BSCI 1510L Literature and Stats Guide: 4 Summary of the Writing Guide and Further Information

From observations of many years of students, we know that 1) you are good at remembering details (and promptly forgetting) and 2) you have no idea how to connect all of the seemingly random 'dots' of information.

Thus, many of you learned about systemic nomenclature (scientific names) and then forgot about it. Many of you learning what 'micro' to 'milli' converts back and forth to and now confuse the two units (which is a major difference!).

Now, you may be asking "Why is all of this material important?".

Quite simply, by following the information expressed and the formats presented earlier, you will be five steps ahead of anyone else who is clueless.

Several of you will have been marked on assignments for not labeling a table or figure correctly, for doing a scientific name wrong (in all the wrong ways possible), not expressing the correct statistical value, and other infractions.  This should not be occurring as the majority of the content in the Writing Guide are simple ideas and formats.

Now for an example:

"texas"

What is incorrect with "texas"?

Everyone should be saying that the 't' should be 'T' since it is a proper noun, etc.

Perfect.  You learned that in 1st or 2nd grade, and why?  Is it some sort of Law or something?  Not really, however it is the accepted format and the 'rule' to follow.  And anyone who does not do so would be showing a basic lack of knowledge, correct?

You now, as an experienced person, write "Texas" with a 'T' without even thinking about it because you learned to do so and know to do so.

"L.o.L. (laughing out loudly)"

What is incorrect in that?  (Which is something possibly that older aunt or uncle or grandparent sent you when they started texting)

Everyone is probably first, groaning about how lame that looks (and that yes, they have received a message like that!) and second, that virtually no one with any general knowledge or familiarity with text abbreviations and modern speech phrasing would do that.  It's 'LOL' or 'lol' in most cases.  And anyone who actually typed out the 'L.o.L.' (and did a parentheses) would be showing that they are not knowledgeable and in reality would be posing, would be trying to fake it, correct?

You also write '"lol" without even thinking about it because you learned to do so and know to do so.

Now, when YOU type e. Coli or E. Coli , or make a table and call that a figure, or copy-paste the Excel screenshot of all 48 numbers of data and do not indicate in the text what the p-value is.....you are doing exactly that:

You are showing your lack of knowledge about the material and also that you are trying to fake your way through it.

You have been shown "the rules" of how to write for Science. 

You (by the middle of the semester) should know how to do so because you have learned to do so.