Plain English Campaign gets it wrong
In almost all cases, I support the Plain English Campaign, who aim to improve the readability of government documents, corporate letters, web sites, and other forms of communication. In their 2011 Golden Bull Awards, however, the Plain English Campaign got it dead wrong. The UK Met Office won an award for ‘empowering people to make […]
Errors in Publications #1
Check those page proofs carefully!
Will asking a question get your science paper cited more?
My friend Jim Steenburgh over at Wasatch Weather Weenies alerted me to this column in the Guardian newspaper. The column points out something that we scientists may know but forget from time to time: factors other than the quality of the science determine whether and how often our articles get cited by others. Among the […]
How To Choose a Good Scientific Problem
I have not found a more concise and clear statement about how to choose a good scientific problem for someone at various stages in their career. Enjoy! Alon, U., 2009: How to choose a good scientific problem. Molecular Cell, 35, 726-728. DOI: 10.1016/j.molcel.2009.09.013. [PDF]
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 […]
Please don’t write multiple-part papers!
I’ve talked about this topic of writing multiple-part papers before. Earlier this year, I published an article about what the data show from Monthly Weather Review. Schultz, D. M., 2011: Rejection rates for multiple-part manuscripts. Scientometrics, 86, 251-259. [PDF] I found that although the rejection rates for multiple-part manuscripts were not that different from the […]
How To Improve Your Writing
Three things will speed your improvement. Reread How-To guides and other inspirational books and articles. Here are some links and some recommendations ([1] and [2]) to get you started. For me, I derive inspiration from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, which I reread every 3-5 years. Rereading parts of Eloquent Science can also […]
How important is it to use “important” in your writing?
August 20, 2011 Filed under Blog, Featured, Uncategorized, Writing
Have you read an article where the author talks about “an important process” or “the important role of another process”? Do these sort of platitudes go in one of your ears and out the other? Are you convinced by the author’s use of the word “important” that it truly is an important process? Or, do […]
Problems with the term “overrunning”
August 15, 2011 Filed under Blog, Featured, Uncategorized, Writing
Several authors have criticized the use of the term overrunning to represent warm-frontal lifting here and here. I don’t need to add anything to those Web pages, but I do want to point out that the definition provided in the American Meteorological Society’s Glossary of Meteorology is wrong and ambiguous. overrunning—A condition existing when an […]
Ten Rules of Academic Writing
An essential list of tips about writing by the many of the experts. Abstract: Creative writers are well served with ‘how to’ guides, but just how much do they help? And how might they be relevant to academic authors? A recent survey of writing tips by twenty-eight creative authors has been condensed to the ten […]
