Scientificwriting…

can be

difficult

This is especially true for

• Professional academics who must write in their second language of English

• who face an additional hurdle in the race to publish or perish

• Undergraduate and postgraduate students

• who are so busy getting to grips with the science that they don't worry too much about writing clearly and consistently

However, help is at hand…

• This short SlideShare will highlight

• Key problem areas for non-native English (NNE) authors

• Some of the errors made by English-speaking students new to science writing

• Not surprisingly perhaps, these overlap to some extent

• And then point you in the right direction towards solving the problems and fixing the errors

These slides are based on two e-books that aim to help NNE and student

authors improve their science writing skills

For more details visit

Science Writing

The two books are

• field guides in the sense that they will point you in the right direction or jog your memory regarding the requirements of writing good scientific prose, rather than be an exhaustive guide to the language and the genre

• interactive in the sense that they contain links to additional material that can be accessed as required to support the main text

The mind map outlines the key themes covered in the books…

… and the word cloud provides a visual representation of them

The following slides contain examples from the topic areas covered in the books and offer some suggestions on how to tackle the various problems, together with links to external resources that provide more details as required

Punctuation

• Strunk’s Rules 2–6* cover comma usage:2. In a series of three or more terms with a single

conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last

3. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas

4. Place a comma before and or but introducing an independent clause

5. Do not join independent clauses by a comma

6. Do not break sentences in two

* Strunk, W. (2007) The Elements of Style, Filiquarian Publishing.

Punctuation

• Apostrophes can be used to indicate either

• Possession; e.g., John’s shirt, or

• Omission; e.g., don’t (but you shouldn’t use these in formal writing)

• Dash it all

• The use of hyphens (-), en dashes (–), em dashes (—) and the like can be dashed confusing

• leading to the potentially life-threatening conundrum of whether you are about to find a man eating tiger or a man-eating tiger in the next room

Style & Flow

• Paragraphs

• Make the paragraph the unit of composition

• As a rule, begin each paragraph with a topic sentence

• Sentences

• Consider the structure (clauses, conjunctions etc.) and order of the words used

• And most important one of all…

• Omit needless words

Formatting

• Even the simplest document will need some formatting and you should be consistent with your choice of

• Font (type, size, colour, etc.)

• Text justification

• Reference styles

• Heading formats

• Figure captions

• Figure and table numbering

• Line spacing

• Paragraph indents

Scientific Rigour

• Take the time to sort out your references

– Check that all author names are spelt correctly

– Use a consistent citation style in the main text

– Make sure that anything cited in the text is also included in the list of references at the end (and vice versa)

– Format this list consistently and according to the relevant guidelines

• How to format references

• Citation Style Chart

Editor’s Most Wanted

• Time spent checking for erroneous double spaces, finding and using the correct symbol for the minus sign, or fixing other typos (typographical errors) prior to the final submission of your work is TIME WELL SPENT

• Take look at the Top Typos that I see most often when editing NNE texts

and try to avoid them

Want some more?

• Go to the knowledge base on our web site, which gives a more structured sample of the material covered in the two books

• Better still, follow one of the links below and get the the most appropriate version for you on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac

• Science Writing: An Interactive Field Guide for Non-Native English Speakers

• Science Writing: an interactive field guide for students

• Or if you are a Kindle user

• Thanks for your time

The Frank Partnership Limited