Rob's Writing 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.

Background Information

• On Scientific Writing by Gopen and Swan (PDF) a fabulous article on all aspects scientific writing from American Scientist.
• 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.
• 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:
  • Hyphenation Tips in three parts.
  • Use of colons and semi-colons
  • Dashes are not hyphens!
• Most common comma errors by Ben Yagoda in the New York Times.

Mechanics of Making Documents

• Rob's Latex Page.
• Writing with LaTeX, some tips specific to SCI and CVRTI.
• The SCI text markup scheme
• Webster's online dictionary and thesaurus
• The Visual Thesaurus, a very elegant description of the meaning and the origin of words.

Tips Specific to Making Posters

• Advice on designing scientific posters by Colin Purrington, Department of Biology, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania. I like this one a lot, nice images and good advice.
• Expanded guidelines for Giving a Poster Presentation from the American Society of Primatologists.
• Poster Presentation of Research Work from Newcastle University.
• Tips for Effective Poster Presentations from the US Department of Energy.
• How to create a poster that graphically communicates your message by Kathryn Tosney, Chair of Biology, The University of Miami.
• Posters with PowerPoint online tutorial/a> by Penn Libraries.
• How to Make a Great Poster by Dina F. Mandoli, University of Washington, Department of Biology.

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  Last modified: Tue May 22 07:52:01 MDT 2012