Research Catalog

A short guide to writing about biology / Jan A. Pechenik.

Title
A short guide to writing about biology / Jan A. Pechenik.
Author
Pechenik, Jan A.
Publication
New York : Pearson/Longman, c2007.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Filter by

1 Item

StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
TextRequest in advance QH304 .P43 2007Off-site

Details

Description
xxi, 310 p. : ill.; 21 cm.
Summary
"Adopted by hundreds of instructors and used by tens of thousands of students nationwide, A Short Guide to Writing about Biology has established itself as the definitive text in its field." "Brief yet comprehensive, this practical text helps students at all levels learn how to communicate effectively with both professional and general audiences, and encourages them to think like biologists and to express that thinking clearly and concisely, in both writing and speaking. Book jacket."--BOOK JACKET.
Series Statement
The short guide series
Subject
  • Biology > Authorship
  • Report writing
Genre/Form
  • Reference works
  • Ouvrages de référence.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (p. 296-297) and index.
Processing Action (note)
  • committed to retain
Contents
Part I General Advice about Writing and Reading Biology 1 -- 1 Introduction and General Rules 2 -- What Do Biologists Write about, and why? 2 -- The Keys to Success 5 -- Ten major rules for preparing a first draft 5 -- Six major rules for developing your final draft 9 -- Eight finer points: the easy stuff 12 -- The annoying but essential final pass 14 -- On Using Computers in Writing 14 -- On Using Computers for Data Storage, Analysis, and Presentation 18 -- Technology Tip 1 Getting the Most from Your Word-Processing Program 16 -- 2 Locating Useful Sources 21 -- Using Indexes 22 -- Using Science Citation Index 23 -- Using Current Contents 24 -- Using Medline and Other Databases 24 -- Prowling the Internet 26 -- Conducting Web Searches: Developing Productive Search Strategies 27 -- Final Thoughts about Efficient Searching: Technology Isn't Everything 31 -- Technology Tip 2 Using Search Engines Effectively 28 -- 3 General Advice on Reading and Note-Taking 33 -- Why Read and What to Read 33 -- Effective Reading 34 -- Reading Data: Plumbing the Depths of Figures and Tables 36 -- Reading Text: Summarize as You Go 40 -- Plagiarism and Note-Taking 42 -- Plagiarism 42 -- Take notes in your own words 43 -- Split-page note-taking: A can't-fail system 49 -- Final thoughts on note-taking: Document your sources 51 -- 4 Reading and Writing About Statistical Analyses 52 -- Statistical Essentials 52 -- Variability and its representation 52 -- When is a difference a meaningful difference? What you need to know about tomatoes, coins, and random events 55 -- Establishing a null hypothesis 57 -- Conducting the analysis, and interpreting the results 59 -- Degrees of freedom 63 -- Summary: Using Statistics to Test Hypotheses 64 -- Moving Beyond p-Values 65 -- Statistical power 65 -- Effect magnitudes 66 -- Reading about Statistics 67 -- Writing about Statistics 68 -- 5 Citing Sources and Listing References 72 -- Citing Sources 72 -- Summary of Citation Format Rules 76 -- Preparing the Literature Cited Section 76 -- Listing the references-General rules 77 -- Listing the references-Using the correct format 78 -- A Sample Literature Cited Section 81 -- Technology Tip 3 Bibliographic Management Software 79 -- Technology Tip 4 Producing Hanging Indents 80 -- 6 Revising 83 -- Preparing the Draft for Surgery: Plotting Idea Maps 84 -- Revising for Content 89 -- Revising for Clarity 92 -- Taming disobedient sentences-Sentences that don't say what the author means 92 -- The dangers of It 95 -- Problems with and 97 -- Headache by acronym 98 -- Revising for Completeness 98 -- Revising for Conciseness 100 -- First commandment: Eliminate unnecessary prepositions 102 -- Second commandment: Avoid weak verbs 103 -- Third commandment: Do not overuse the passive voice 104 -- Fourth commandment: Make the organism the agent of the action 105 -- Fifth commandment: Incorporate definitions into your sentences 106 -- Revising for Flow 107 -- A short exercise in establishing coherence 109 -- Improving flow using punctuation 110 -- Revising for Teleology and Anthropomorphism 111 -- Revising for Spelling Errors 111 -- Revising for Grammar and Proper Word Usage 113 -- A grammatical aside: Rules-that-are-not-rules 118 -- A strategy for revising: Pass by pass by pass 119 -- Becoming a Good Reviewer 119 -- Receiving criticism 122 -- Fine-tuning 124 -- Sentences in need of revision 124 -- Technology Tip 5 Tracking Changes Made to Documents 123 -- Part II Guidelines for Specific Tasks 129 -- 7 Writing Summaries and Critiques 130 -- Writing the First Draft 131 -- Writing the Summary 132 -- Sample Student Summary 133 -- Analysis of student summary 134 -- Writing the Critique 135 -- The critique 135 -- Analysis of student critique 138 -- 8 Writing Essays and Review Papers 139 -- Why Bother? 139 -- Researching Your Topic 141 -- Developing a Thesis Statement 142 -- Writing the Paper 143 -- Getting underway: Taking and organizing your notes 143 -- The crucial first paragraph 144 -- Supporting your argument 146 -- The closing paragraph 148 -- Citing Sources 148 -- Creating a Title 149 -- Revising 150 -- 9 Writing Laboratory and Other Research Reports 151 -- Why Are You Doing This? 151 -- The Purpose of Laboratory and Field Notebooks 152 -- Taking notes 153 -- Making drawings 156 -- Components of the Research Report 156 -- Where to Start 159 -- When to Start 160 -- Writing the Materials and Methods Section 160 -- Determining the correct level of detail 160 -- Giving rationales 163 -- Describing data analysis 163 -- Use of subheadings 163 -- A model materials and methods section 165 -- Writing the Results Section 166 -- Summarizing data using tables and graphs 167 -- Constructing a summary table 168 -- To graph or not to graph 168 -- Preparing graphs 174 -- (Not) falsifying data 178 -- The question: To connect or not to connect the dots? 178 -- Making bar graphs and histograms 182 -- Learning to love logarithms 185 -- Preparing tables 187 -- Making your graphs and tables self-sufficient 190 -- Putting your graphs and tables in order 190 -- Incorporating figures and tables into your report (or not) 191 -- Verbalizing results: General principles 191 -- Verbalizing results: Turning principles into action 194 -- What is a "figure"? 194 -- Writing about negative results 195 -- Writing about numbers 195 -- In anticipation-Preparing in advance for data collection 196 -- Citing Sources 199 -- Writing the Discussion Section 199 -- Expectations 200 -- Explaining unexpected results 201 -- Analysis of specific examples 203 -- Writing the Introduction Section 206 -- Stating the question 207 -- An aside: Studies versus experiments 208 -- Providing the background 209 -- A sample introduction 212 -- Talking about Your Study Organism or Field Site 213 -- Deciding on a Title 213 -- Writing an Abstract 215 -- Preparing an Acknowledgments Section 216 -- Preparing the Literature Cited Section 216 -- Preparing a Paper for Formal Publication 216 -- Checklist for the Final Draft 218 -- Technology Tip 6 Using Computer Spreadsheets for Data Collection 198 -- Technology Tip 7 Graphing with Excel 221 -- 10 Writing Research Proposals 225 -- What Are Reviewers Looking For? 226 -- Researching Your Topic 227 -- What Makes a Good Research Question? 228 -- Writing the Proposal 229 -- Proposed research 232 -- Citing references and preparing the literature cited section 234 -- Tightening the Logic 234 -- The Life of a Real Research Proposal 235 -- 11 Answering Essay Questions 237 -- Applying the Principles 242 -- 12 Writing a Poster Presentation 244 -- Layout of the Poster 246 -- Making the Poster 248 -- Checklist for Making Posters 250 -- 13 Writing for a General Audience: Science Journalism 251 -- Science Journalism Based on Published Research 252 -- The simple statement and bullet leads 252 -- The narrative lead 253 -- The surprise or paradox lead 254 -- Science journalism in action: An example 254 -- Journalism Based on an Interview 255 -- 14 Preparing Oral Presentations 259 -- Talking about Published Research Papers 260 -- Preparing the talk 260 -- Giving the talk 262 -- Talking about Original Research 264 -- Talking about Proposed Research 265 -- The Listener's Responsibility 265 -- Preparing Effective Slides and Overheads 266 -- The Pros and Cons of PowerPoint Presentations 267 -- Checklist for Being Judged 270 -- 15 Writing Letters of Application 272 -- Before You Start 273 -- Preparing the Resume 273 -- Preparing the Cover Letter 276 -- Recruiting Effective Letters of Recommendation 287 -- Appendix A The Disassembled Paragraph Reconstituted (From Chapter 6) 289 -- Appendix B Revised Sample Sentences 290 -- Appendix C Revised Sample Sentences in Final Form 292 -- Appendix F Sample Form for Peer Review 298 -- Appendix H Using the Paper Versions of Leading Indexing Services 301.
ISBN
0321385926
LCCN
^^2006044759
OCLC
65205158
Owning Institutions
Harvard Library