How to Prepare a Really Lousy Submission: Water Resources Research Editorial Team

Sent to me from colleagues at the University of Utah. [PDF]

“Utilize” versus “Use”

From The Telegraph (sent to me by Jamie Gilmour): When the American writer David Foster Wallace died four years ago, he left behind the following fragments: notes towards a dictionary all of his own. Utilize A noxious puff-word. Since it does nothing that good old use doesn’t do, its extra letters and syllables don’t make […]

Automation of literature reviews

A recently published paper in Scientometrics raises the specter of an automated tool that would search through existing citations and “facilitate novices to perform tasks that are usually carried out by trained professionals.” The tool was then used for students to create literature reviews and these were submitted to conferences. The tool was so successful, […]

Avoid hyperbole in scientific writing.

Hyperbole can take many different forms. Nearly all should be avoided in scientific writing. Avoid calling previous work “pioneering”, “novel”, or “foundational”, unless it truly is. Don’t call a study “comprehensive.” They rarely are. Don’t say that you’ve conducted “detailed work.” You’re a scientist. You’re supposed to do detailed work. Avoid absolutes like “never”, “always”, […]

Oh, snap! A dig at a badly written introduction

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 […]

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”, […]

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 […]

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