Under The Microscope

THE OXFORD DICTIONARY FOR SCIENTIFIC WRITERS AND EDITORS, Oxford University Press, 1991; 389 pages; $59.95

This book arrived at a fortuitous time, just as I was wrestling with the proofs of my first book. Now I can prove to my editor that the scientific community does not hypenate "infrared" or "ultraviolet", no matter how much he waves the Chicago Manual of Style at me.

This book will prove more useful to the scientific writer than merely as a means of settling arguments. It gives you a certain degree of confidence in some of the more esoteric terms with which one has to deal, including the names of even the most obscure scientific luminaries. The appendices include the standards (periodic table, Greek alphabet, and so on), but also have a most valuable and oft-missed section on how to cite references.

The editors note that this is not a dictionary of science, explaining the brevity of definitions or total lack of them. It's a tad disappointing that one really needs the range of companion volumes to make up a full scientific reference set, but this volume can provide a useful start.

A range of sciences are covered, including computing, astronomy, chemistry and zoology. There is one usage of extreme contention not fully explicated. What's the corrct abbreviation for kilobyte or kilobit? This, this first edition, mentions kbyte and kbit, but has nothing to say on the arguments over kB, kb, KB and Kb. I've seen people come near to blows over that one. Let's hope the next edition will provide an answer.

Vicki Hyde, NZSM