REU Writing Workshop III
John Anderson
Northwestern University
July 31 and August 1, 2007
Overview
• Large group discussion
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20 min
Recap: the writing process in action
Using different types of feedback
Questions for revision: stories, structures, sentences
Using figures effectively
Writing an effective abstract
• Individual writing
30 min
• Status of the project
• Examining the structure of the draft
• Flagging sentences for revision
• Small group discussion
40 min
One model of the writing process
• Create figures and draft captions
• Figures express results and data
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Discuss with advisor
Make outline
Write draft
Review with other students
• May or may not be co-authors on the project
• Revise: prepare error-free draft for advisor
• Iterate from there
• Abstract is usually written last
Some thoughts on process
• Stages are usually not a simple linear series
• Planning, drafting, revising, more planning, more drafting, more
revising, editing, revising, editing, revising…
• Drafts are tools for getting feedback
• Reflect on what decisions you need to make
• Understand what kinds of feedback you can expect from different
readers
• Bring different types of readers into the mix
• Ask them specific questions
• Not all pieces of a draft may be equally “cooked”
• So they may require different amounts of heat and pressure to
finish them
Revising vs. editing vs.
proofreading
• Revision = seeing again
• How can this point be different?
• Global revision: questions about purpose, audience, meaning that
affect the whole thing (or a major section of the thing)
• Local revision: questions about paragraphs and sentences
• Editing = clarifying meaning
• How does this point connect with a reader
• Once I know what I want to say, what is the best way to say it?
• Proofreading = eliminating mistakes
• Better: eliminating ambiguity
• To make any of these steps easier, try breaking it
down into distinct subcategories
Using different types of feedback
• Reader-based feedback
• What happens when the reader reads: “movies of [the reader’s]
mind” (Peter Elbow)
• Can help locate problem passages
• Criteria-based feedback
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How the draft meets or does not meet specific parameters
Can mean mechanics: spelling, grammar, formatting
Can also mean conventions: expectations, style, voice
Submission guidelines: good example of criteria
• Learn how to get the most out of both types
• Understand how one can masquerade as the other
• Ask for what you need
Questions for revision
• What story are you telling?
• What appears at the beginnings and ends of
sentences, paragraphs, and sections?
• Where is new information introduced?
• What are the “actors” and “actions?”
• Do your actors and actions map on to subjects and
verbs?
• Are the subject and verb close to each other?
(see Gopen and Swan)
Using figures effectively
• Choose appropriate figures
• What type of data?
• What type of story?
• Preserve the quality of the original graphic
• Vector vs. raster
• Screen vs. print resolution
• Make captions stand on their own
• Avoid cryptic references to figures (“See figure 1”)
• Avoid chartjunk
• Drop shadows
• 3-D bar graphs and pie charts
Every picture tells a story…
But it doesn’t tell it on its own
Figure 9: AFM images of collagen type I fibrils on ethanol-cleaned glass slide. (Scan rate of 1.001 Hz.)
Topography (left), amplitude (right).
Figure 10: Digitally processed images of Figure 9 (left) using the MetaMorph Image Acquisition and
Image Processing Program (Universal Imaging, Inc.).
Explain what the figures show
Perhaps the most interesting image is shown in Figure 9. In
this figure, and in the processed image (Figure 10), the ends of
several collagen fibers are visible and appear to be composed
of several smaller structures wound around each other into the
larger collagen fiber. This suggests that these structures are
indeed collagen fibrils, and these smaller strands represent
microfibrils wound together. We can see that several of these
fibrils have these unwound ends, indicating that they have
potentially been broken. This theory is supported by the
structure on the upper-right corner of the original image, which
appears to have been broken and consequently shows this
striated structure. This seems to suggest that, unlike the
poly-L-lysine samples, something in the preparation of the
ethanol-cleaned samples caused the collagen fibers to be
broken and prevent them from cross-linking sufficiently. This
would be an interesting relationship to examine further if
more conditions were controlled in order to determine exactly
what is causing this behavior. (Nocedal, 2006, emphasis added)
Writing an effective abstract
• Make it complete
• Abstract should stand on its own
• Test by reading as though skimming: abstract + figures = decision
• Follow the order of the paper
• Purpose/problem
• Approach/methods
• Results/significance
• Make it succinct
• Select key statements from the body
• Remove supporting details
• Remember that the abstract is not an introduction
Sample abstract: Nocedal
The aim of this research was to investigate the use of atomic
force microscopy (AFM) for the high-resolution imaging of
collagen fibers in aqueous media. Collagen plays a vital role in
many processes in vivo, especially in structural integrity, yet few
studies have used AFM to investigate the structure of these
fibers. Type I collagen was used in this study on AP-mica, polyL-lysine-coated glass slides and on ethanol-cleaned glass slides
to determine what structures these fibers assume in vitro under
the various conditions. It was found that AFM is in fact a viable
method for determining collagen structure, and that type I fibrils
can be seen in both cross-linked and isolated forms. A resolution
of about 20–30 nm was achieved. This research forms a
foundation for further investigation into the different types of
collagen structures in vivo and the environmental conditions that
cause them. (Nocedal, 2006)
Purpose
Methods
Results
Sample abstract: Wei
The use of a variable resistor-capacitor (RC) bridge circuit was
previously reported to be a viable solution to the spurious contribution
of fringe capacitance during nanoscale impedance microscopy (NIM).
In this paper, a refinement of this technique combined with standard
NIM is presented as an impedance characterization tool for organic
light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). In this technique, a sinusoidal bias is
split into two equal branches, which are subsequently sent to the
tunable RC circuit and the sample. By balancing the phase and
magnitude of the two branches, the contribution to the current through
the sample/tip junction can be directly monitored. To demonstrate the
improved detection limit offered by this technique over more
conventional NIM, conductive AFM measurements were performed on
8 μm by 8 μm OLED devices, demonstrating significant improvement in
resolution in the current and phase maps. This paper also suggests
possible future research that is necessary to fully enable impedance
spectroscopy at the nanoscale. (Wei, 2006)
Purpose
Methods
Results
Example: deriving the purpose
Abstract:
The use of a variable resistor-capacitor (RC) bridge circuit was previously reported to be a
viable solution to the spurious contribution of fringe capacitance during nanoscale
impedance microscopy (NIM). In this paper, a refinement of this technique combined with
standard NIM is presented as an impedance characterization tool for organic light-emitting
diodes (OLEDs).
Body:
A previous experiment9 presented the use of a variable resistor-capacitor (RC) circuit to
compensate for the spurious contribution to the AC flow by fringe capacitance in NIM
measurements. By analogy to the variable RC components in electrical bridge circuits, this
technique was referred to as bridge enhanced nanoscale impedance microscopy (BE-NIM).
In this experiment, cAFM scanning was performed on gold electrodes patterned on silicon
oxide grown on n-type silicon at a single AC bias and frequency. It was demonstrated that
with BE-NIM, the detection limit of NIM could be improved by at least several orders of
magnitude. Here we present a refined BE-NIM technique that is applicable to operational
OLEDs for the first time. This work may lead to future development in impedance study at
various frequencies.
(Wei, 2006)
Which statement most accurately
describes your current status?
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“We have results (or expect them very soon) that validate our
hypothesis. The draft tells an interesting story (even if not complete
yet), and I’m ready to write an abstract.”
“We have results, but they’ve taken us in an unexpected direction. The
draft tells a story, but I’m not sure it’s the one we want or need to tell.”
“Our results are incomplete (or worse, uninteresting). We are in the
process of changing our direction. I’m not sure what story I can tell
about what we did.”
“Technical difficulties have prevented us from following through. The
draft tells a story, but it’s more about where the problem came from
than what we did with it. There’s something interesting here, but results
confirming the hypothesis will have to wait for another day.”
Write a statement that describes the current relationship of the writing
to the research. How close is the story in the draft to the story you can
tell (or will soon be able to tell) from the results?
Examining the structure of the
draft
• In each section, mark the divisions between
“chunks”
• Larger than a paragraph
• Smaller than a section
• Any places where a subheading would be helpful
• In each paragraph, underline the most
important sentence
• What statements are essential to the meaning of the whole
paragraph?
• Where are they located?
Flagging sentences for revision
• Assemble a collection of key sentences
• Key sentence in each paragraph
• Sentences at beginnings and ends of sections
• Figure captions
• Draw a line under the first six words
• How clear is the meaning of the sentence’s opening?
• Select three sentences to revise
• Try this: bring subject and verb closer together
• Try this: replace “placeholder” verb with real action
• Try this: reverse order of information presented
Discussion
• Looking for stories
• Compare notes: project status
• For drafts closer to completion: review abstract, figure
captions
• For earlier drafts: review introduction
• Looking for structure
• How many subsections does each section have?
• Where are sections in need of reordering?
• Looking at sentences
• Compare originals and revisions