Write down which titles and abstracts were helpful, informative and allowed you to understand what the paper was about. Once you’re ready to think about your own title and abstract, take a look online at some recent examples. Browse titles, and abstracts for ones that best inform you, and ones that are too complicated If you want to be a real overachiever, practice rewriting those abstracts so that they convey the research objective, methods used, results and findings in a clear, easy to understand way.Ħ. Look at what was done well, and what wasn’t. What sentences help you determine whether this paper will be helpful or not.What sentences helped you make predictions.What sentences were the easiest to understand.Review abstracts for their own readabilityīefore you start working on your own abstract, it might help to critically read others, especially for readability.Īs you look at other abstracts mark down: If you weren’t right, rewrite the title so that it would help a reader make a more accurate prediction about the paper’s content.ĥ. Were you right? If you were, tuck that title away noting why it worked well. Predict what you think the paper will really be about, and then briefly read the abstract, and discussion sections. Seeing other papers that do this will help you as you approach your own title.īrowse publication titles. Practice being able to predict what the paper is really about based on its titleĪ characteristic of a good title is being able to predict what the content will be about. When you write your own paper and approach those challenging sections, your translation skills will help readers at varied research levels comprehend your work.Ĥ. This exercise helps you become a better technical translator, especially for the methods and results sections. For each section’s takeaway, bullet the most pertinent information the researcher was trying to convey.Īs you do this exercise, make sure you simplify the information you’re bulleting. Practice bulleting out key takeaways from abstracts, results and conclusionsĪs you review papers, look at each section and develop a hypothetical “takeaway” section. Once you’re ready to start writing your own abstract, you will have had plenty of practice summarizing complex information in an easy to understand way.ģ. Reviewing abstracts and then simplifying them into TLDR summaries will improve reading comprehension and critical thinking. Rather than doing a mini paragraph, you can fashion your TLDRs into quick bullet points. Try not to write more than 2-3 sentences for your TLDR summary. Read over them, and make your own short TLDR sentences. To do this exercise, just browse recent publication abstracts. These summaries pop up at the end of long posts as a quick takeaway from the long paragraph posted just above. Practice turning abstracts into TLDR summaries When it comes time to draft your own title and abstract, you’re going to be much better at conveying your information in a very straightforward manner.Ģ. Have fun with this exercise by using emojis, slang, and modern text message-style abbreviations (for example, DIY, ICYMI, WRT). If you want to really challenge yourself, keep the character length to Twitter’s old constraints of 140 characters or less. Search random publication titles and abstracts, and then come up with a very short tweetlike paraphrase of the material that is also very approachable. Tweeting (or practice tweeting) some of the most difficult topics builds those writing muscles.ĭoing this exercise is simple. Not only is there a character limit, but there’s a tone and a purpose, and a different type of audience. Second, tweets come with certain writing constraints. Why would being able to tweet a research paper’s title or abstract be so important? First, it is one channel of promoting science to the rest of the world. Practice turning titles and abstracts into Tweets These tools will help you think deeper about your research publication and make it more accessible to a broader audience.Īt the end of this article, you’ll also find a list of writing and publication resources for your next paper.ġ0 easy manuscript writing exercises to build your skills 1. But in case that time comes up, or you have a student needing help, or a colleague needing a little advice, here are some quick manuscript skill-building exercises. Who has time for practice? Mostly no one, not when it comes to manuscript writing anyway.
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