Short Guide to Writing About Biology

by Pechenik, Jan A.

Edition:

4th

ISBN13:

9780321078438

ISBN10:

0321078438

Format:

Paperback

Pub. Date:

7/1/2000

Publisher(s):

Addison-Wesley

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What version or edition is this?

This is the 4th edition with a publication date of 7/1/2000.

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Summary

Emphasizing writing as a means to examining, evaluating, sharing, and refining ideas, A Short Guide to Writing about Biology helps students get more out of their biology courses and prepares them for work beyond the classroom. More than a "writing guide," this book teaches students to think as biologists and to then express that thinking clearly and concisely through their writing and speaking. With comprehensive coverage on how to read and evaluate articles, how to interpret and describe the results of statistical tests, how to maintain laboratory and field notebooks, and how to communicate information concisely and convincingly to professional and general audiences, this book is a "must have" for any biology student. This edition also provides considerable emphasis on the Internet and work with computers in Biology.

Preface

xiii

Part I General Advice About Writing and Reading Biology

(132)

Introduction and General Rules

(20)

What Do Biologists Write about, and Why?

(3)

The Keys to Success

(12)

Eight major rules for preparing a first draft

(5)

Seven major rules for developing your final draft

(5)

Six finer points: one last pass

(2)

On Using Computers in Writing

(2)

On Using Computers for Data Storage, Analysis, and Presentation

(1)

Summary

(2)

General Advice on Reading and Note-Taking

(30)

Effective Reading

(2)

Reading Data

(5)

Reading Text

(2)

Plagiarism and Note-Taking

(8)

Plagiarism

(1)

Taking notes

(7)

Split-page note-taking: a can't-fail system

(1)

Final Thoughts on Note-Taking

(2)

Locating Useful Sources

(9)

Using indexes

(1)

Using Science Citation Index

(1)

Using Current Contents

(1)

Using Medline, Biological Abstracts, Basic BIOSIS, and BioDigest

(1)

Prowling the Internet

(2)

Seeking other relevant Web sites

(2)

Final thoughts about efficient searching

(1)

Closing Thoughts

(1)

Summary

(1)

Reading and Writing about Statistical Analyses

(17)

Statistical Essentials

(13)

Variability and its representation

(3)

What you need to know about tomatoes, coins, and random events

(3)

Establishing a null hypothesis

(1)

Conducting the analysis and interpreting the results

(5)

Degrees of freedom

(1)

Summary

(1)

Reading about Statistics

(1)

Writing about Statistics

(3)

Citing Sources and Listing References

(10)

Citing Sources

(5)

Preparing the Literature Cited Section

(3)

Listing the references

(2)

Listing journal references

(1)

Listing items from the World Wide Web

(1)

Listing book references

(1)

Listing an article from a book

(1)

Listing a laboratory manual or handout

(1)

Sample Literature Cited Section

(2)

Revising

(53)

Preparing the Draft for Surgery: Plotting Idea Maps

(5)

Revising for Content

(4)

Revising for Clarity

(6)

Taming disobedient sentences

(4)

The dangers of ``it''

(2)

Revising for Completeness

(3)

Revising for Conciseness

100

(7)

First commandment: eliminate unnecessary prepositions

101

(1)

Second commandment: avoid weak verbs

102

(2)

Third commandment: do not overuse the passive voice

104

(2)

Fourth commandment: make the organism the agent of the action

106

(1)

Revising for Flow

107

(5)

A short exercise in establishing coherence

110

(1)

Improving flow using punctuation

111

(1)

Revising for Teleology and Anthropomorphism

112

(1)

Revising for Spelling Errors

113

(1)

Revising for Grammar and Proper Word Usage

114

(7)

Becoming a Good Editor

121

(9)

Giving criticism

123

(2)

Receiving criticism

125

(1)

Fine-tuning

126

(1)

Sentences in need of revision

126

(4)

Summary and Checklist

130

(3)

Part II Guidelines for Specific Tasks

133

(166)

Writing Summaries and Critiques

135

(9)

Writing the First Draft

136

(1)

Writing the Summary

137

(1)

Sample Student Summary

138

(2)

Analysis of student summary

140

(1)

Writing the Critique

140

(3)

The critique

141

(2)

Analysis of student critique

143

(1)

Concluding Thoughts

143

(1)

Writing Essays and Terms Papers

144

(12)

Why Bother?

145

(1)

Getting Started

146

(1)

Researching Your Topic

147

(1)

Writing the Paper

147

(6)

Citing Sources

153

(1)

Creating a Title

154

(1)

Revising

155

(1)

Writing Laboratory and Other Research Reports

156

(77)

Why Are You Doing This?

156

(1)

The Purpose of Laboratory and Field Notebooks

157

(6)

Taking notes

158

(5)

Components of the Research Report

163

(2)

Where to Start

165

(1)

Writing the Materials and Methods Section

165

(6)

Determining the correct level of detail

166

(4)

A model materials and methods section

170

(1)

Writing the Results Section

171

(36)

Summarizing data using tables and graphs

172

(3)

Constructing a summary table

175

(1)

To graph or not to graph

175

(6)

Preparing graphs

181

(2)

(Not) falsifying data

183

(1)

The question: to connect or not to connect the dots

183

(6)

Bar graphs and histograms

189

(2)

Learning to love logarithms

191

(4)

Preparing tables

195

(2)

Self-sufficient graphs and tables

197

(1)

Verbalizing results: general principles

198

(4)

Verbalizing results: turning principles into action

202

(1)

Writing about negative results

203

(1)

Writing about numbers

203

(2)

In Anticipation

205

(2)

Citing Sources

207

(1)

Writing the Discussion Section

207

(9)

Expectations

208

(1)

Explaining unexpected results

209

(2)

Analysis of specific examples

211

(5)

Writing the Introduction Section

216

(7)

Stating the question

216

(2)

An aside: studies versus experiments

218

(1)

Providing the background

219

(4)

Deciding on a Title

223

(2)

Writing an Abstract

225

(1)

Preparing an Acknowledgements Section

226

(1)

Preparing the Literature Cited Section

227

(1)

Preparing Papers for Formal Publication

228

(2)

Checklist for the Final Draft of Your Research Report

230

(3)

Answering Essay Questions

233

(8)

Basic Principles

233

(8)

Applying the principles

238

(3)

Writing Research Proposals

241

(11)

Researching Your Topic

242

(2)

What Makes a Good Research Question?

244

(1)

Writing the Proposal

245

(6)

Introduction

245

(2)

Background

247

(2)

Proposed research

249

(1)

Citing references and preparing the literature cited section

250

(1)

Tightening the Logic

251

(1)

The Life of a Real Research Proposal

251

(1)

Writing a Poster Presentation

252

(8)

Layout of the Poster

255

(3)

Making the Poster

258

(1)

Checklist for Making Posters

259

(1)

Writing for a General Audience: Science Journalism

260

(10)

Science Journalism Based on Published Research

260

(5)

Journalism Based on an Interview

265

(5)

Preparing Oral Presentations

270

(12)

Talking about Published Research Papers

271

(5)

Preparing the talk

271

(2)

Giving the talk

273

(3)

Talking about Original Research

276

(1)

Talking about Proposed Research

277

(1)

The Listener's Responsibility

277

(1)

Preparing Effective Slides and Overheads

278

(2)

Getting Fancy, or Not

280

(2)

Writing Letters of Application

282

(17)

Before You Start

283

(1)

Preparing the Resume

283

(4)

Preparing the Cover Letter

287

(10)

Recruiting Effective Letters of Recommendation

297

(2)

Appendix A

299

(2)

The Disassembled Paragraph Reconstituted (From Chapter 5)

299

(2)

Appendix B

301

(3)

Revised Sample Sentences

301

(3)

Appendix C

304

(2)

The Revised Sample Sentences in Final Form

304

(2)

Appendix D

306

(2)

Commonly Used Abbreviations

306

(2)

Appendix E

308

(3)

Suggested References for Further Reading

308

(3)

Appendix F

311

(3)

Some Computer Software for the Biological Sciences

311

(3)

Index

314

Short Guide to Writing About Biology

9780321078438

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Table of Contents