How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, 5th edn.

As he reminds us throughout, the author of this book should know what he's writing about, as he has been in the business a long time; Dr Day was, among other things, on the Publications Board of the American Society for Microbiology for some 19 years. A transatlantic approach first becomes evident on the second page of the Preface, with a reference to 'graduate students', but apart from some differences in spelling and a few words or constructions which sound awkward to the English ear ('transmittal' for 'transmission'), this is not a drawback. What is more irritating is a prevailing sense of smugness: when reading the Preface I assumed the author was tongue-in-cheek while writing 'For those of you who share my tremendous admiration for How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, let me tell you a bit about its history', but by the time I'd finished the whole book, I was not so sure. The author declares his intention 'to make the reader laugh' and has weighed things down with what I suspect he would call a 'leavening' of humour; he may be a good raconteur in the flesh, but writing jokes down, one soon realizes, is a quite different talent, as my first quotation suggests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]