Communicating Rocks: Writing, Speaking, and Thinking About Geology

158 Pages·2011·3.252 MB·English

by  Peter Copeland

Communicating
Rocks
Writing, Speaking, and Thinking
About Geology

Peter Copeland

University of Houston

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Table of Contents

Preface v 5

Acknowledgments vii

About the Author vii

1 Communication Equals Thinking 1

2 Written Communication 9
2.1 Types of Written Communication 9
2.2 Problem Words and Concepts 30
2.3 Other Examples 96

3 Oral Communication 119
3.1 An Illustrated Talk in Front of a Seated
Audience 119
3.2 The Poster Presentation 136

4 Writing Is Hard 139

References 145

Credits 149

iii
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Preface

Perhaps I began writing this book when my father forced me to
explain to him the difference between heat and temperature. I
was in high school at the time and it was only after I’d spent
some time thinking about the problem that I realized he had
known the difference all along—he was forcing me to state, in
clear sentences, just what the key issues were at hand and why it
is important to make the distinction. Well, it stuck. Now I’ve
written a book that hopes to explain to others why this distinc-
tion is important and why communication (mostly in writing,
but in oral presentations as well) not only helps others learn
what you know, but also facilitates greater understanding within
the one doing the writing or speaking.
I encountered another early influence—one I also didn’t ap-
preciate at the time—a few years later when I was an under-
graduate geology major at the University of Kansas. In the
spring semester of 1981, one of my nonscience schoolmates was
surprised to find I owned a copy of The Elements of Style
(Strunk and White, 1979) and even more surprised to find that it
was assigned to me by my paleoecology professor, the late
Roger Kaesler. It’s unfortunate that my friend of some years
ago thought, and some science students today think, that the
concerns of effective prose are only the domain of the English
department. It is fortunate, however, that Professor Kaesler took
the time in his class to really push his concern for good writing
as it applied to geology. Three decades later, I can’t remember
why I enrolled in the class—I wasn’t particularly interested in
paleontology at the time and fossils have not played a large role
in my subsequent career—but it is with the advantage of the
perspective gained in the intervening years that I now recognize
it was one of the best classes I ever had. Five essays were re-
quired of the students during the semester. They were to be on a
topic recently discussed in class and had to fit on a single sheet
of paper. The point being that if you can’t get across the basic
idea in one page, you probably don’t understand it. I still have
my notes and handouts from this class and in a few instances, I
have drawn directly from them in this work.
Chapter 1 is a brief discussion of the philosophy that is the
foundation for all the other chapters. This is the idea that clear
communication is not just needed for telling people about what
you have done, but if you are not a good communicator, you
cannot be at your best as a thinker. Your ability to understand
the sensible world is dependent on your ability to tell people
about it and vice versa.
Chapter 2 concerns written communication in the geo-
sciences. I discuss the importance of the abstract, the differ-
v
ences between a research paper and a research proposal, includ-
ing the various types of research proposals. Specific detail is
given to how to present a hypothesis. The bulk of Chapter 2 is a
set of rules: rules of English, rules of geology, and rules of
style. Most of the rules of English can be found in other sources
such as Strunk and White (1979) or Nicholson (2003). The rea-
son for putting the rules of English alongside the rules of geol-
ogy is the complete geologist is not just one who understands
igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks. The complete
geologist is also not just one who has facilities in chemistry,
physics, biology, and mathematics. The complete geologist is
one who understands all of this and also knows how to tell oth-
ers. We tell about our work with words, sentences, and para-
graphs. Because a list of rules, being out of context, cannot fully
illustrate the problems associated with their misuse, Chapter 2
concludes with a series of examples of problematic sentences in
geology and my suggestions on how to improve them.
Chapter 3 deals with oral communication, in particular the
oral presentation in front of live audience. In this context, all of
the rules of written communication apply, but there are even
more concerns here. The presenter is not just author, but also
director and star of brief stage production. As director, we need
to take note of the scenery (the slides you prepare to illustrate
your scientific findings) and the acting (the oral presentation
given to accompany the slides). Giving a good talk is an impor-
tant skill for a working scientist that improves with experience;
this chapter is offered as a foundation to the student. A slightly
different sort of communication from giving a talk to a seated
audience is standing in front of a poster dealing with interested
parties one on one; Chapter 3 concludes with some pointers on
effective posters and their presentation.
Chapter 4 is an extremely brief attempt to suggest some ways
to make the process of writing and rewriting a bit easier.
Throughout the book I offer examples of sentences or para-
graphs I think need work. I made up some of these examples,
but some appear here in a modified version from other’s work.
These examples have been changed in detail but not in style. It’s
not important who wrote them (some of them were originally
written by me) and I’ve tried to change them enough to make
them hard to find using your local search engine but I hope you
don’t bother; what is important is that we learn from these mis-
takes and become better writers, not the exact character of the
original version. I’ve edited the borrowed examples to remove
any reference to a particular location (where I had to keep refer-
ence to a place in the sentence, I used a made up place such as
Upliftistan or Smith County).

vi
Some of the examples I offer in Chapter 2 come from the five
essays I wrote for Professor Kaesler’s paleoecology class in
1981. My hope here is to offer some more examples of what not
to do and to do so with my own (albeit early) work. The errors I
made then are obvious to me now, but it took a while for the
habits of mind to become so ingrained that I now make them
less often. I hope the errors in the rest of the book (the ones that
weren’t obvious to me or they would have been removed) will
not detract from the main point I’m trying to make: The science
of geology can only be at its best when communication—both
in writing and speaking—is also at its best.

Peter Copeland
Houston, 2011

Acknowledgments

My manuscript for this text benefited from reviews by Pat
Bickford, Mathew Brueske, Rich Brusch, Larry Davis, Ann Eg-
gar, Maya Elrick, Allen Glazner, Jamey Jones, Denet Pernia,
Nicole Jackson, and three anonymous reviewers. In particular,
Reed Scherer, and Bill Dupré merit special thanks for their
helpful reviews. My thoughts about clarity in communication
over the years have benefited from interaction with others along
the way, especially Steve DeLong, Allen Glazner, Dave John-
son, Kent Condie, Mark Harrsion, and Bill Kidd. They may be
able to see their influence. I thank all of the above-mentioned
people as well as others for their help but, of course, all errors
are my responsibility. Mike Taylor, Rob Stewart, and Wyman
Herrendeen helped with various aspects of my research. Thanks
to Dru Peters, without whose encouragement I may never have
begun this project. Beth Copeland helped me come up with the
title for the book and helps me in other ways all the time.

About the Author

Peter Copeland has been a professor in the Department of Earth
and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Houston since
1990. His research interests include primarily geochemistry and
tectonics. He is a fellow of the Geological Society of America
and from 2000-2004 he was Editor of the GSA Bulletin.

vii
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Chapter 1: Communication Equals Thinking

… how then shall he be thought wise whose penning
is thin and shallow?
(Jonson, 1641)

You could say things like, “Hopefully, the metrics within our methodology
will momentarily constrain the history of the metamorphics into two dis-
crete episodes beginning at 100 Ma ago,” but you don’t want to. You could
write research proposals that include statements such as, “I hypothesize that
daily observation data can be utilized to produce more accurate initial-
condition and boundary-condition inputs for regional geophysical model-
ing,” but you don’t want to.
The point of writing this little book is to help geologists do a better job
telling the world about their studies by explaining why no one wants to be
responsible for such sentences. If you immediately recognized eight errors
in the first example and two errors in the second, you may have already
learned what this book hopes to teach you. On the other hand, if you found
the two examples unobjectionable, please read on.
Geologists love to go out into the field and see the works of nature writ
large. We also enjoy working for hours in the lab, trying to unlock the mys-
teries of the samples we brought home. However, too many people who
love rocks don’t love writing about them or never learned the best way to
do so. Perhaps they were the kind of undergraduate who thought that time
in English class was time wasted inasmuch as it was time away from look-
ing at rocks. However, we cannot lose sight of the fact that all of our work
is of little value until we put it in a form that can be shared by many.
Many books are available that give advice on how to craft good prose.
Everyone doing any writing in English should have a copy of A Dictionary
of American-English Usage Based on Fowler's Modern English Usage
(Nicholson, 1957) and The Elements of Style (Strunk and White, 1979).
These are the classics.
Two recent treatments of English and its misuse are Eats, Shoots &
Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (Truss, 2003) and
Between You and I: A little book of bad English (Cochrane, 2005). One of
the things I liked about these books is the joy the authors take from a sen-
tence well crafted. For these folks, communicating rocks. I hope the goal of
communicating about rocks can bring readers of this book some of that
same good feeling.
Other books I have consulted that would be good for students to have ac-
cess to include Zinsser (2006), O’Conner (2000, 2003), Bernstein (1965),
Walsh (2004), Wallraff (2000), Gordon (1983, 1984), and Mitchell (1979,
1981, 1984, 1987). All of these books’ subjects are general; the main in-
tended audience of this book is students of geology, particularly at the up-
per-undergraduate and early-graduate level. It is my hope that this will
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