“Unnecessary” Quotation Marks

I think people use quotation marks too often in scientific manuscripts. Be brave. Boldly define your term and use it sans quotation marks. It’s good to know that someone else thinks like me. Let me introduce you to The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.

“Even referees were not infallible.” – L. F. Richardson

Happy 129th birthday (11 October 1881) to Lewis Fry Richardson, who pioneered the first numerical weather prediction and for whom the Richardson number is named. Jim Matthew of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society lent me a copy of his biography Prophet or Professor? by Oliver Ashford. As I was reading it today, I came across the … read more

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

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