The Science Of Scientific Writing    Set G      The Introduction     The Pivot Point of the Paper   Challenges to Coherence   Exercise 1     Hand in Glove     Exercise 2      Final Page .

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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

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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