A Short Guide to Writing about Chemistry (2nd Edition)

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Summary: Writing About Chemistry
Review: In A Short Guide to Writing about Chemistry Herbert Beall and John Trimbur describe how to write in chemistry. Beall is an expert in writing books about chemistry and Trimbur wrote books about reading and writing. With these two authors combined for one book, there was no doubt that this book would be a top seller. The book thoroughly discusses how to write research papers, literature reviews, critiques, persuasion essays, and lab reports. The book describes what chemists read and write about.
To understand chemistry you must find what is significant, make a model, and reason by analogy. The book describes how to read a chemistry textbook, study for tests or quizzes, and take lecture notes. All of these hints are good for a college student in chemistry.
The book gives step by step details as the chapter goes along. It gives good details for visual aids, and how to rehearse before delivering your speech if you have to do an oral presentation. The lab report chapter is very useful because it's not just enough to understand the concepts, but you must write out a lab report.
After the authors describe the steps to follow, they give an example and then practice problems. The book includes websites to look at for a chemistry article and good engines to use when searching for a certain chemistry concept.
The book covers so much information that any student at any level of study can understand the book. The book is designed mainly to get the students to communicate in the chemistry language either by writing, reading, or giving oral presentations. With all of the great things found in this book, it is no surprise that it was successful at helping students and professors alike in writing about chemistry.

Rating:
Summary: How to read and write chemistry (for the university student)
Review: This book is meant to be a practical guide in reading and writing chemistry. There are numerous practical tidbits interspersed throughout the book. There are also exercises (many of which include "peer review" style discussion among classmates) and numerous examples (both positive and negative). The topics range from reading the primary literature through writing lab reports and even to giving oral seminars.

The authors do a good job straddling the line between keeping the text short (this is a "Short Guide" after all), while providing the essential kernals of information. Unfortunately, it reads a bit like a how-to guide for someone trying to get an "A" grade in their "Writing in Chemsitry" course. There is little discussion of format variations (except possibly in the "Writing a Research Proposal" section) probably not the author's fault, more of a page constraint issue. However, I would like to have seen less on, say "How to keep a freshman lab book" (17 pages!) and more on, "How to give an oral presentation." Surely the target audience should be the upper-year student, not the freshman.

If the biggest problem is the formulaic presentation, the best aspect is the numerous examples interspersed throughout the book. I was pleased to note that the examples, at least, are chosen to highlight the differences in scientific opinion that constantly arise and that younger scientists find baffling. Because science is generally taught as hard facts in high school, there is no indication that science is actually a refining process where theories are put to the test, elevated, or destroyed as work is done to test their validity. This process is amply demonstrated by the authors, in a wide variety of subdisciplines, all of which are fun to read, even for professors and other chemical professionals.

Therefore, I recommend this book for the senior undergraduate and graduate student who wants to refine/develop their scientific writing style. I'm skeptical about recommending the book to freshmen, in spite of the number of pages devoted to freshman topics, because I'm not as happy with those chapters.