*Reminder*

For next class...

In the handbook read:
• Pronouns
• Modifiers
• Dangling Modifiers
• Voice

In the textbook read:
• Chapter 11

Also, keep in mind that we will have a peer review for the research report on Monday, October 24. The final draft of the report will be handed in on Wednesday, October 26.

If you want me to review a draft of the assignment, come see mne during office hours or send me an email so we can schedule an appointment at another time.

*Cyclical*

This doesn't have a whole lot to do with technical writing, but it does touch on something that came up in class today:

2005 tied for worst year for tropical storms (CNET)

From the article:

"While it is unclear whether global warming has created more storms, many experts say it has made the storms that occur more intense."

Food for thought...although, I don't think I'll be looking to buy a Prius any time soon.

*Reminder*

We will be doing a workshop on graphs and tables in class on Wednesday. Please make sure you bring in a copy of the lab notes (PDF).

*Good Charts*

There are some great resources on the Web for creating visuals. This page, put together by some folks at Illinois State, offers some general principles for creating graphics, some explanations of the graphic types and how they should be used, and also gives some examples of bad visual design. The page lists a point from Strunk & White that really captures one of the main ideas I hope everyone comes away with in this class:

"A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences for the same reason that a drawing should contain no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts."

It's easy to scan this for valuable information and well worth a look. It even includes tips for anyone who plans to use Excel to create visuals, something that will certainly be useful for some of you on the research report assignment.

Lab notes

This reasearch seems like it will be very challenging to write a report about. Are we susposed to make some large assumptions about certain parts of the experiment? The lab notes do not seem to have enough information in them. Also, I think that the information from the results seems very confusing and vague. It seems to me like we are either missing somthing or we are susposed to make a lot of assumtions for this assignment.