Your writing Habits?

edited April 2016 in Community
Obviously, as an enthusiast, practitioner, or general community member, there is some interest in enhancement of the human experience through exploratory research. I am wondering, for those of you who keep notes, journals, data, etc., what are your writing practices? Do you keep a personal journal (like, a general journal)? Do you keep notes on what you do? What do they look like? Do you have training in one of the formal writing styles (MLA, APA, Chicago Style, AMA, etc?) How does your personal writing differ from your scientific writing, and how do both of those differ from how you share things in the community forum? I am wondering these things, because I would like to help develop a writing standard for the peer-reviewed journal project that has been proposed here. In order to do so, I would like to have a preliminary idea of what your writing currently looks like, and compare, between individuals, significant differences and similarities in style, to develop a process that will best fit everyone here.
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  • edited April 2016
    Cannot speak for secondary education, as this one is only 20 years old, about to be pushing 21 in a couple weeks. ^^

    Studied MLA in high school classes, and among all assignments essays in that class were the easiest. The 'formula' for an essay, to myself, is exceedingly easy, however, when it comes down to attempting to present something, it usually isn't within a formal setting.

    I never truly utilize true MLA format in day to day living, or honestly anywhere outside of a scholastic setting. There Is simply no need for the rigidity of it's rule sets.



    Moreso than less whenever I am trying to share information or data, I may break the ideas into groups and go into details about said groups, though I am also prone to tangents and little rants. Formalities when it comes to sharing information outside of a true scholastic setting feel wasted to me.

    I believe the purpose of language is to communicate and share ideas as a tool. If I use a word incorrectly to describe something more clearly to a person, I honestly believe that language has served myself better than if I had used it properly. It is a tool for our disposal. ^^

    But when it comes to tying together ideas or thoughts, forming sentences or perhaps even paragraphs... Personally, my goal is to simply present information. I am not hugely regarding grammatical accuracy or spelling correctness, I respect people's ability to understand when I say "gramattical" over "grammatical". Yes, the spelling is incorrect, and yes, I could fix it. But I think other people can read it.

    I don't use this as an excuse for bad writing. But in many given situations, I just don't feel like it's... Acute... enough to warrant further attention than the given topic I am discussing. This is more of a "in real time" issue.



    If it's scholastic presentation for educational purposes, being as concise and understandable as possible obviously makes much more sense. In such condition, perfection is always awesome. :3
  • As any documentation of biohacking related studies would be scientific, APA would be the standard format that should be used (at least in the "normal" scientific community).
  • Personal writing and blog posts tend towards the abrasive and conversational style.
    Actual experiments should be (and are usually though not always because I'm lazy) documented in standard lab notebook format.

    I've edited and co authored a few papers. The format is pretty standard. I feel like moving away from that wouldn't be a good idea in as much as continuity in form between journals is one of the things that helps establish legitimacy. 
  • I usually use APA in latex for my papers, and I write other things directly without repeating words as often as possible.
  • I pretty much write as I would talk (bad grammer). If I have to actually keep legible notes for some reason, where it has a slightly more professional notation to it then the format is more in the style of a case file/search warrant. All facts and nearly no speculation/personal option.

    Basically I'm lazy when I type. I also hate citing due to an argument I had with a professor regarding information I knew to be true due to my background and experience but not an everyday person. She told me I needed to site my source and I basically said that I was the source and she was an idiot. I'm kinda abrasive that way.
  • So the consensus, thus far seems to be a mixture of "apa" and "fuckit." LOL. I am well versed in APA, and could certainly design, instruct, and edit from that standpoint. What about AMA? Isn't that used for a lot of biomed stuff?
  • Yeah, AMA is more on the bio side, APA is more of a 'social science' thing, I thought
  • APA is a good scientific standard of writing. We can use either, I am just wondering on preferences and who uses what...
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