Gershom (Jan M.L.) Martin The Lady Thatcher Professorial Chair in Chemistry Dept. of Organic Chemistry | Faculty of Chemistry | Weizmann Institute of Science | Rehovot | Israel

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The Craft of Scientific Writing (course ID: 20092101)

1st semester, Sundays 14:00-16:00, Schmidt Auditorium

Supplementary material and lecture notes for the course will be posted here as they become available. Meanwhile, here are some useful online resources:

• Course syllabus at the Feinberg Graduate School website
• Information about the course textbook, "The Chemist's English" by Robert W. Schoenfeld
• PDF version of the book from Weizmann intranet
• A brief summary of the book (work in progress)
• FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) accompanying the course
• The Chicago Manual of Style website (full of useful questions and answers)
• The Chemistry Style Manual by Kieran F. Lim (less authoritative than Chicago or Schoenfeld, but you cannot beat the price)
• American Institute of Physics style manual (free download)
• Summary of American Chemical Society style manual (information about the actual book)
• The Economist style guide (rather specific to British English, recommendations do not always apply to scholarly writing, use only as directed)
• Differences between Oxford (British) and American English (WikiPedia article, caveat lector/reader beware)
• English-to-American dictionary
• Useful reference works:
  • Merriam-Webster dictionary (will open in new window)
  • Oxford English Dictionary (will open in new window)
  • Educational companion (PDF) to the book "Eats, shoots & leaves: The zero-tolerance approach to punctuation." by Lynne Truss. (Chapter 1 of the book; Companion website. Very warmly recommended. Thanks to Steve Weiner for lending me the book!).
  • PDF version of 'Eats, shoots and leaves' (intranet only)
  • Common errors in English: website version of book by Paul Brians. (Single-file text-only version for offline reading.) Quite useful, even though I disagree in one or two cases. The most commonly misused words and phrases are summarized here. A longer list appears at Wikipedia (caveat lector/reader beware).
• Lecture notes:
  • Lesson 1
  • Most of the remaining lectures are based on the book by Schoenfeld.
  • Lesson 2 (Schoenfeld, Ch. 1-8)
  • Lesson 3a (more Schoenfeld)
  • Lesson 3b-4a (from manuscript to published paper)
  • Lesson 4b (back to Schoenfeld)
  • Lesson 5 (Eats, shoots, and leaves)
  • Lesson 6 (back to Schoenfeld)
  • Lesson 7 (back to Schoenfeld)
  • Lesson 8 (common fallacies/sophisms/errors of reasoning)
  • The view of Paul von Ragué Schleyer on how to write a paper (use as directed, Gershom has some comments)
  • Lesson 9 (practical paper writing strategies).
  • Lesson 10: guest lecture by Prof. Adrian Goldman (U. of Helsinki, Finland).
  • No class on Sunday, Dec. 28, 2006 (Hanuka)
  • Class on January 18, 2009 will be in the Dov Elad Room of the Kimmelman Building (4th floor).
  • Final class: February 1, 2009. Guest lecturer: Prof. Adrian Goldman (U. of Helsinki) with a more "Life Sciences Journals" perspective on things.
• Homework assignments:
  • Lesson 1
  • Lesson 2: carefully review chapters 1-8 of Schoenfeld.
  • Lesson 5: solve the punctuation exercises in this PDF document
  • Final exercise: correct this abomination or rewrite it in proper English.

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