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General advice and instructions for written assignments
Writing is correctly considered to be a reflection of your thinking process and your carefulness. You will be judged
throughout your life and career on how well you are able to express yourself in writing, and how the writing is
presented (i.e., grammar, spelling, format). (Incidentally, but of equal importance, you will be evaluated throughout
life on your ability to follow instructions!). Do not underestimate the importance of good writing.
You are blessed with access to computers - use this advantage! Word processors give you infinite flexibility to
change your text, reformat, correct, and reorganize, in addition to giving you tools such as spell-checkers and
thesauri - use them! You will be graded on presentation (grammar, spelling, format) as well as content and
organization. Specifically:
 I will take points off for spelling errors. Spell-checkers leave no excuse for this.
 I will take points off for mistakes (such as the write word in the wrong plaice) that make it obvious that you have
not proof-read your final copy. Lack of proof reading suggests that you do not value your work or my time.
Items to watch out for (also see “Grammar tips”, below):
Capital letters. Don’t use them at random; if you capitalize words in a title, for example, capitalize all of them
(except conjunctions and prepositions), do not just randomly capitalize a few. Use capitals for names such as
James Bay (not James bay); but a series of lakes or rivers are “lakes Michigan and Ontario” or “the LaPlatte and
Lamoille rivers. Genus names are always capitalized, species names are not. Thus, yellow perch is Perca
flavescens (note use of italics)
Commas. Many people tend to write first, then scatter commas at random across the text to make it look good. If
you are uncertain about where commas should be used, review a grammar book, or read the paper out loud,
pausing at the commas, and see if it sounds right.
Style. Be very careful with flowery or dramatic language. It sounds great in popular articles and magazines, but it’s
very difficult to do well (it just looks easy). Better to stick with somewhat drier, factual information than lose
your reader with metaphors.
Length
Scientific writing should be concise, precise, and to the point. Verbosity is unnecessary except in novels, and is not
tolerated in scientific writing.
Organization
There are four parts to writing: (i) idea generation and synthesis, (ii) fermentation of ideas and restructuring of
thoughts (outlining), (iii) getting words on paper (the rough draft), and (iv) fine tuning (proofing and editing).
Organize your thoughts, concepts, and information before you begin to write. Don’t underestimate the value of
outlines. Writing an outline, no matter how rough, can be invaluable both for arranging your ideas in a logical order,
and for ensuring that you have not left any important points out. Use section and even subsection headings to set off
portions of the text if you like - these can be of particular use to the reader (but don’t overdo them).
Format
Text should be in 12 pitch, and double-spaced (I must have room to scribble notes)
Use 1” margins all around
Quotations
Don’t. Direct quotations are used extremely rarely in scientific writing, and only when a cited author has said
something so well that it deserves repeating exactly. Otherwise, quotes are simply a lazy way of getting around
having to put something in your own words. But do not use any text directly from a source without quotation marks
– that’s plagiarizing, which is an academic integrity violation.
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Citing references:
When you cite a reference, list the author(s) and year of publication in parentheses at the end of the sentence (Smith
2001). If there are two authors, list them both (Smith and Jones 1999), but for more than two, use “et al.”, which
means “and others” (Ferdinand et al. 2000).
Journal articles:
Danehy, R. J., N. H. Ringler, and J. E. Gannon. 1991. Influence of nearshore structure on growth and diets of
yellow perch (Perca flavescens) and white perch (Morone americana) in Mexico Bay, Lake Ontario.
Journal of Great Lakes Research 17:183-193.
Chapter in a book:
Leach, J. H. 1993. Impacts of the zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) on water quality and fish spawning reefs in
western Lake Erie. In: T. F. Nalepa and D. Schloesser, eds. Zebra mussels: biology, impacts, and control.
Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, FL.
Helpful sources for writing:
For scientific articles, many journals such as the Transactions of the American Fisheries Society and the Canadian
Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, give specific guidelines for form, content, citations, use of scientific units,
spelling of scientific words, etc. These are found in the “Guide to authors”, usually in the first issue of a given year.
Strunk, W. Jr., and E. B. White. 1979. The Elements of Style. MacMillan Publishing Co, New York, NY.
Also note that the Writing Center at the Living and Learning Center on campus offers free tutoring on writing - I
urge you to use this resource, particularly if you are revising a paper which received a poor grade.
Grammar and other points (these are just a few items of grammar or word use that I see frequently abused).
When referring to a species, give the scientific (Latin) name the first time you mention it, thereafter use only the
common name. The genus is always capitalized, species is lowercase, both must be in italics or underlined.
Capital letters are frequently misused. Confine their use to proper names and beginnings of sentences. Random
capitals within a sentence is a sure sign of absence of proof-reading.
Trailing comparisons: if you use a comparison word such as “more”, complete the comparison with “than”
e.g., “Lowland rivers tend to be more turbid than headwater streams”
Similarly, use of ‘-er words (greater, lesser) requires a comparison. “Europeans are taller” is not a complete
sentence.
Specify the subject of your sentence, particularly at the beginning of a paragraph. Never use “it”.
not “These were the most likely to suffer mortality”
instead “The tagged fish were the most likely fish in the study population to suffer mortality”
better “Tagged fish had higher mortality than untagged fish.”
Start each paragraph with a good topic sentence. Let your reader know what this paragraph is going to talk about.
Subject and verb should agree (singular vs. plural); ‘none’ is a singular word: “None of us is perfect”, “ The pail of
frogs was heavy.”
Don’t confuse:
effect vs affect
its vs it's (it’s is always and only an abbreviation for “it is” or “it has” - the apostrophe is not possessive, as
in “Fred’s dog”, so you would write “its tail”)
like vs such as – “Many fish like sturgeon are benthic” is wrong (there are no other fish like sturgeon,
sturgeon are being used as an example)
they're vs their vs there
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principal vs principle
presently vs currently - the first means soon, the second means now
lead (noun - heavy stuff), lead (verb - opposite of follow), led (verb, past tense of lead)
freshwater (adjective); fresh water (adjective and noun). Thus: freshwater fish live in fresh water
Two words used together to modify a noun should be hyphenated: snow-covered mountain
Remember that data is a plural word, datum is the singular. “The data were analyzed.” not “The data was analyzed”
Beware of turning one word into two:
throughout, not through out
without, not with out
everyday is an adjective (sunrise is an everyday occurrence); every day is an adjective and a noun (the sun rises
every day)
Punctuation
always put a space before an opening parenthesis, but not within the parentheses (like this)
use characters such as % for percent,  for degree, $ for dollars - that’s why word processors are so cool
p. is an abbreviation for ‘page’, pp. is an abbreviation for ‘pages’; sp. is one species, spp, is several within a genus
avoid the temptation to preach about the ills of mankind’s influence on the environment
avoid using esoteric words - they are more often misused than not
In science writing, always use metric!
Et al. is an abbreviation for the Latin “et alia” meaning “and others”, used in citations such as “the paper by Smith et
al.”. Thus al. is an abbreviation and has a period after it.
In the text, do not describe figures or tables (“Figure 1 shows the relationship between fish length and weight”);
describe the data (“Fish tended to increase in weight linearly with increase in length (Figure 1)”).
When fewer words will convey the same information, use fewer words:
the purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis
in this study we assessed
in order to provide a basis for comparing
during the process of
conspicuous numbers of
for the duration of the study
despite the presence of
in a single period of a few hours
the largest fish was 150 millimeters long and the smallest fish
was 75 millimeters long
showed a tendency toward higher survival
I hypothesized
we assessed
to compare
during
many
during the study
despite
in a few hours
fish lengths ranged from 75 to 150 mm
had higher survival