Successful Scientific Writing
Janice R Matthews, John M Bowen, and Robert W Matthews
The subtitle of this book indicates its targeted audience:
"A step-by-step guide for the biological and medical sciences". You will find it here:
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A thoughtful and thorough 230-page guide that goes down to the type of practical advice you don't expect, as in page 71 of the book in a subheading about writing momentum, and how to keep it.
"If you must eat [while writing], choose foods that require only one hand, don't stain papers, and don't make you thirsty or (worse yet) sleepy."
Thankfully, computer screens are vertical (for the time being, and e-readers are coming soon), but keyboards and journals are not, so watch out for these coffee stains!
This book is thorough and complete. It will answer many if not all of the questions the novice writer has when facing the daunting task of writing a first draft - including answers to the dreaded writer's block (page 72 and 73).
A large 24-page chapter on visuals entitled "Supporting the text with tables and figures" is well worth reading. And naturally, three chapters on grammar and composition complete the book. These chapters are not dry. They are always related to the scientific article, making the grammar points immediately relevant to the reader / writer.
The font size is small (10 point). There is a lot of material to digest in this book (including many tables). The authors break down the text in numerous subheadings. It can be overwhelming at times, and not all information given will be of immediate use. So read selectively, but take the time to do the many exercises given (the correct answers are given at the end of the book). Although the guide is targeted for life science researchers, much of it applies across the board to all scientific domains. This is probably the type of book you can read many times and always learn something new as your writing skills improve.
They Say, I Say
Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein
The subtitle of this book does a pretty bad job at revealing its contents:
"The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing".
It should be: "Academic Argumentation"
You will find it here:
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I found some interesting chapters in this little book of 180 pages but most of it is more useful in the context of an oral argumentation than a written one, particularly when the gloves are off - as in a political debate. The authors give templates, i.e, a series of sentences where you fill in the blanks with what is appropriate . Here is one example of such as a sentence under the heading "Templates for disagreeing with reasons"
"X's claim that........ rests upon the questionable assumption that...... "
I, for one, would not have used the word "questionable" which I find somewhat offensive. Instead, I would have mentioned the assumption and shown that the assumption may have been reasonable in the context of X's work, but is no longer sustainable in the new context of [include context here]. The other sentences under the same heading use far too much aggressive words for a scientific paper: "mistaken", "overlooks", "can't have it both ways", "We don't need him to tell us that. Anyone familiar with... has long known that..." The templates from other chapters are more useful. The last section of the book ( section 3 - page 101 to 135) is useful to the writer scientist. It touches on techniques to increase the fluidity of writing, and to propose objections to our own findings prior to answering them to pre-empt the anticipated common objections.
The templates would be more useful in the context of a Q&A, where one has to agree and disagree at the same time, or to partly agree on a side point while defending the core, to rephrase a question, etc.
The examples given are from literature, not from science papers, but they are still helpful. Scientists with ESL not yet familiar with argumentation in the English language will find great help in the use of templates. Beware however, do not use such templates in writing without careful consideration.