The Science Of Scientific Writing Set B Paragraphs: Intro to Readers' Expectations First Three Expectations Exercise 1 Quiz A Fourth Expectation: Coherence Paragraph flexibility: explicit and implicit texts Exercise 2 Final Page.
OVERVIEW: The way to well-written science
PART I: Paragraphs and Sentences
SET A: Paragraphs: The Maps Behind Them
SET B: Paragraphs: Using Maps to Meet Readers' Expectations
SET C: Paragraphs with Something Extra: Points and Tails
SET D: The Generic Section: Expectations and Maps as Blueprints
SET E: Scientific Sections: The Methods and Results
SET F: Scientific Sections: The Discussion
SET G : Scientific Sections: The Introduction
SET H : Sentences
SET I : The Paper as a Whole
PART II: The Paper and its Sections
SET 1: Argument Parts
SET 2: Indicator Words
SET 4: Locating Arguments in Prose
SET 5: Rationale's Essay Planner
SET 6: Evidence in Arguments: Basis Boxes
Synthesis 1: Position-Early Paragraphs
Synthesis 2: Position-Final Paragraphs
Synthesis 3: Writing a Discussion I
Synthesis 4: Writing a Discussion II
Set B: Readers' expectations of paragraphs, and how maps can help us to meet them
In Set A you learned how to create maps for the different styles of paragraphs used in scientific papers. These maps are useful tools for refining your ideas and for sharing those ideas with your immediate collaborators. But when you want to communicate more widely you need to be able to convert those maps into paragraphs. To do so you need to know how readers expect paragraphs to be organised, so that you can work with your readers, rather than against them. Readers can absorb written information more efficiently, and more accurately, if it is presented in the formats that they expect, either consciously or not.
In this Set we will look at the most common expectations of paragraph organisation, and at each point we will also see how easily we can use a pre-existing map to generate an acceptable paragraph. We will continue with this theme in Set C.
Note: For most of this set we will focus on paragraphs with more than three sentences, because they are more difiicult to write. You might well think: "Well, why don't I only write short paragraphs?" If you did this, your readers may well have little trouble with each paragraph in isolation, but they would likely have major problems with the text as a whole, which will probably seem to lack cohesion. The most extreme example of this would be to make each sentence of the paper a separate paragraph! In Set C we will reconsider short paragraphs, but for the moment imagine that we are always thinking about paragraphs of four or more sentences.
(Optional: You can read more about paragraph length here.)
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