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OVERVIEW: The way to well-written science
How to do the Course
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
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Abbreviating an Introduction
Let's hone your skills at pruning down an Introduction.
Below is a "first draft" of the first paragraph of an Introduction to a
fictional paper on tiger conservation.
* Use the "allusion strategy" mentioned on
the previous page to reduce its length.
* Copy the revised version to the Rationale workspace
"India has an enormous variety of biogeographic zones: the
Trans-Himalaya, the Himalayas, the Semi-arid, the Western Ghats, the
Deccan Peninsula, the Gangetic Plains, the Coast, North-East and the
Islands. Of these the Western Ghats arguably has the greatest number of
threatened animals and plants. These include the Nilgiri Marten,
Wroughton's free-tail bat, Nasikabatrachus, the King Cobra, the tiger,
Anacolosa densiflora and Pseudoglochidion anamalayanum. Of these
species, the tiger has continued to garner the greatest attention.
Tiger conservation studies have identified a large number of factors
that influence population numbers: the requirement for large,
unfragmented landscapes; poaching; human-tiger conflicts and the need
for large prey. Recent studies have shown that it is this last factor
that is probably the most important."
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