Effective Writing (at home?)

Kathryn (Katy) Huff

Webinar, Grad SWE

May 20, 2020

Physics, University of Chicago Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics, University of Wisconsin - Madison Nuclear Engineering, University of California, Berkeley illinois
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“ In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite. ”
- Paul Dirac

Resources

Strategies That Work For Me

  • Build your text around figures and data
  • Write and edit separately.
  • Each new reader/reviewer adds clarity.
  • Review it yourself, tomorrow..
  • Avoid Weasel Words
  • Brevity, active voice, and more brevity
“Dear Herr Hahn,
Much respect for the consistency you are showing in not writing. Anything else would not be 'timely' would it?”
- Lise Meitner, 1917

Resources

  • How to Write a Lot - Paul Silvia
  • Getting Things Done - David Allen
  • The Checklist Manifesto - Atul Gawande
  • Pomodoro Technique
  • Bullet Journaling
  • Habitica/Todoist/Looper/Trello/etc.
  • Accountabilibuddies

Writing Habits

  • Good: Wake up whenever, write when you find time
  • Better: Write on a schedule, give yourself rewards.
  • Best: Write at the same time every day, with a quiet accountabilibuddy, or with a timer, set SMART goals, reward yourself.
“I’ve always objected to doing anything over again if I had already done it once.”

- Grace Brewster Mary Hopper

Resources


  • Professor Hacker Blog
  • The Not-So-Short Guide to $LaTeX$
  • GitHub
  • StackOverflow (caveat emptor)

Strategies that Work for Me

  • vim
  • jupyter, markdown, rst, $\LaTeX$
  • Zotero, $BibTeX$
  • GitHub template repositories
  • Zenodo, Figshare
  • pandoc, Doxygen, sphinx
  • matplotlib, yt, paraview
  • jekyll, reveal.js, beamer
  • voice-to-text plugins
  • Kindle, GoodNotes, GoodReader

Word Processing

  • Good: stone tablet, microsoft word
  • Better: word with track changes, open office
  • Best: plain text markup with version control and a makefile


Tools: LaTeX, markdown, restructured text

Plotting

  • Good: custom formatting, clickable GUI
  • Better: plot format templates (excel, mathematica)
  • Best: scripted plotting, matplotlib, gnuplot, etc.

Reference Management

  • Good: copy citations from google scholar, memorize citation styles (Chicago, MLA, IEEE...)
  • Better: maintain a semi-infinite .bib file of all papers you've ever read.
  • Best: Zotero, Mendeley, BibDesk, EndNote, RefWorks

Backing Up Files

  • Good: hope
  • Better: nightly emails
  • Best: remote version control


Version Control Systems: cvs, svn, hg, git

Managing Changes

  • Good: naming convention
  • Better: clever naming convention
  • Best: local version control

Version Control.

Merging Collaborative Work

  • Good: single master copy, waiting
  • Better: emails and patches
  • Best: remote version control

Distribution Control

  • Good: "email to request access"
  • Better: license file
  • Best: license file, citation file, DOI, forkable repository


Example: joss.theoj.org

“We lose ourselves in what we read, only to return to ourselves, transformed and part of a more expansive world.”

- Judith Butler

Resources

  • Set up Google Scholar notifications
  • Read MS and PhD theses in your field
  • See "The Professor Is In" for faculty applications
  • Read grant proposals (ask your advisor)
  • Read books: philosophy, science fiction, nonfiction, biographies, popular science, historical fiction...
  • Read magazines, blogs, tweets, the New Yorker, the Economist, the NYTimes, the Washington Post, Mother Jones, the Wall Street Journal.
  • Abandon Facebook, join GoodReads.
This part is ideal at home.

Links

THE END

Katy Huff

katyhuff.github.io/2020-05-20-writing
Creative Commons License
Effective Writing (at home?) by Kathryn Huff is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://katyhuff.github.io/2020-05-20-writing.