Making Sense in Geography and Environmental Studies--a Student's Guide to Research, Writing, and Style (review)

Making Sense in Geography and Environmental Sciences—a Student's Guide to Research, Writing and Style provides advice to students to overcome writer's block, become familiar with their institution's library, and to avoid common errors in writing. The title of the book implies that it is designed specifically for students in geography and the environmental sciences, and the author's claim to examine both the general precepts for effective writing as well as "the special requirements of reporting the research process and findings in the social, physical, and biological sciences" (p. ix). However, I found little advice specifically for students in physical geography or the environmental sciences, and thus I believe the title is somewhat misleading.

Margot Northey is a specialist in communication and former Dean of Queen's University's Business School in Ontario. David Knight is a professor of political geography at the University of Guelph, also in Ontario, and his work focuses on territoriality and the spatial organization of society. Dr. Knight's interests are demonstrated in the examples used throughout the book. When an example is given, it is usually from the perspective of planning or political geography, and there are no examples that would appear relevant to a student from environmental studies or from the physical side of geography.

While reading this book, I was frequently confused as to the intended audience. The book has many helpful suggestions, but it also brings up many concepts that may be too advanced for undergraduates. I will give several examples because this dilemma kept resurfacing. To wit, the book's fifth chapter, "Writing an Essay" assumes that the reader is familiar with the approaches of logical positivism, feminism, humanism, postmodernism, structuralism and realism; other parts of the book provide simple advice such as remembering to put your name on your paper. The explanation of deductive and inductive approaches is brief and inadequate for students new to these concepts. Nor do the authors explain why or how students should consider these concepts in their own writing and research. If the book is intended for undergraduate students, which is the impression given by the chapter on lab reports, this leaves me wondering why more advanced concepts were brought up if they were not going to be explained in a more complete manner.

Making Sense in Geography and Environmental Studies does contain some very good advice, but the best advice is often buried and hard to find. Key sentences that are so good they should be bold and repeated to students, are found midway within long lists or often at the end of long sections or paragraphs. Some of these long lists of advice to students may be more beneficial as shorter bulleted lists that are more to the point.

The authors do not seem to have spent enough time becoming familiar with how modern students operate. This edition supposedly has been updated to include the role of computers in writing, but I think it only weakly attempts to incorporate the use of computers. Most university students use computers in all phases of writing, from searching for interesting topics to taking notes on books and articles. The authors advise students to take notes for a research paper on index cards, and they remind them to keep such notes banded so they do not get mixed up. Conversely, typing notes on a computer not only allows one to keep all quotes, notes and other information in one document under the reference of the source, but it also provides the capability to search for a certain phrase, which is invaluable in the research and writing process. The section on preparing presentations is useful and gives good advice on organizing one's thoughts. Although this section did recognize and comment on the use of slide projectors, it ignored the use of PowerPoint for presentations...