Pitt and online resources for improving writing / presentation skills
Writing:
There are lots of books and articles out there about the nuts and bolts
of scientific writing. If I were allowed to keep only one book, it
would be Mimi Zeiger's "Essentials of writing biomedical research papers"
ISBN 0-07-134544-2. Don't let "biomedical" mislead you: it's just as
relevant to computer science research. Let's say it's the only book
I've seen to explain the structure of a Discussion section, or what
should go into an Abstract :-).
There's two more books I keep handy: Miller, Dowrick, and Swift's "Handbook of Non-Sexist Writing for Writers, Editors, and Speakers"
and Lyn Dupre's "Bugs
in Writing: A Guide to Debugging Your Prose".
Pitt offers several classes on composition and creative writing. You
can look them up on the
English Department's homepage
under Writing, or at the Registrar's under ENGCMP-English Composition
and ENGWRT-English Writing. You might want to read the course
description and contact the instructor first, to make sure the course
syllabus will meet your expectations.
Pitt runs a Writing
Center staffed by experienced consultants who have been trained to
help others with their writing. They will help students learn to identify
their patterns of error and correct them on their own, but
if you'd rather figure out first the principles of scientific writing,
see the resources above. :-)
Presentation (talks):
The Sheridan Center for Teaching
at Brown University has published an excellent booklet on
Persuasive Communication (go on, read it; it lays out the basic organization of a talk, among other things).
Spike (John Hughes) gives a set of excellent presentation tips;
check out the section on thesis proposal talks as opposed to thesis
defenses. I can't find it on is webpage, but he said on multiple
occasions that talks should start with a teaser (a glimpse at what
we'll know by the end of the talk); here's a more formal version (with
Simon L Peyton Jones and John Launchbury): How to give a good research talk.
John Pinto of Stanford University lists a few Do's and Don'ts for Brief Research Talks (from Gordon H. Bower). You may agree or not with Bower's observations; they're still interesting.
Presentation (posters):
I like these two sources on effective poster
presentations:
Dina Mandoli's How to make a great poster (what is a great poster, how do you make a poster, how to plan poster organization etc.) and
Kathryn Tosney's How to create a poster that graphically communicates your message, with many positive and negative graphical examples.
The most sensible thing to do
is print
a real-size draft of your poster (A4 sheets taped together), put it up
on a lobby wall with a stack of post-it-notes and pencils next to it,
and ask your friends to mark their comments directly on the poster
draft.
Compiled by Liz Marai, July 2008.