One important aspect of being a scientist is to be able to effectively communicate our research to others, especially in written form. Prof. Gauthier is particularly fond of following a style of scientific writing known as “writing from a reader’s perspective” developed by Prof. George Gopen at Duke University. A former student of Prof. Gauthier, Dr. Bonnie Schmittberger, has put together a presentation giving some of the highlights of Prof. Gopen’s approach. A paper of Prof. Gopen is also quite useful and is not too long; it gives several examples to illustrate the method. Finally, Dr. Schmittberger put together a set “writing rules” of that come from the ancient Physical Review Style guide (and most items she heard many times from Prof. Gauthier …).
Prof. Gopen has written several books about writing, and this one is quite good: The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader’s Perspective. This one is for teaching writing, but is is also great for learning (and seeing more examples): Expectations: Teaching Writing from the Reader’s Perspective. Prof. Gauthier owns both of these and you can stop by to borrow one if you are at OSU (but they are often loaned out).
Please contact Prof. Gauthier if you find other useful guidelines for scientific writing and he will consider posting here.
Video on diagramming sentences
Purdue OWL exercises on different aspects of grammar
— OWL exercises on sentence clarity
— OWL exercises on sentence conciseness