Science-terrific Writing

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Science-terrific Writing
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Swim against the current

• In direct opposition to everything your high
  school teacher and probably your college English
  professor taught you
• Were conveying information not writing a novel
• Shorter is better!
• Overall and sentences

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Before You Write

• Be completely familiar with problem, possible
  solutions, methods, analyses and implications
• Know your stuff
• Know the story (plan what you will write)
• Where does it begin (problem, possible solution)
• What goes on in the middle (try out the solution)
• How does it end (did the solution work)
• Know who your audience will be

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Start Writing Kind of

• Detailed outline to the level of each paragraph
• List topic sentences for each paragraph
• Topic sentences should summarize an idea and
  content of paragraph
• Include Goal and List of Objectives
• Review topic sentences for logical structure
• Do the topic sentences follow the story line

Reality Sometimes this is done after youve
written But, IT MUST BE DONE!!!
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Write like youve never written before!

• Be clear, simple, concise, and organized (JWM
  guidelines Ratti and Smith 19987)
• Rules
• 1. Never tell me anything I dont need to know
• 2. Never fail to tell me anything I need to know
• To repeat the study
• To understand the study/results
• 3. Never tell me something more than once
  (except maybe in discussion for emphasis)

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Introduction

• No heading
• Set up problem
• Summarize current knowledge (i.e., cite, Cite,
  CITE!) and state any gaps or questions generated
  (this is what you will be addressing)
• Have an obvious knock me over the head with it
  problem statement
• State Goal (general statement)
• Should directly address problem statement
• State specific objectives
• Numbered objectives are always good
• Answers/results from objectives should achieve
  goal

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Study Area

• Present information about study area in past
  tense (e.g., precip., temp.)
• Figure showing study area at the state level is
  always good.

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Methods

• Organize in order of objectives
• For each objective have an obvious method.
• To determine density I (we)
• To estimate survival I(we)
• Be sure to cite those responsible for, or
  describe a particular method/analysis
• 2 Parts 1. Data collection 2. Data analyses
• Data collection
• Who, WHY, when, where, how
• Do not describe anything that is not used in an
  analysis or presented as a result
• Data analyses
• Should be clear (from data collection section)
  where data for each analysis came from

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Separate second level headingData Analysis

• State analyses explicitly do not leave anything
  open to interpretation
• Important for repeatability
• Again follow order of objectives
• Make sure there is an analysis for each objective
• Make sure there is not an analysis that is not
  presented as an objective

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Results

• Present sample sizes
• Arrange according to objectives
• These can be very short at times (dont worry)
• Use tables and figures to present information
  more concisely
• Highlight pertinent information from table in
  text
• Reference Tables/Figures correctly (see
  guidelines)
• Do not include extraneous information
• Extraneous not needed for replication or
  understanding

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Discussion

• Do not repeat information in results section
• Use this section to convince me whether you
  solved the problem (or not!)
• What have/would others say about your results
• This section should contain quite a few citations
• Should we do anything else to clarify the problem
• Did the results create any new/interesting
  questions?

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Literature Cited
Check! Journal! Guidelines!!
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Assignment for Next Week

• Use information in this presentation
• Write an outline with major sections of final
  paper
• Within each section, list topic sentences
• Check for logical structure (it might be good to
  have someone unfamiliar with your study read and
  check for logical structure)