Judy Swan, Scientific Writing: Beyond Tips and Tricks

PCR Seminar with Judy Swan: "Scientific Writing: Beyond Tips & Tricks"

In order to write clearly, we must understand how we read. In this workshop, we learned how to align with readers' expectations with Judy Swan, world-famous science writer and 2013 TEDxCMU speaker.

[abdullahiibrahim]

An awesome workshop. My takeaways are:
1. Scientist are defacto teachers of writing
2. Professors don't have a language for speaking about their expertise
3. Write from the readers' perspective
4. Reading scientific articles takes energy
5. Readers focus on sentence structure before substance
6. Emphasis
7. Structure helps the writer/reader see things
8. Readers change their mind, data do not change
9. The rule of writing scientific papers is "No Rules"
10. Determine what your facts are (from your data) and then speak for them
11. No neutral sentence, you must choose a side

Thank you, Judy Swan.

[erickouhai]

Although, most of the time, I write in a way that blurry's the things that I want to say; I may not be qualified to stand in the same grounds of professionals as sophisticated as her, much less to judge how great she delivers her lectures, which is blatantly obvious and need not be mentioned, but because I've had the luxury of watching this lecture on YouTube, extracting some new information that is so valuable, it's equivalent to a purse of gold, I, for one, at the very least, as a token of my deepest appreciation, have to say that this lecture is truly enlightening. Really. I thank, most especially, Mrs. Judy Swan and all the people who made this possible. I felt like I owed all of them a comment, and here it is.

[EricBrennanOrganic]

This workshop was excellent, but, I wish I could have seen the full handout from the lecture, and also heard the comments from the audience.

Now here's a re-write. Although I didn't have access to the full handout, this workshop was excellent. :).

[miriamtorres]

I decided to study Accounting because I work better with numbers, than with language. However, I feel that this presentation has opened up a door of possibilities for my understanding of language and better communication skills. So glad you recorded this for the public. (And, yes, the benefits would have been doubled, if all of the student's responses would have been heard, repeated, or presented in some way.) Thank you so very much!!!

[carolinespec]

Just wonderful presentation! Thank you!

[myeongwoo]

Judy Swan is a good teacher. I took her writing workshop when I was in NJ.

[farahhammoud]

Absolutely loved this. Brought things to light that I have never noticed before!

[suzannemoogan]

What a fantastic lecturer she is, so engaging definitely not one of those who like to hear themselves talk.

[rajeshthakur]

This whole talk has a high level of information and experience packed into one and a half hours of time. For learners and academician, this is a must watch like. Thanks, Judy Swan and organizers for this... Best Regards.

[aoihana]

This is such a useful and practical presentation for a scientific writer, especially grad students. Thank you.

[carcucov]

This is a great lecture! Congratulations!

[sheilagavin]

Thank you Prof. Judy Swan! Great content!

[Phn_tm]

This was an invaluable presentation. Thank you!

[azharoslan]

Thank you for this amazing, amazing content!!!

[EddieStyle]

Very good video, very helpful, delicately presented and fun. Thank you.

[teachingwithdmitriyfedorov]

The same stuff I'm teaching to my Ielts students.
Your work always has to be logical in terms of structure, the way your ideas are presented, the number of arguments in each Body paragraph.
Our job is to write smoothly and not let anything break this flow.

[lordthanoz]

excellent lecture! I watched it many times. 

[yuanhuihuang]

This is good despite the little hiss. I will recommend.

[fewcommentsonnews.]

SCIENTIFIC WRITINGS _ Never i was able to thinking of it before. How many of Researchers team to participate in such responsabillity, often during of tireless years inside of Lab. CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU !

[JH-KU]

Thank you very much for sharing this. Very useful.