how to write right (technically speaking)

  Everybody researches in their own way, but there are certain required elements. For example, many of the basic elements of the research I did in 1975 back in fifth grade at the Fenton Elementary School (RIP) I still do today: (1) read, (2) take notes, (3) organize the notes, (4) write. Back in Fenton, Illinois, my chosen topic was Japan. I found resources to read about Japan and, as I found an interesting fact, wrote it down on an index card along with the source I found the fact from. Once I had read all the readables, I then sat down and identified themes, such as culture, geography, industry, and general facts. I then divided my cards amongst those themes and then, within each theme, arranged the cards in the order I wanted to discuss them in my paper. This is analogous to what researchers do today when conducting a literature review. My method is my method--you will need to find out what your method needs to be. However, students I pay for out of active contracts or endowment...

  AI, aka artificial intelligence, has been hotter than Hades since Open AI released ChatGPT in November of 2022. And it is impressive. I was certainly blown away at how good a writer it is, at least for the responses it has given me for various technical questions I've asked. But beware: AIs have a definite writing style, something I was able to detect when two students submitted very similar essays to a prompt I gave them in November of 2022. However, researchers (and everyone, really) need to be extremely careful when using AI because, and I don't know how to put this politely, AI is a bullshitter.  I first experienced the bullshitting when I asked it to provide a response along with supporting references on a question I had about evaporation. ChatGPT provided a well-written responsive response with several references. Being anal retentive (that is, a good researcher), I wanted to see the words the reference used with my own eyes. That turned into a two-hour black hole of t...

keep things where things belong Outlining technical papers and reports is not exactly janitorial science. My basic go-to outline is: - Abstract - Introduction - Background - Methods - Results and Discussion - Conclusions - Acknowledgments - References Yawn.  For a report, the “Abstract” will become the longer “Executive Summary” instead. If I’m feeling a little snappy, I might change the section titles to be a bit more descriptive of the work at hand. For example, here’s the outline for a report I coauthored on a review of springs in Texas: - Executive Summary - Introduction - Database Development and Evaluation of Spring Status - Spring Analysis - Fractal Analysis - Future Work - Conclusions - Acknowledgments - References - Appendix In this case, “Database Development and Evaluation of Spring Status” stands in for “Methods” and “Spring Analysis,” “Fractal Analysis,” and "Future Work" stand in for “Results and Discussion.” In fact, "Fractal Analysis" really exists a...

    Breaking Bad   “We’re all on the same page.” ― Jesse Brinkman in Breaking Bad    Watch how headings, tables, and paragraphs break from one page to the next.   “Breaks” refer to the break from one page to the next. A bad break is when something gets left behind on one page that really should be on the next page. The worst bad break is when a header is left behind:  "Expert Panel Assessment" is the header for the next paragraph, but the header is on the previous page, separated from the text. What you want is: Which I achieved (in this real-world example in a proposal I am working on at the moment) by adding lines before "Expert Panel Assessment" until the header jumped to the next page. You should also look for cases where one sentence of a paragraph is on one page with the rest on the next page. Better to shift the entirety of that sentence to the next page. More visually appealing but, more importantly, better for your reader who ...