The Chemist's English: With "Say It in English, Please!" [Hardcover]

Robert Schoenfeld (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2001 | ISBN-10: 0895739461 | ISBN-13: 978-0895739469 | Edition: 3 Rev Sub

In the days of globalization speaking and writing good English is a must, not only for chemists. That good English stands the test of time can be proved by this longselling title!

Comments on this book:

'Chemists owe it to themselves to read this book, and a high proportion of those who do are likely to want a copy to keep all to themselves ...'
Journal of the American Chemical Society
'Recommended without qualification; and a suitable gift for friends.'
Chemical and Engineering News
'There are plenty of useful tips ... in this modestly priced bijou.'
Clinical Chemistry
'What recommends THE CHEMIST'S English is above all its readability ...'
Angewandte Chemie
'This book is too good to be confined to chemists; the message is there for all scientists.'
Australian Broadcasting Commission.
'This book, which may well be one of a kind, is an utter delight.'
Carbohydrate Chemistry
'The book might well serve as a prescribed text for PhD students.'
Nature

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 193 pages
• Publisher: Vch Verlagsgesellschaft Mbh; 3 Rev Sub edition (December 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0895739461
• ISBN-13: 978-0895739469
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,621,612 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Laughing out loud, January 28, 2005

By 

A. J. Cornish Bowden (Marseilles, France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Chemist's English, 3rd rev. ed. with "Say It in English, Please!" (Hardcover)

Books on writing technical English are quite common, and some of them are useful. However, they are not usually the sort of books to be read for entertainment or for which description "witty and amusing" springs to mind.

Robert Schoenfeld's book is the exception to all this. It has a great deal of perfectly serious things to say, and its advice is generally excellent, but it manages to be effortlessly humorous at the same time. Probably in reality it wasn't effortless at all, but it just reads that way, like the best journalism. Schoenfeld was for many years the editor of the Australian Journal of Chemistry, and most of his book appeared originally as articles in Chemistry in Australia, so he was a sort of journalist, but was clearly a chemist first.

You might doubt that it would be possible to be witty and entertaining about a subject apparently as dry as quantity calculus -- basically, whether you should label the axis of your graph with x (cm), as Schoenfeld and I would prefer, or with x/cm, as many of the leaders in chemical thermodynamics insist with a passion that might seem hard to credit -- but you would be wrong. Even though I have now read the two chapters on this subject many times, I can still read them one more time just for the amusement -- and really, the whole book is like that: Schoenfeld manages to find amusing things to say about such uninviting topics as the balancing of parentheses and the use of mathematical symbols in English sentences.

The main (and trivial) complaint that I have about this book is that it is written primarily for chemists, and I would like to have a book that was directed more towards biochemists. I have sometimes thought of stealing Schoenfeld's idea and writing one myself, but unfortunately I'm not witty enough.