Scientific writing

[Pekka]

... plus it wouldn't work, since you'd have to sign an NDA and the company has to approve it. That is, you're not a professional proof reader and you're not affiliated with my current employer either so... I think it wouldn't fly even if you wanted to help (and be paid to do it).

However, I'm always willing to let you help me with suggestions and materials You could start by giving me the security guideline and policies of the company you work for and give me a permission to use it publicly

[Asher]

Security guidelines? What security guidelines.

The company I work for has one rule: "Don't be stupid"

The company my company's contracted to for this project has some insane security policies. Really ineffective, as they all are, though.

[Pekka]

Well, maybe you work for a company that mostly has smart people in it. This isn't the case with most companies.

And yes, I think the 'level of suck' can often times be determined by the number of policies as well. It's better to have few and make everyone remember them and understand why they should follow them than have tons no one cares about and quite frankly most of them are weird and stupid.

[Provost Harrison]

I'd love to see you attempt scientific writing Pekka

[Pekka]

Well, my scientific work for bachelours did recieve the equivalent of Laudatur, I believe I was the only one.

You might think, well, this guy here is a loon who can only produce the makings of his own crazy brain. Make no mistake, I produce superior quality. Superior. I'm not even ashamed to say it, I'm ****ing good at what I do. I'm not the only one who thinks so, my work has gone through my mentor and because I recieved excellence, it also went through 2 of his peers. See, he didnt' want to be a huge homer so he needed peer review times two. My excellence was concurred .

[Provost Harrison]

Alas I have always been more of a doer and a thinker. I've never been very good at writing things (or at least I don't consider it to be a major strength of mine).

[Pekka]

Hey no ****. It's not like I'm an excellent scientific writer. I'm decent, but not excellent. As in, I'm able to pass the level where the content only matters. But I have to struggle quite a bit sometimes, plus go through several revisions. But it's getting better all the time. But I'm not sure if there's a point of... trying to do it in English. I know I can do it, given that someone works with me and is patient and can just teach me along.

I can manage a normal article, in fact I'm writing one now with a recent PhD graduate, but my portion is less than 10 pages, so I can manage that. Because I can go and check every single word and sentence over and over again and if I run into trouble, I can just ask help for a sentence or two.

But the whole thesis? You see, I just can't write it. It would be so full of rubbish, I can't even have a single comma in the wrong place or miss one. That's how strict I am and the quality I expect. Absolutely no mistakes. So just think about it, with my English, semi difficult subject with lots of concepts and explaining concepts, empirical study, critical replies to articles and books... I'm bound to have 10 grammar problems in every... paragraph. The again, I find scientific writing a bit easier than the other way around. Because it's kind of strict and the Gods of science restrict me from free flow. So it's a bit easier for me.

[Kuciwalker]

Your English is just as good as almost all of the native speakers here, and significantly better than some...

[Jon Miller]

Once more, in my experience, the ability to write well in english has little bearing on good scientific writing. This is at least true in Physics. I did a thesis in undergrad. Despite getting help from english major freinds and the english department, I had to basically rewrite everything with my advisor.

Additionally, in graduate school I have done some writing. Here, even my freinds in graduate school couldn't help me, only post-docs really assisted me in wording and expression of ideas. Even they weren't good enough, when I took it to my advisor, she marked it completely in red.

Very few of these corrections were straight up grammer, and I think only one was a physics correction. But, there is a particular way how scientific writing is, and the result after her assistance is a good paper. Even it, though, could have some improvement.

Having correct grammer is only the beggining of a proper scientific paper, at least in physics.

Jon Miller

[Asher]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Your English is just as good as almost all of the native speakers here, and significantly better than some...

Mrs Tuberski

[Pekka]

JM, So, as concluded, I need a professional proof reader. That is if I want all the commas and grammar to be perfect.

And no, no one will do it for me in here for free so... just have to pay for it. It'll be worth it though. Depends how much it costs.

[Jon Miller]

"professional, scientific, proof reader"

JM

[Pekka]

Well, it's kind of what I said in the OP...

[Jon Miller]

BTW, the masters student on my experiment will have a thesis that is 90-120 pages. Of course, he is considered a good masters student.

JM

[Krill]

Yeah but Kuci, one needs to be better "pretty good" when writing a PhD...