Self-Paced Scientific Writing Training – Materials
This series of 14 lessons and exercises was developed at the now defunct Center for Scientific Communication at Vanderbilt by Jessica Moore in 2010.
Lessons & Critical/revision exercises
Introduction: papers vs. proposals
A paper’s results are known and proposal’s results aren’t, so the two documents should set up their arguments differently
Module 1: sections of papers and proposals
Lesson 2—Displaying data & Exercise 2
Organize your data to set up a story and design your figures so they’re easy to interpret
Lesson 3—Linking experiments & Exercise 3
Results and research plan sections
Relate each result or experiment to the overall story
Lesson 4—Explaining rationale & Exercise 4
Introductions and specific aims
Get editors and reviewers excited! Exercise 4
Lesson 5—Putting results in context & Exercise 5
Discussions
Make sense of results and address experts’ concerns
Lesson 6—summarizing & Exercise 6
Abstracts and specific aims
Module 2: the writing process
Lesson 7—Getting started & Exercise 7
Know your document’s message before you start writing, and plan each section around it
Lesson 8—Drafting and developing & Exercise 8
Don’t worry too much, but plan ahead
Module 3: revision techniques
Lesson 9—Organization within a section & Exercise 9
Make strings of sentences into unified paragraphs that progress logically
Lesson 10—organization within paragraphs & Exercise 10
Indicate where your paragraphs are going
Lesson 11—emphasis & Exercise 11
Place key ideas strategically
Lesson 12—structure for flow & Exercise 12
Use old information as context for new information
Lesson 13—transitions & Exercise 13
Indicate the relationship of a sentence to the previous one
Lesson 14—clear sentences & Exercise 14
Say what you mean, use your verbs, and get rid of fluff