An unfortunate order of words

A quote from Sports Minister Hugh Robertson, from this article. “The British themselves are pretty stoic; there is a long tradition of watching sport in rain macs or listening to Cliff Richard or whatever.” Come on. Cliff Richard isn’t that bad.

An abstract that says nothing

This abstract comes from a recently published in an atmospheric science journal: Previous studies have shown that numerical diffusion plays a crucial role in the ability of mesoscale models to reproduce features similar to sub-meso motions found in observations, particularly in terms of spectral energy distribution. In this study, the impacts of surface heterogeneity and … read more

Past or Present Tense?

Which is correct? A. Wetzel et al. (2004) show a negative correlation between snow density and air temperature that explains 52% of the variance. B. Wetzel et al. (2004) showed a negative correlation between snow density and air temperature that explains 52% of the variance. The difference is that A uses the present tense “show”, … read more

It’s time for Microsoft Word to die.

Nice article from slate.com on the frustrations of dealing with Microsoft Word. (Image from http://ohinternet.com/Clippy)

Stream of consciousness writing vs Structured writing

There is a provocative post over on 3monththesis.com called “The worst thesis writing advice ever”. That advice? “Just get words down on the page, because you can always sort it out later.“ The rationale? Because the process of “sorting it out”, or editing, is 99% of the whole exercise! If you leave clarifying your thoughts … read more

How not to write about complexity in science

Having graded over 130 student essays this past fall, I saw a certain word pop up again and again: complex. “Earthquakes are a complex problem.” “Titan has a complex methane distribution over the Tropics.” “To pin down the many complexities and feedbacks involved in jet stream blocking may prove to be difficult.” “Governments and international … read more

Review: “Writing Science” by Joshua Schimel

I just finished reading a new book Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded by Prof. Joshua Schimel, in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at UC Santa Barbara. Schimel’s book is the perfect companion to Eloquent Science. Whereas Eloquent Science provides guidance about how to … read more

Speaking Science to the Public

A while back, I was asked about the type of guidance that I would provide someone who wanted to communicate to the public via their National Hydrometeorological Service’s Web page. The book I most highly recommend is “Don’t Be Such a Scientist”. The author definitely has an American way of writing, so nonnative American English … read more

Teller on Communicating Science

No, not Edward Teller, but Teller of the magic act Penn and Teller. The Smithsonian magazine’s March 2012 issue has an article written by Teller, available online. In the article, Teller explains seven principles for how magicians convince the audience of the trick. After reading them, I think many could be equally applied to convincing … read more

Writing a Thesis: How to Interact with your Supervisor

Three-Month Thesis has a thoughtful post about how many thesis drafts you need. I would disagree with a few things on that page. 1. The number of drafts depends very strongly on the student. I would argue that you need as many drafts as it takes to finish the thesis. 2. In principle, the quality … read more

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