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Writing Science|科学写作前言及简介

已有 2541 次阅读 2023-8-16 16:39 |个人分类:科学写作|系统分类:科研笔记

Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded》(科学写作:写出能被引用的论文以及能获资助的提案)一书于2011年出版,豆瓣评分9.7,是一本关于写作的指南。本书主要讲如何科学地写作,如何更好地讲故事,同时告诉读者写作需要注重结构和内容,而不是拘泥于某些细节。此书作者是加州大学圣巴巴拉分校生态进化与海洋生物学系的Joshua Schimel教授,Soil Biology & Biochemistry主编。作者的导师是美国科学院院士Mary Firestone教授。

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科学家所做的不止是研究,还需要写作,可以说科学家也是专业作家。科学家职业生涯是建立在成功的论文之上。成功的定义不是让论文发表,而是让文章的思想进入读者的意识中。《科学写作》是建立在成功讲述故事理念之上,讨论如何更有效地写作。本书将写作经验与作者多年来作为作者、审稿人和编辑的经验相结合,向科学家和学生展示了如何以清晰的方式讲述研究故事,并使读者的理解达到最大化。

作者采用综合方法,从论文或提案的整体结构到个别章节、段落、句子和单词,利用故事结构来讨论成功的科学写作方式。首先作者从建立核心论点出发,分析为什么有些故事很吸引人、令人流连忘返,而有些故事却很快被遗忘。其次作者说明了故事结构的要素,讲述了科学家和研究人员在论文和提案中使用的结构如何符合经典的模式。而后针对论文的内部结构,作者解释了如何以简洁和专业的方式写出清晰的章节、段落和句子。同时一篇论文中的观点应该是无缝流动的,吸引读者一直读到结束。最后作者说明科学写作涉及的特殊挑战,如讨论研究的局限性以及如何为公众写作。

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本译书是译者边读书边翻译的,读过之后很有收获。于是与Joshua Schimel教授交谈后,想把译书分享给大家。由于是初译版,文中还有些许不足,还望见谅,仅供大家学习与参考。当然也更推荐同学们阅读原书,感受作者英语语言的独特魅力。本公众号会按照原书章节陆续推送全书翻译,欢迎大家关注、收藏、转发

群落生态学介绍生态学经典、前沿文献,传播生态学知识。9篇原创内容公众号

译者序      

第一次了解《Writing Science》是进入生态文献分享编辑部后的事情了。编辑群中大家经常讨论翻译以及写作的问题,常雅荃博士强烈推荐本书。在杨老师的带领下,编辑部也多次组织了关于本书的系列讲座,令人印象深刻。译者一口气读完后,大呼过瘾。

对于科研启蒙的译者来说,印象最深刻的一句话莫过于:作为一名科学家,你是一名专业的作家。在论文中,作者不仅仅是在展示自己的结果,还在讲述研究背后以及现实的故事。许多时候我们拿到了数据,马上就要分析数据发文章,却忽略了头脑中具有新意的想法。而这些想法会拓展我们的认知。在论文发表时我们需要看到、也必须认识到我们所做研究对世界的理解究竟发生了怎样的变化。在阅读生态学的经典论文后,比如哈钦森的生物多样性为何如此丰富、西蒙莱文的生态学中的格局与尺度问题,我们会发现,这些论文具有的故事性很吸引人,一些论文经过十年乃至几百年以后,仍然发光发热,而更多的论文却淹没在了知识的海洋中,被人们遗忘在了角落。好的文章似乎总有一种活力,能让读者从一个段落读到另一个段落,最终一口气读完全文,收获知识的同时也得到启发。

论文写作中,我们会集中精力思考行文的思路,权衡语言的表达,让读者理解与欣赏。在大学时,老师课上曾说:一篇文章也可以压缩成一段话(摘要),也可以压缩为一句话。那一句话可能就代表了一年甚至几十年的研究结论,正文十或二十行或许写了很多天,却代表了几个月努力的实验成果。在研究过程中,我们也要时刻牢记,研究不仅是在探寻真理,更是为读者讲述动人的故事。

谷际岐

于中国农业大学


Preface

前言

Those who can do, also teach.

那些能做到的人,也教书

It came as a surprise to me one day to discover that I was writing a book on writing. It’s not the normal pastime for a working scientist, which I am—I’m a professor of soil microbiology and ecosystem ecology. I write proposals, I write papers, and I train students to do both. I review extensively and have served as editor for several leading journals. Teaching writing evolved from those activities, and it became a hobby and a passion. This book is the outgrowth—it’s what I have been doing when I should have been writing papers.

有一天,我惊讶地发现,我正在写一本关于写作的书。这不是一个在职科学家的正常消遣,而我是土壤微生物学和生态系统生态学的教授。我写提案,写论文,还培训学生做这两件事。我广泛地审稿,并担任过几个主要期刊的编辑。写作教学是从这些活动中演变而来的,它成为了我的爱好让我热血沸腾。这本书我写作教学的衍生品--当我写论文的时候,我一直在做这件事。

Although I believe I have become a good writer, I got there through hard work and hard lessons. I didn’t start out my academic life that way. Before teaching my graduate class on writing science for the first time, I went back to my doctoral dissertation for a calibration check—what should I expect from students? I made it through page 2. At that point, my tolerance for my own writing hit bottom and my appreciation for my advisor’s patience hit top. Even the papers those clumsy chapters morphed into were only competent.

虽然我相信我已经成为一名优秀的作家,但我是通过努力工作和艰苦训练而达到的。我的学术生活并不是一开始就这样的。在第一次教科学写作研究生课程之前,我对自己的博士论文进行了校准检查--我应该对学生有什么期望?我把它翻到了第二页。在这一点上,我对自己写作的容忍度跌到了谷底,而对我的导师的耐心赞赏达到了顶点。即使是那些笨拙的章节演变成的论文也只是合格。

My writing has improved because I worked on becoming a writer. That doesn’t mean just writing a lot. You can do something for many years without becoming competent. Case in point: the contractor who put a sunroom on our house. He kept insisting, “I’ve been doing this for 20 years and know what I’m doing”; the building inspector’s report, however, said to reframe according to building codes and standard building practices.

我的写作有了提高,因为我努力成为一名作家。这并不意味着只是写了很多。你可以一直做一件事,但过去多年却仍然达到目标拥有能力。比如给我们的房子装阳光房的承包商。他一直坚持说:"我已经做了20年,知道自己在做什么。然而,建筑检查员的报告说,要根据建筑法规和标准建筑做法重新设计。

I have learned to write through a number of avenues: guidance from my mentors; the trial and error of reviews and rejections; thinking about communication strategy; working with students on their papers; reviewing and editing hundreds of manuscripts; reading and rereading books on writing; and importantly, participating in my wife’s experiences as a developing writer, listening to the lessons from her classes, and watching how real writers train and develop. I have tried to meld all these lessons into science writing, incorporating writers’ perspectives into the traditions and formulas of science. This book represents that amalgamation, and I hope it will help you short-circuit the long, slow, struggle I experienced.

我学会了通过多种途径写作:导师的指导;审查和拒绝的试验和错误;思考沟通策略;与学生一起在论文上工作;审查和编辑数百份手稿;阅读和重读有关写作的书;更重要的是,参与我妻子作为一个发展中的作家的经验,听她的课程,并观看如何真正的作家训练和发展。我试图将所有这些课程融入科学写作,将作家的观点融入科学的传统和公式中。这本书代表了这种融合,我希望它能帮助你缩短我经历的漫长、缓慢、挣扎的路程。

Principles versus rules

原则与规则

Many books on writing (notably the bad ones) present a long string of rules for how to write well. In them, writing is formulaic. In good writing, however, “the code is more what you call guidelines than actual rules” (to quote from Pirates of the Caribbean), a point made strongly by two prominent writers on writing, Joseph Williams (Style: Toward Clarity and Grace) and Roy Peter Clark (The Glamour of Grammar). Most of the time, following the rules will improve your writing, but good writers break them when it serves their purposes. I distinguish such rules from principles, which are the general concepts that guide successful communication. If you violate principles, your writing will suffer.

许多关于写作的书(特别是那些糟糕的书)提出了一长串关于如何写好的规则。在他们那里,写作是公式化的。然而,在好的写作中,"代码更多的是你所谓的指导方针,而不是实际的规则"(引用自《加勒比海盗》),两位著名的写作作家约瑟夫-威廉姆斯(Style: Toward Clarity and Grace)和罗伊-彼得-克拉克(《语法的魅力》)强烈地指出了这一点。大多数时候,遵守规则会改善你的写作,但好的作家会在为他们的目的服务时打破规则。我将这种规则与原则区分开来,后者是指导成功沟通的一般概念。如果你违反了原则,你的写作就会受到影响。

Throughout the book I try to distinguish between rules and principles, and I hope to offer enough insight that you will understand which are which, and why. When following a rule conflicts with following a principle, flout the rule freely and joyously.

在整本书中,我试图区分规则和原则,我希望能提供足够的洞察力,让你明白哪些是规则,以及为什么。当遵守规则与遵守原则相冲突时,要自由而快乐地藐视规则。

Sources for examples

例子的来源

I found examples in many places—some from work I know, some from papers that friends recommended, one from someone I met on an airplane, and many from randomly flipping through journals. The examples I hold up as good practice, I use intact and cite properly, though I remove the reference citations to make them easier to read. Exemplars of good practice deserve to be recognized. I sometimes point out what I see as imperfections, but only to highlight that even good writing can usually be better, and that although we may strive for perfection, we never reach it. A “good enough” proposal may still get funded, and an award letter from the National Science Foundation is the best review I’ve ever seen.

我在很多地方找到了一些例子--有些来自我认识的工作,有些来自朋友推荐的论文,有些来自我在飞机上遇到的人,还有很多来自随机翻阅的期刊。我把这些例子作为良好的实践,完整地使用并正确地引用,虽然我把参考文献的引用去掉了,以使它们更容易阅读。良好做法的典范应该得到认可。我有时会指出我所看到的不完美之处,但只是为了强调,即使是好的文章通常也可以做得更好,尽管我们可能会努力追求完美,但我们永远不会达到完美。一个"足够好"的提案仍然可能得到资助,国家科学基金会的奖励信是我见过的最好的审查。

The examples of what I think you should not do are closely modeled on real examples. However, unless they come from my own work, I have rewritten the text to mask the source. When I rewrote the text, I maintained the structural problems so that even if the science is no longer “real,” the writing is. In some cases these examples are from published work; in others, from early drafts that were revised and polished before publication. If you recognize your own writing or my comments on it (if I had handled it as a reviewer or editor), please accept my thanks for stimulating ideas that I could use to help future writers. We learn from our mistakes, and I need to show readers real “mistakes” to learn from. I hope I helped with the reviews I wrote at the time.

我认为你不应该做的事情都是密切仿照真实的例子。然而,除非它们来自我自己的工作,否则我已经重写了文本,以掩盖来源。当我重写文本时,我保留了结构上的问题,这样即使科学不再是"真实的",写作也是真实的。在某些情况下,这些例子来自已发表的作品;在其他情况下,来自在发表前被修改和润色的早期草稿。如果你认识到你自己的写作或我对它的评论(如果我曾作为审稿人或编辑处理过),请接受我的感谢,因为它激发了我可以用来帮助未来作家的想法。我们从错误中学习,我需要向读者展示真正的"错误"来学习。我希望我当时写的评论能起到帮助作用。

When I take examples from my own work, it is because only then can I accurately explain the author’s thinking. When I use others’ work, I can assess what they did and why it worked or failed, but I can’t know why they made the choices they did. For proposals, I use my own extensively because I have access to them. Proposals aren’t published, so I can’t scan other fields to find good examples, as I could for papers.

当我从自己的作品中选取例子时,是因为只有这样我才能准确地解释作者的想法。当我使用别人的作品时,我可以评估他们做了什么,为什么成功或失败,但我无法知道他们为什么做出这样的选择。对于提案,我广泛地使用自己的作品,因为我有机会接触到它们。建议书并没有出版,所以我不能像论文那样扫描其他领域来寻找好的例子。

I have included examples from many scientific disciplines to illustrate that my approaches and perspectives are broad-based; the basic challenges and strategies of writing are similar across fields. Many, however, come from the environmental sciences, where I knew where to find useful examples and where I felt that most readers would be able to understand enough of the content to have an easier time focusing on the writing.

本书囊括了许多学科的例子,以说明我的方法和观点是基础广泛的;写作的基本挑战和策略在各个领域是相似的。然而,许多例子来自环境科学,我知道在那里可以找到有用的例子,而且我觉得大多数读者能够理解足够的内容,从而更容易专注于写作。

Exercises and practice

练习和实践

In most chapters, I include exercises to apply the concepts I discuss. I encourage you to work through these, ideally in small groups. Writers often have writer’s groups, where typically four to six people get together to work over each other’s material, discuss what works and what doesn’t, and suggest alternative ways of doing things. This process is helpful in developing successful writers—it provides insights from different points of view that can stretch boundaries and offer new ideas. Analyzing others’ work can hone analytical skills. Groups also provide a supportive environment for learning, analogous to how a lab group helps you expand your research tools.

在大多数章节中,我包括应用我讨论的概念的练习。我鼓励你做这些练习,最好是在小组中进行。作家们经常有作家小组,通常有四到六个人聚在一起,互相研究对方的材料,讨论哪些是可行的,哪些是不可行的,并提出其他的做事方法。这个过程对培养成功的作家很有帮助--它提供了来自不同观点的洞察力,可以扩展边界并提供新的想法。分析别人的作品可以磨练分析能力。小组还提供了一个支持性的学习环境,类似于实验室小组如何帮助你扩展你的研究工具。

The exercises fall into several categories. The most important is the short article I ask you to write (and rewrite, and then rewrite again). I use this exercise in my writing class, and it is enormously successful, particularly when coupled with peer discussion and editing. The short form intensifies the focus on the story as well on each paragraph and sentence.

这些练习分为几类。最重要的是我要求你们写的短文(重写,然后再重写)我在写作课上使用这种练习,它非常成功,特别是在与同伴讨论和编辑的时候。短文强化了对故事的关注,也强化了对每个段落和句子的关注。

The second important exercise is to analyze the writing in published papers. How did the authors tell their story? Did it work? Was it clear? How could you improve the writing? This, too, is best done in groups. These papers don’t need to be the best writing in the field—we can learn as much from imperfect writing as we do from excellent work. The rule in these discussions should be that you may not discuss the scientific content unless it is directly germane to evaluating the writing. Get in the habit of evaluating the writing in every paper you read or discuss—the more you sensitize yourself, the more those insights will diffuse into your own writing.

第二个重要的练习是分析已发表论文中的写作。作者是如何讲述他们的故事的?有用吗?清楚吗?你可以如何改进写作?这也是最好在小组内完成的。这些论文不需要是该领域最好的文章--我们可以从不完美的写作中学习到很多东西,就像我们从优秀的作品中学习一样。这些讨论的规则应该是,你不能讨论科学内容,除非它与评价论文有直接关系。养成在你阅读或讨论的每篇论文中评估写作的习惯--你越是让自己敏感,这些见解就越是会扩散到你自己的写作中。

Finally, there are editing exercises that target specific issues such as sentence structure, word use, and language. For those, I provide suggested answers at the back of the book. Remember, though, that there is never a single way to approach a writing problem; my answers are not the only approach and may not even be the best. In working examples in class, students often find different and better solutions than any I came up with.

最后,还有一些针对具体问题的编辑练习,如句子结构、词语使用和语言。对于这些练习,我在书的后面提供了建议的答案。不过,请记住,处理写作问题的方法从来都不是单一的;我的答案不是唯一的方法,甚至可能不是最好的。在课堂上的工作实例中,学生们经常会找到与我提出的任何解决方案不同的、更好的解决方案。

If you really want to become a better writer, do the exercises. Work with your friends and colleagues on them. You only learn to write by writing, being edited, and rewriting. You must learn not just the principles but also how to apply them.

如果你真的想成为一个更好的作家,就做这些练习。与你的朋友和同事一起做这些练习。你只有通过写作、被编辑和重写来学习写作。你不仅要学习原则,而且要学习如何应用它们。

The point is that you have to strip your writing down before you can build it back up. You must know what the essential tools are and what job they were designed to do. Extending the metaphor of carpentry, it’s first necessary to be able to saw wood neatly and to drive nails. Later you can bevel the edges or add elegant finials, if that’s your taste. But you can never forget that you are practicing a craft that’s based on certain principles. If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.

问题是,你必须先把你的写作剥离出来,然后才能把它重新建立起来。你必须知道什么是基本的工具,以及它们被设计来做什么工作。延伸一下木工的比喻,首先要能整齐地锯木头和打钉子。之后你可以对边缘进行倒角,或添加优雅的顶饰,如果这是你的品味的话。但你永远不能忘记,你正在练习一种基于某些原则的工艺。如果钉子不牢固,你的房子就会倒塌。如果你的动词软弱无力,你的句法摇摇欲坠,写出来的句子就会崩溃。

WILLIAM ZINSSER, On Writing Well

威廉 · 津瑟,On Writing Well


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

致谢

I always blame this book on Christina Kaiser and Hildegard Meyer, two graduate students at the University of Vienna. But the person really responsible, as she is for most of the best things in my life, is my wife, Gwen. We spent the summer of 2005 in Montpellier, France, at the Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive of the CNRS, hosted by Stefan Hättenschwiler and Giles Pinay; we took the opportunity to go to Vienna to visit Dr. Andreas Richter and his research group. Tina and Hildegard were chatting with Gwen and mentioned that they liked reading my papers because they were well written. That sparked Gwen to suggest I teach a workshop on writing for the lab group in France. The rest is history. So Tina and Hildegard, little may you realize the power of that off-hand comment, but you catalyzed this. Thank you.

我总是把这本书归咎于克里斯蒂娜-凯泽和希尔德加德-迈耶,这两位维也纳大学的研究生。但真正负责的人,就像她对我生命中大多数美好事物所做的那样,是我的妻子格温。2005年夏天,我们在法国蒙彼利埃度过,在法国国家科学研究中心(CNRS)的生态学和进化中心,由Stefan HättenschwilerGiles Pinay主持;我们利用这个机会去维也纳拜访Andreas Richter博士和他的研究小组。蒂娜和希尔德加德在与格温聊天时提到,他们喜欢读我的论文,因为它们写得很好。这促使格温建议我为法国的实验室小组讲授一个关于写作的讲习班。剩下的就是历史了。因此,蒂娜和希尔德加德,你们可能很少意识到来自不经意的评论力量,是你们促成了这一切。谢谢你们。

My thanks to Gwen are endless—not only did teaching writing come from her inspiration, but much of what I know about writing and how writers learn their craft comes from her. She supported and encouraged me through the years I’ve worked on this, and she has read through most of the book, providing valuable insights and feedback.

我对格温的感谢是无止境的--不仅写作教学来自于她的灵感,而且我对写作和作家如何学习他们方法的许多理解也来自于她。在我从事这项工作的这些年里,她一直支持和鼓励我,而且她通读了本书的大部分内容,提供了宝贵的见解和反馈。

The other critical thread that led to my writing this book was becoming a 2006 Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow. Not only was the Leopold program’s communication training influential, but simply being a fellow helped motivate me to take what I had learned and make it available to the community.

导致我写这本书的另一条关键线索是成为2006年奥尔多-利奥波德领导力研究员。利奥波德项目的交流培训不仅有影响力,而且仅仅是作为一个研究员,就帮助激励我把我所学到的东西,提供给社区。

Many of my colleagues have given me ideas, insights, quotes, and good stories about science and communication. Many of those comments were made in passing and were not targeted at either writing or this book. You may not realize how sticky those ideas were, and you may not even remember saying them, but thank you. I have been privileged to work with as talented, insightful, and generous a group of friends and colleagues as I can imagine. I am grateful to you all for enriching my work and my life.

我的许多同事给了我关于科学和交流的想法、见解、名言和好故事。其中许多意见都是顺便说的,并不是针对写作或这本书的。你可能没有意识到这些想法有多大的粘性,你甚至可能不记得说过这些话,但是谢谢你。我很荣幸地与一群有才华、有见地、慷慨的朋友和同事一起工作,这是我能想象到的。我很感激你们所有人,因为你们丰富了我的工作和生活。

Many of those colleagues have reviewed my work over the years and forced me to develop my writing and thinking skills to get proposals funded and papers published. At the time, I may have complained about that “miserable know-nothing so-and-so,” and I once commented about a good friend who was the editor handling a paper that “If he accepts this version, I owe him a beer; if he sends it back for more revision, I’m going to pour it on him.” I am, however, grateful to you all for holding my feet to the fire and forcing me to make my work as good as it could be. It both built my scientific career and taught me how to write.

多年来,这些同事中有许多人审阅了我的工作,迫使我发展自己的写作和思考能力,以使提案获得资助和论文得以发表。当时,我可能会抱怨那个"可悲的一无所知的某某",我曾经对一个作为编辑处理论文的好朋友评论说:"如果他接受这个版本,我欠他一杯啤酒;如果他把它送回去再修改,我就把它倒在他身上"。然而,我很感谢你们,因为你们把我的脚放在火上,迫使我把我的工作做到尽善尽美。它既建立了我的科学事业,也教会了我如何写作。

My Ph.D. advisor, Mary Firestone, taught me the most crucial lessons of how to frame the question and the story. When I was finishing my dissertation, she also edited my horrible, sleep-deprived writing into a form that was at least minimally acceptable and did so with grace and humor. She set me on this path.

我的博士生导师玛丽-费尔斯通(Mary Firestone)给我上了最关键的一课:如何构思问题和故事。当我完成我的论文时,她还把我可怕的、“睡眠不足”的文章编辑成至少可以接受的形式,并以优雅和幽默的方式进行编辑。她让我走上了这条道路。

Erika Engelhaupt gave me great suggestions and great text for chapter 20, “Writing for the Public.” Weixin Cheng provided valuable suggestions on chapter 19, “Writing Global Science.” Bruce Mahall and Carla D’Antonio, with whom I lead the Tuesday evening plant and ecosystem ecology seminar, have helped me deepen my insights into communication strategy. Carin Coulon drew the wonderful figure of the Roman god Janus that appears in chapter 13.

Erika Engelhaupt对第20"为公众写作"给了我很好的建议和很好的文本。程维新对第19 "撰写全球科学"提供了宝贵的建议。Bruce MahallCarla D'Antonio与我一起主持了周二晚上的植物和生态系统生态学研讨会,他们帮助我加深了对沟通策略的认识。Carin Coulon绘制了出现在第13章的罗马神Janus的精彩形象。

I owe great thanks to the U.S. National Science Foundation. The NSF is an extraordinary organization, due to the talent and dedication of its program officers. The NSF has supported my work and helped me grow to reach the point where I could write this book.

我非常感谢美国国家科学基金会。国家科学基金会是一个非同寻常的组织,这要归功于其项目官员的才华和奉献精神。国家科学基金会支持了我的工作,帮助我成长到可以写这本书的地步。

Many people have participated in the workshops I’ve given on writing and in the graduate class I teach. This book grew from them, and in working through the lessons in person I have been able to polish them. Thank you all.

许多人参加了我举办的写作研讨会和我教授的研究生课程。这本书是从他们那里成长起来的,在亲自授课的过程中,我也得以对它们进行了打磨。感谢你们所有人。

I’ve worked on manuscripts with a number of graduate students and postdocs. They helped me develop my own writing tools and my analytical understanding of those tools so I could teach them to others. The list is long and grows longer monthly: Jay Gulledge, Mitch Wagener, Joy Clein, Jeff Chambers, Mike Weintraub, Noah Fierer, Sophie Parker, Doug Dornelles, Shawna McMahan, Shinichi Asao, Izaya Numata, Ben Colman, Knut Kielland, Susan Sugai, Carl Mikan, Andy Allen, Michael LaMontagne, Amy Miller, Matt Wallenstein, Shurong Xiang, Dad Roux-Michollet, Sean Schaeffer, Claudia Boot, Mariah Carbone, and Yuan Ge. Particular thanks go to Shelly Cole for her generosity. Thanks also to all the other students whose dissertations and manuscripts I have read and edited while serving on your committees.

我曾与一些研究生和博士后一起写过稿子。他们帮助我发展了自己的写作工具,以及对这些工具的分析理解,以便我能够将它们教给别人。这个名单很长,而且每月都在增加。Jay Gulledge, Mitch Wagener, Joy Clein, Jeff Chambers, Mike Weintraub, Noah Fierer, Sophie Parker, Doug Dornelles, Shawna McMahan, Shinichi Asao, Izaya Numata, Ben Colman, Knut Kielland, Susan Sugai, Carl Mikan, Andy Allen, Michael LaMontagne, Amy Miller, Matt Wallenstein, Shurong Xiang, Dad Roux-Michollet, Sean Schaeffer, Claudia Boot, Mariah Carbone, and Yuan Ge。特别要感谢谢莉-科尔的慷慨解囊。也感谢所有其他的学生,我在为你们的委员会服务时阅读和编辑了他们的论文和手稿。

Finally, I would like to note two books that have greatly influenced my thinking on writing and communication: Joseph Williams’s Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, and Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick. Williams’s book is the best book on writing I have ever read, and I am deeply indebted to him for his insights, many of which I have assimilated into this book (filtered through my own experiences and focused on writing science). I cannot match his insights into the sophistication of the English language, so I recommend that you reread it regularly and give copies to your friends and students. Made to Stick isn’t ostensibly about writing at all, and distinctly it isn’t about writing science. Rather, it focuses on advertising, marketing, and general communication. It is, however, a spectacularly insightful and fun discussion of what makes ideas engaging and “sticky,” a critical issue for scientists who want their work to get noticed from among the overwhelming flood of papers published every year.

最后,我想记下两本极大地影响了我对写作和交流思想的书:约瑟夫·威廉姆斯的《Style: Toward Clarity and Grace》,以及奇普和丹·希思的《坚持》。威廉斯的书是我读过的最好的写作书,我深深地感谢他的见解,其中许多见解我已经吸收到这本书中(通过我自己的经验过滤,专注于科学写作)。我无法与他对英语语言复杂性的见解相提并论,所以我建议你经常重读这本书,并将其送给你的朋友和学生。Made to Stick表面上根本不是关于写作的,而且很明显不是关于科学写作。相反,它专注于广告、营销和一般的沟通。然而,这本书对什么使观点具有吸引力和"粘性"进行了非常有见地和有趣的讨论,对于那些希望自己的工作从每年发表的大量论文中得到关注的科学家来说,这是一个关键问题。

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