Chapter 5: “The Motivation to Write”, plus Video: “Overcoming Barriers to Writing”

“Writing can be a struggle, or it can be fun. Most likely it is both. The attitude with which we approach the writing project can determine its success. Lack of motivation and writer’s block can prevent us from beginning, continuing, completing, and enjoying writing projects. This chapter provides strategies for overcoming these obstacles to our […]

Chapter 24: Accessible Oral Presentations: Free to download

“Most of the time at conferences is spent listening to others talk. Given the over- whelming challenge for the audience to sit through, absorb, and remember mate- rial from all these presentations, a speaker must be memorable to connect with the audience. As the previous chapters focused on scientific writing, this chapter starts by distinguishing […]

Errata from Eloquent Science

Here is a list of typos identified by the compositor of the book. These changes were not implemented at the time.   p. 53, 1st graph: OK to change “formating” to “formatting”? p. 53, 3rd graph: OK to change “conciousness” to “consciousness”? p. 86, 3rd graph of section 9.8: OK to change “parenthethical” to “parenthetical”? […]

Eloquent Science: Chapter 11 Figures

I received a request from a professor who uses Eloquent Science in the classroom. He wanted the figures from Chapter 11: Figures and Tables, so that he could adapt them into his own presentations. In response to that request, here they are, in a single PowerPoint file: Eloquent Science: Figures from Chapter 11

Eloquent Science eBook and PDF chapters

For those who want a digital copy of Eloquent Science, the book is now available through Springer for immediate PDF download (no copy protection, watermarked). The price (as of 26 February 2013) is £22.99 / $39.95 / €29.74. If you are at an educational institution, your library may have purchased the rights to the whole […]

How to add line numbers to your manuscript

The journals of the American Meteorological Society now require line numbers in submitted manuscripts. How do you add such line numbers to your manuscript? From p. 374 of Eloquent Science: A Practical Guide to Becoming a Better Writer, Speaker and Scientist: “Final Checks of Your Manuscript,” “Lines numbered in margin”: You may wish to add […]

Upsidence?

Dave Mechem (University of Kansas) and my Manchester colleagues have been telling me about a new term that has been adopted from geology into atmospheric science: upsidence. My understanding of upsidence is that the term means ascent in an environment with otherwise large-scale descent. The term is used to refer to an “upsidence wave”, a […]

Losing Your Way

This section is published in the October 2010 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Volume 91, p. 1416.

Writing is Like Forecasting

This section is published in the June 2010 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Volume 91, p. 791.

Recommended Reading

Previously, I provided three items of essential reading. Here are other books that I highly recommend for improving your scientific communication skills. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING ON WRITING Cook (1986): Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing delivers a thorough accounting of the editing process. The book deals mainly with sentence-level revisions and contains […]

Next Page »