Improving communication skills through writing groups
April 30, 2014 Filed under Blog, Featured, Potpourri, Presentations, Writing
Liveblog (Vienna, Austria): Later today and tomorrow, I’ll be talking to ClimateSnack‘s Mathew Reeve about improving communication skills for scientists. This got me thinking more about what ClimateSnack is trying to do. This graphic shows it well. It is about getting scientists to become better communicators with other scientists through short Climate Snack blog posts. […]
“Over” versus “more than”
Reader Russ Schumacher pointed out to me that the Associated Press has now accepted both “over” and “more than” as in “over 500 people attended” and “more than 500 people attended”. The outrage from the community is described here. Where do you stand?
My response to 3monththesis’s “Why some perfectionism is a good thing”
The original post is here, and the post starts: One of the most common pieces of writing advice is to “just get words down on the page; don’t worry about detail, and don’t think too much”. This is often given as a way of overcoming writers block, or the “fear of the blank page”. Perfectionism […]
Polarimetric radar terminology
My colleague Joey Picca from the Upton NWS Forecast Office tells me that the term “dual-polarimetric” is redundant because “polarimetric” already implies the use of a radar with multiple polarizations. Thus, “polarimetric” or “dual-polarization” are more proper. Image from http://www.cimms.ou.edu/~schuur/radar.html
Sell no manuscript before its time
January 18, 2014 Filed under Blog, Featured, Publishing, Writing
This classic TV advertisement from the late 1970s features Orson Welles proclaiming that Paul Masson winery will not sell its wine until it is ready. Unfortunately, many authors “sell” their manuscript to journals before they are ready to enter peer review. The manuscripts are often sloppy, lacking careful proofreading. References are not in the proper […]
More on plain writing in the government
Regular reader Brian Curran sends us this link on the Plain Writing Act and the results thereof, following up on earlier discussions of clear language in government writing. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2013/11/19/plain-writing-in-government-agencies-plainly-speaking-arent-there-yet/ As the report card from the Center for Plain Language shows, NOAA gets a D for “Plain Writing”, although which documents were used was not stated […]
Twenty tips for interpreting scientific claims
This Comment in Nature today by William Sutherland, David Spiegelhalter, and Mark Burgman is meant as a primer for policy makers who need to interpret science, but I would argue that this primer is also useful for scientists who might fall into this trap of overinterpreting or misinterpreting results in their own or others’ studies. […]
From the “You’ve Got to Be Kidding” Category…
I wonder if these authors chose this title, just to get the attention. Anyway, here it is.
10 grammar rules you can forget: how to stop worrying and write proper
Jim Steenburgh sent me this article from The Guardian about “what pop music can teach you about building sentences.”
How to read and understand a scientific paper
Brian Curran sends along this great blog post about how to read and understand a scientific paper. The subtitle is a guide for nonscientists, but Brian points out that even scientists could benefit from this information. In fact, I would say that many of the questions asked by the author are valuable in constructing a […]
