Who are “the experts”?

One of the features of Eloquent Science is the “Ask the Experts” columns. (The idea for these sections came from a discussion with Prof. Tracey Holloway, University of Wisconsin.) I don’t say much about who these people are in the book, but you may be interested to know a little more. Y. Hancock is a … read more

If a tree falls in the forest…

This month’s issue of the Annals of Improbable Research answers the question of whether a tree falling in the forest will make a sound if no one is around to hear it. The answer is yes (Melchior 2010). Moreover, the bigger the tree, the louder the sound. What I like about this article is that … read more

Use of first person in writing (a cross-disciplinary thought experiment)

I recently attended a workshop on writing across the disciplines at the University of Manchester run by Alex Baratta. The group spent a lot of time discussing how each of our own disciplines uses the first person in academic writing. After the discussion went on for a while, I offered the following model. What does … read more

Book Review: How Not to Write a Novel

How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them–A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide The cover of the book (British version) caught my eye. Then the title. Then the tagline: “200 mistakes to avoid at all costs if you ever want to get published.” I was curious about how many lessons could be … read more

Bad Writing and Bad Thinking

Russ Schumacher pointed me to this article from the The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Bad Writing and Bad Thinking” by Rachel Toor. Call me simple-minded, call me anti-intellectual, but I believe that most poor scholarly writing is a result of bad habits, of learning tricks of the academic trade as a way to try to … read more

Bob The Angry Flower: It’s vs Its

A great title (Bryan 2005)

I was recently reminded of this paper by my colleague George Bryan. Bryan, G. H., 2005: Spurious convective organization in simulated squall lines owing to moist absolutely unstable layers. Mon. Wea. Rev., 133, 1978–1997. I love this title. This title has all of Lipton’s five characteristics of an effective title. Informative The title has all … read more

Appropriate way to label axes of graphs

Prof. Brian Fiedler of the University of Oklahoma recently published an article in Physics Education calling for a change in direction in teaching dimensionless ratios in physics. As he advocates, The tick marks [on an axis of a graph] are pure numbers. Labels with a solidus such as R/µm are orthodox notation for what the … read more

The range of reviewer recommendations from crocs to pigeons

Explains the evolutionary line of Rejectosaurus. From the A(frican) Blog of Ecology by Raf Aerts: “I’ve just spotted a Revisosaurus major on one of my manuscripts, even though the field characteristics were very close to those of a Rejectosaurus resubmittens (see Fig. 1, blue line).”

Bob the Angry Flower speaks out against improper apostrophe use

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