Earth Science
Welcome to the Earth Science writing skills site.We've put together this site to help you improve your academic writing skills and your own scientific writing style. Good writing is not only crucial to your degree, it is also crucial in an increasingly competitive jobs market, where being able to describe your research is just as important as doing the research.
The site is packed with information, examples and writing tasks derived from real student work generated from within this department. The idea behind the tasks is that reading manuals about good scientific writing is of far less benefit than practising the art itself, and that the more you practise, the better - and quicker - you will become.
The tasks are grouped into six main categories, each with sub-categories, as you can see below. Although the tasks are presented in a numbered list, you can click on them in any order you like. There are four different styles of task: wordclick, multiple choice questions, select the problem and freetext. You'll find detailed instructions when you click on individual tasks.
Above the task list there is a blue question mark. Click on this before you start on the tasks themselves. The page that pops up provides a comprehensive explanation of the task topic, and also examples. Reading this page will save you time and give you a better understanding of the topic under discussion.
We hope you enjoy the site.
Writing Skills Action Sheet for Earth Science
PunctuationPunctuation is a key part of written English. The term covers everything in written language that is not a letter or a number, i.e. colons, dashes, apostrophes etc. Using punctuation incorrectly can substantially alter the meaning of a sentence, resulting in unfortunate (and mark-losing) misunderstandings.
The rules that govern punctuation vary from country to country, and over time. Some elements of punctuation are a matter of personal preference but others have clear rules and intentions. In these exercises, we stick to current practice in the main Earth Science publications.
05. Punctuation - commas and run-on sentences
06. Punctuation - quotation marks
Essays MUST be formatted properly, i.e. laid out correctly, with the proper use of capitals and italics. This is not just academic pedantry. Being able to follow appropriate formatting rules is crucial to any piece of writing, including job applications.
Muddled Phrasing
Many good thoughts are wasted because they are expressed badly or, equally frustrating, are lost under a torrent of wordiness. Remember that if what you say isn't clear, your marker won’t know if you’ve answered the question or not. Clearer writing means better marks.
09. Muddled phrasing - poorly constructed sentences
10. Muddled phrasing - sentence fragments
Good scientific writing displays three attributes. It is:
- precise (no superfluous ideas included)
- concise (don't use 100 words where 20 will do); and
- crisp (each sentence contains a single idea, clearly expressed)
Make sure you also use the right word within a phrase, for example: belief in (not belief on), to dispose of (not to dispose with).
11. Word/Phrase choice - colloquialisms
12. Word/Phrase choice - wordiness
13. Word/Phrase choice - mistaken or poorly chosen
"If you haven't written it, you haven't done it."
David Lindsay, 1999, A Guide to Scientific Writing, Australia, Pearson Education, p.ix
For most Earth Science essays and assignments, observation, interpretation and evidence are key. You must choose your sources of information carefully, write very clearly and make sure that your evidence, whether textual or in diagram or graph form, is relevant to the assignment. David Lindsay, 1999, A Guide to Scientific Writing, Australia, Pearson Education, p.ix
Read the essay or assignment title properly. Do not shorten or ignore it.
Diagrams should illustrate concepts you have discussed, and the caption should be concise but informative.
Every source you cite must be properly acknowledged both in the text and on a references cited page or in a bibliography at the end of your paper. As well as the information and exercises below, you may find this library site extremely useful:
http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/library/howtofindinformation/findingusinginformation/
15. Relevance of content to question
16. Excessive use of quotations
18. Observation, interpretation and evidence - understanding the difference
Essays, reports and assignments in Earth Science always require a very clear structure, and clearly headed sections are always useful to both writer and reader. Obviously, you may have to tailor the structure to the aim of the assignment, but the structure is the scaffolding round which you work.
- an introduction (providing background, outlining aims)
- methods: describes how research is (or was, if describing work already done) carried out
- results: describes the data
- interpretation: interprets the data
- discussion: discusses the data and links clearly back to the aims outline in the introduction
- conclusions: the most important points linked to the aims, and how to proceed from here
20. Structure - summary and conclusions
You'd be amazed how many sentences in essays appear to have been written in obscure code. See if you can decipher some of these.
Academic Writing Skills Tutorials by the University of Glasgow are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.