| Course Home  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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