Writing class notes

It's been a very fruitful experience in the writing class. I'm learning so much every time. It's worth the effort to polish your writing because you'll get research funding, or a job if you write well.

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Keep your writing accurate, concise, clear, and objective. ACCO.

"Details added, impact lost."

Does the detail really matter? Is the detail necessary to convey the main point? Is it only one point, or are there 10 points you're trying to make?

Good exercise:

1. Write a subtitle for each paragraph. If you can't, or if it's too long, you need to split the paragraph.

2. After you finish writing, shuffle all the sentences and try to group them into paragraphs. It's a good way to find sentences that you wrote five times.

Stay focused. 

What's your problem statement? In other words, what's your goal? 

Order to write: results, discussion, then introduction. That way, you can keep your introduction relevent to the experiments. 

Add a narration at the beginning of results. A narration contains the approach and the goal, just to remind readers. A narration can also contain rationale. Why you used this subject, why in this experimental design, etc. It will put the results into context.

Keep the sentences short! Average 12-17 words. 

Use active voice to make your writing engaging, intriguing and exciting. Say "We found that..." instead of "It was found".

Go straight to the point rather than "Smith et al found that...". This part is something additional that the readers have to go through before getting to the main point. 

Homework: find a good example of writing that's accurate, concise, clear, easy to understand. Not cumbersome to read through. 

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I thought science needs long sentences!

Good reminder: people are busy and don't want to read. So, catch their attention, make it exciting to read your material, and make your writing easy to understand. 

Ideally, the subheadings of each paragraph can be put together to make summary. 

ライティングの授業、深い！！

毎週学ぶことがたくさん。そしていやおうなしに書かねばならない。隔週で自分の書いたものを提出して皆に見てもらうので…。やっぱ、「自己管理する最良の方法は、自己管理しなくて良い状況に自分を追い込むことだ」の格言通り。

長くて複雑な文章を書くのが科学英語の使命だと思っていたので笑、短く簡潔に、との指導に目からうろこ…。そうですよね、一文がだらだらとつづいてちゃいやになりますよね…。しかも何が言いたいの？ってなるし。以前翻訳した英文契約書では、最も長い文は8行に及んでいた。A4の紙で、普通サイズの文字で、一文が8行！　い、息継ぎできないわ…。当然ながら込み入った内容だし、3文くらいに分けて訳した気がする。

現代は読み物にあふれていて、基本、読者は読みたくない、読む時間がないと心得るべし。だから、読者に読みやすく、面白いじゃないか！と思ってもらえるような書き物にすべし。

良い文章が書ければ、研究費や良い職を得るのにも有利だしね。文書で表現できなければ、面接に呼んでもらえないということです。

コンピュータを使うようになったためか、書くのは簡単。でも、上手に書くというのは全く別のお話。クラスメイトの書いたものに対して、建設的にアドバイスするのも難しい。

第二言語なので思うように表現できずもどかしい、、、けれど、練習あるのみ！！

難しくて論点がつかみにくい論文ならいっぱいあるのだが（笑）。良い例を読んでみたいな…。お手本から学びたい。さがそう。