Why I am here?

I was subtly informed last week that my technical writing ability is nonexistent. This information wasn't news to me, I knew one of my biggest challenges while working on a PhD was going to be improving the quality of my writing and grammar. I did not properly gauge just how bad my writing ability was. I was always a math and science guy so paying attention to the snotty English teacher who even questioned if I was going to go to college was extremely low on my list. I never had to take any English courses during my undergraduate education because I had taken college level English in high school. I seriously doubt if they would have helped this deficiency since English classes always had a tendency to focus on creative writing, which is not my issue.

So what did I learn during this last session of technical writing? I have a tendency to use run on sentences. The difference between which and that (which I now know..(I think)). The usage of commas, semicolons and punctuation in general is a foreign concept to me. Latex does not have a grammar editor (damnit). I learned not to submit a copy of my paper to my advisor before I proof read, and make sure all of my "half" paragraphs are out. Also, all of the non-native English speakers I work with write better than I do.

So essentially I'm going to be using this area for practice writing and discussing technical things. I'm currently working on two research projects. One in Cyber Physical Systems, and another in Distributed Fault Tolerance. I'll mostly discuss what I've learned as I go in attempts to improve the way I write up these projects next time the opportunity arrives.


p.s. I'm also a terrible public speaker but that's because I have a tendency to wait until 30 minutes before the talk to begin preparing. I've been successful on occasion if I'm studious about preparing well in advance.

Alright .. time to email this to the wife so that she can beat up my writing.