One space or two?

Russ Schumacher and I have been discussing the current online battle between those who advocate one space between sentences and two spaces. The debate started with Slate’s Farhad Manjoo, then was picked up by The Atlantic, citing Tom Lee. I have to admit that my typing instructor in seventh grade taught us to use two … 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.

“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

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