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 … read more

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 … read more

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 … read more

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 … read more

Outtake chapter: Incorporating Communication Skills into Teaching

I had written a chapter for Eloquent Science entitled “Incorporating Communication Skills into Teaching.” This chapter was later dropped as too tangential to the topics focused on in the book. Although I never completed writing that chapter, I felt that the draft might be useful to others, so I make it available here. Incorporating Communication … read more

Errata: Figure 19.1

Please replace Fig. 19.1 on p. 227 with the correct version below. I had inadvertently used an earlier version of the figure that Dave Whiteman supplied, and this error slipped past both his and my readings of the page proofs.

Appendix B: Commonly Misused Scientific Words and Expressions

Download a sample chapter from the book.

Chapter 8: Constructing Effective Paragraphs

Download a sample chapter from the book.

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