The Science Of Scientific Writing Set C Coherence &Cohesion Coherence I Exercise 1 Coherence II Exercise 2 Cohesion Exercise 3 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: Paragraph Coherence and Cohesion
SET D: Sentences
SET E: Scientific Sections (including Methods)
SET F: Scientific Sections: The Discussion
SET G : Scientific Sections: The Introduction
SET H : The Paper as a Whole
Exercise 1
The paragraph below is from the Miller et al., (2008) paper that was analysed last week. The percentages shown after the first, third and final sentences show the percentage of students who picked that sentence as the paragraph's landmark sentence. Obviously there was much uncertainty amongst our reader sample. In light of the ideas preseented on the previous page,
- determine the cause of this uncertainty, making a note of what you think it is, and
- revise the paragraph so that the uncertainity is reduced.
Note: to do this exercise, and other similar exercises in Set C, you will have to make your best possible guess at what the author's original purpose actually was. That is something we cannot know for sure without talking to the authors themselves (although sometimes that does not help either!). It is not important that your guess at the real purpose of the paragraph matches with mine - all that matters is that your revised version is coherent.
Planning for biodiversity, when it did occur, rarely extended beyond the boundaries of individual jurisdictions(42%). Respondents to our survey reported that their departments regularly engaged in cross-jurisdictional collaboration, but typically not for the purpose of protecting native habitats and the species that depend on them. The higher levels of cross-jurisdictional conservation planning in the Seattle MSA were likely in response to Washington State's Growth Management Act (8%). Adopted in 1990 the Growth Management Act requires cooperation among counties and municipalities to counter threats to the environment and quality of life posed by uncoordinated and unplanned growth (Azerrad & Nilon 2006). Elsewhere, the bureaucratic structure for broad-scale planning frequently exists in the form of state planning offices, regional councils, and metropolitan planning organizations (Michalak & Lerner 2007), but these governance bodies often have very weak, if any, regulatory power, rely on voluntary compliance, and have little enforcement power (Bollens 1992). A more stringent, regulatory approach involving incentives and mandates may be necessary to achieve higher levels of jurisdictional collaboration in conservation planning (Wilkinson et al. 2005; Baldwin & Trombulak 2007)(50%).
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