Jean-Luc Lebrun

I spent a quarter of my present life with a great American company: Apple Computer, in its Advanced Technology Group, promoting the work of its scientists to worldwide audiences. For Apple, I also ran a Singapore research Centre in IT. I now spend time writing books on ... well, writing, and I conduct seminars for research centers and institutes, as well as doctoral schools throughout Europe, Asia, and around the place where I live, in San Diego, California. Having spent close to 20 years lecturing on Scientific Writing, I made a number of discoveries on the way. First of all, it is very hard for a writer to evaluate his or her own work! So I've designed a tool to help scientists evaluate their scientific paper by themselves prior to submission to a journal. Dr Tomi Kinnunen and computer scientists from the university of Joenssu in Finland coded my design, and SWAN - the Scientific Writing Assistant was born. SWAN is a java applet that works on Mac, PC, and Linux computers. The tool is free. But it would help if you also read "Scientific Writing 2.0 - a Reader's and Writer's Guide" to understand why it is so useful. I also discovered something else. Writers who do not "integrate" readers into their writing create "reader failures". Interestingly, these failures have physiological and cognitive roots. They have little to do with grammatically correct and error-free writing. So to help out people who write non-fiction, reports, info sheets, and manuals for others, I wrote "THINK READER"— in which I show through example that a writer can overwhelm the brain by demanding too much from the reader's memory, attention, and knowledge. THINK READER, and you'll instantly become a better writer!