SYLLABUS: BSC 5936 (section 2), Scientific Communication (Spring 2007)
This syllabus is posted for the convenience of those who want a general idea of the content of the course. The syllabus for use by students enrolled in the course is posted in Blackboard (http://campus.fsu.edu) and includes links to lecture materials, assignments, and class handouts.
Meetings: 232 Conradi Building, days and times to be arranged
Instructor
Dr. Anne B. Thistle, 334 Conradi Building
644-5131 (fax 644-9829), thistle@bio.fsu.edu
Office hours: TBA and by appointment
Textbooks
- Cook, Claire Kehrwald. 1985. Line by Line: How to Improve Your
Own Writing. Houghton Mifflin, Boston.
- Hunter, J. (editor). 1990. Writing for Fishery Journals.
American Fisheries Society, Bethesda, Maryland.
- Strunk, W., Jr., and E. B. White. 2000. The Elements of Style, 4th edition. Pearson Allyn & Bacon, Boston.
Additional required reading
- Woodford, F. P. (editor). 1986. Scientific Writing for Graduate Students: A Manual on the Teaching of Scientific Writing. Council of Biology Editors, Bethesda. 187 pp.
(This book is out of print, but a copy is available in the reference section of Dirac Science Library,
call number Q179 .C6 1986.)
Handouts
A few of the handouts for the course will be supplied to you on paper at class time. The rest you must print out yourself from the course website and bring to class. Links on the web syllabus lead to the handouts for each topic. Be certain to bring to each class meeting the handouts appropriate to the topic (and remember that lectures may sometimes run a little ahead of the syllabus, so bring the following handout as well, just in case).
Dates, topics, reading, and assignments
Week of January 9
-
Introduction; forms and purposes of scientific communication
Reading: Woodford, Ch. 1; Hunter, pp. vii-viii, 75-78; Mack (1986)
- Steps to publication: the ground plan
Reading: Woodford, Ch. 2
Week of January 15
- Monday, January 16, is a university holiday
-
Steps to publication: the master plan
Reading: Woodford, Ch. 3
-
Steps to publication: the first draft
Reading: Woodford, Ch. 4; Strunk & White, pp. 15-23
- Assignment: paper topic due
Week of January 22
-
Steps to publication: from draft to submission
Reading: Woodford, Ch. 5, 6, 8; Strunk & White, pp. 25-33
-
Constructing tables and figures
Reading: Woodford, Ch. 10; Hunter, pp. 33-64; Gopen and Swann (1990)
-
Manuscript preparation
Reading: Hunter, pp. 65-74
Week of January 29
-
Mechanics of editorial marking
- From submission to print
Reading: Woodford, Ch. 9
- Assignments: quiz
Week of February 5
-
Grammar basics
Reading: Cook, pp. xiii-xx, 139-159; Strunk & White, p. 1, 11-13
-
Commas
Reading: Cook, pp. 108-131; Strunk & White, pp. 2-7
- Assignment: sentence outline of term paper due; EXAM I (through grammar basics)
Week of February 12
- Commas (continued)
-
Lesser problems I
(semicolon, "nor," "both," "like" and "as," hyphenation, dashes)
Reading: Cook, pp. 131-136; Strunk & White, pp. 7-9, 34-35
Week of February 19
-
Dangling modifiers
Reading: Cook, pp. 18-53; Strunk & White, pp. 13-14
- [handouts] Lesser problems II
(split infinitives, irregular plurals, "this" without antecedent, "due to" and "based on," number agreement)
Reading: Cook, pp. 75-107; Strunk & White, pp. 9-11
Week of February 26
- Lesser problems II (continued)
-
Parallelism
Reading: Cook, pp. 54-74; Strunk & White, pp. 26-28
- Assignments: first draft of term paper due; quiz
Week of March 5
Week of March 12
-
Lesser problems III
(mysterious abbreviations, incorrect substitutions, neologisms, gender reference, verb tense, "fuzzy with," jargon)
Reading: Cook, pp. 1-17; Hunter, pp. 1-25; Strunk & White, pp. 23-25
- Bibliographic bookkeeping
Week of March 19
- Indexing and library searches (we will meet at Dirac Science Library)
Reading: Woodford, Ch. 14
- Assignments: Revised version of term paper due; EXAM II (through Lesser problems III)
Week of March 26
- Organizing a review paper
- The curriculum vitae and web pages
- Making poster presentations
- Proposal writing, dissertation writing
Reading: Woodford, Ch. 11, 12
Week of April 2
- Making oral presentations
Reading: Woodford, Ch. 13
- Writing and revising exercises
- Assignment: quiz
Week of April 9
- Writing and revising exercises
- Assignment: Final version of term paper due
Week of April 16
- Writing and revising exercises
EXAM WEEK: Cumulative final exam, Thursday, April 26, 3:00-5:00 p.m.
Grades will be determined as follows:
40% Three written exams (two mid-terms and cumulative final)
30% Term paper
15% Quizzes
15% Homework and class participation
90-100% = A; 80-90% = B; 70-80% = C; 60-70% = D; Below 60% = F
Grades will be curved if necessary. Makeup exams may occasionally be
approved on a case-by-case basis.
Address of course website: http://bio.fsu.edu/~thistle/scicomm.html