Friday, December 01, 2006

Writing for Science and Engineering

Today, scientists and engineers know they must communicate well. They are not content with yesterday's rambling discussions or Power Point templates. To help each other, scientists from top U.S. schools such as Georgia Tech, Pitt, Vermont, and Virginia Tech have collaborated on this site:

http://www.writing.eng.vt.edu/index.html

The site explains, step by step, how to handle the many facets of science writing: audiences, formats, style, slides, posters, references, etc. It includes guidelines, examples, and interactive exercises.

Some of its didactic pages are poorly formatted (as vast blocks of text). However, the links bring you to examples of every science genre, from the memo and letter to the slide presentation or the poster. Links also lead to excellent articles about the latest in designing information for scientists and engineers, including a better slide design than the defaults offered by Power Point.

Want to skip the theory and go to the skills? Proceed directly to the "exercises" page:
http://www.writing.eng.vt.edu/exercises/index.html

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