Rob's Writing and Presentation Resources
Something I do a lot of, something I teach, and something I am
passionate about. I hope these resources are useful and not too
biased by my experience and perspective. I have started merging writing
and presentation resources because they interact in very powerful ways and
both have the common goal of telling a great story.
Quick Links:
- Writing background info
- Writing a thesis
- Presentation background info
- Making documents: the mechanics
- Making posters
- The PLoS Computational Biology Ten-Rules
series
- General tips on communication and productivity
- Scientific Writing and Communication by Angelika
Hofmann. Oxford University Press. My favorite book on
scientific communications. Available from Amazon.com and
other fine book suppliers in paperback for under $25.
- Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (11th Edition) by Joseph
Williams and Joseph Bizup . A fabulous book on writing style.
- Carla Roberts' writing tips, from
Carla Roberts, Proprietor of Preferred Copy Editing. Email:
preferredcopyediting@yahoo.com and at this Website. This is an
excellent summary of writing rules and tips, nicely organized and
easy to navigate.
- Weixiong Zhang's ten tips for writing
scientific papers. Cited as W. Zhang, Ten simple rules for
writing research papers, PLOS Computational Biology, in press.
- Writing Guidelines for
Engineering and Science Students from Michael Alley at Penn State
University. Includes much original content and links to other useful
sites for both writing and presentation of engineering content.
- On Scientific Writing by Gopen
and Swan (PDF) a fabulous article on all aspects scientific
writing from
American Scientist.
- Study and writing tips
for students, this is a large blog covering a variety of topics. I
found it via
Donna Norton who has some nice writing tips like
11 Rules of Writing – Common Mistakes [& Fixes].
- Three letters from Nature on the use
of the passive voice.
-
The Pernicious Passive Voice by J. Kirkam. Also in PDF format From: Physics in
Technology, Volume 6, Issue 5, pp. 197-200 (1975).
-
How to write a scientific paper by Robert Schulman. A very
tongue-in-cheek description of the process.
-
Guide to Grammar and
Writing from Capital Community College Foundation.
- suggested by Candace Mayberry
(thanks, Candace!)
- SI Unit
rules and style conventions, from the National Institute for Standards and
STandard and Technology
- Pursue Online Writing
Program, a great resource for all aspects of writing. Got a
grammar question or want to know how to use a word? This is the
place to look.
- IEEE
Computer Society writing links, full of useful links to
information on writing style and formats.
-
Grammar tips from Tina Blue a nice collection of tips on
all sorts of aspects of grammar including:
- Hyphen rules by our own Chris
Pickett
- Most common comma errors by Ben Yagoda in the New York Times.
- Presentation Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students
from Michael Alley at Penn State University. Includes much original
content and links to other useful sites for both writing and
presentation of engineering content.
- Les Posen's Presentation
Magic , a great starting point for all sort of information on
presentation tools.
- Garr Reynold's
Presentation Tips.
- Resources from Nancy
Duarte , the queen of presentation.
- Six Minutes speaking
and presentation guides.
- Gavin
McMahon's slideshare site, which is a collection of resources
from a pro. He runs Fasssorward, a
consulting company for communications. The focus is clearly products
not science but there are valuable lessons, e.g., from this
summary of six rules.
- Stock Photo Sources: these are places to get high quality images,
usually for a price.
-
Istock Photos (recommended by some as good balance
between selection and cost.)
- Canstock and
ShutterStock Photo,
which offers free weekly image and photo downloads to users who
create a free account on their site. Both teachers and students can
use these free weekly images in educational content. The total
database includes 15 million professional, royalty free stock
photos.
- Canva (yes, without
the "s") Stock Photos, a site the also offers storage and some
tools for manipulating photos. They have free accounts and
photos charges start at $1 per photo.
- Fotolia.com, which seems
now to be part of Adobe.
- Dreamstime.com
- Soundbible.com, a similar
source for sounds and sound effects.
This is a catch-all of suggestions about carrying out all the above
tasks and more, general tips about communicating and working effectively.
Last modified: Sun Sep 21 17:57:56 MDT 2025