respective distribution means, FA […]
Chinese translation of “How to Research and Write a Case Study in Meteorology”
Hai-Jiang Kong of the Henan Meteorological Observatory was kind enough to translate my article “How to research and write effective case studies in meteorology” in the Electronic Journal of Severe Storms Meteorology into Chinese: “如何做有效的天气个例研究”. That article is made available here: PDF. Thanks Hai-Jiang! Schultz, D. M., 2010: How to research and write effective case […]
Advice on providing better feedback…
Our advisors coated the drafts of our writing in red ink. And, we, in turn, coat the drafts of our students’ writing in red ink. Does the volume of red ink challenge students to improve their writing, or do they just shrug it off (for any number of reasons)? I was just reading an article […]
