Writing Skills –Part 2

Technical Issues

Content vs Presentation

• Content is always more important than presentation!

• Good presentation can enhance impact and intelligibility

Formatting

• Page layout, headings, sections, headers and footers, page numbers, page breaks, table of contents, index etc…

• Font size

• Font type times, verdana comic vivaldi

• Font style bold italic

• Line spacing, paragraph spacing, indenting, bullet points, numbering etc.

Example Document

• Set outline document structure

• Set styles and formatting

• Set page layout

• Create content, references, figures

Checklist

• Content– Formatting, Spelling, Grammar– Figures and captions, References

• Page structure– Margins, Paper Size, Document Title,

Author, Page No’s and Total, Modification Date or Printout Date

Contact IT staff

• Paul J Warren - Senior IT officer– Tel: 273727 paul.warren@materials– General overview

• Alex Cock – IT officer– Tel: 273727 alex.cock@materials– TeachingLab and Library computers

• Khalid Schofield – IT technician– Tel: 273728 matt.brechin@materials– General problem solving (hard and soft)

Questions?

• Any pet hates?

• Any common problems?

• Microsoft Office Help does work!

• Google will find free tutorials!

Software

• Word Processing– Microsoft Office - market leader! (OUCS)– Corel (WordPerfect) – alternative (OUCS)– MathType / SciWord - equation editing (OUCS)– LaTeX / Winedt / WinTeX - (web download)

• consider compatability with your supervisor!

• Bibiliographic software– Endnote / Procite / Reference manager (OUCS)

• Powerful in combination with on-line databases• Endnote web free site license

Software2

• Graphing– Excel – part of Office readily available (OUCS)– Origin, SigmaPlot - low cost site licensed (Dept website)– Mathematica and Matlab – low cost site licensed (Dept website)

• Images/micrographs– Photoshop / PaintshopPro / Corel – cost money (OUCS)– Gimp – freeware (web download)– Digital micrograph etc – specialist (Dept IT staff)

• Mathematical packages– Mathematica & Matlab – low cost site licensed (Dept website)

• PDF creation– Acrobat full – costs money (OUCS)– Pdf995 or CutePDF – freeware (web download