Aimi SCI writing course

13-day course.

Day 1

Principles of good writing

1. Have an idea to share
2. Engage your readers and not bore them
3. Revise
4. Cut all unecessities

Some bad habits in writing

1. Weighted phrases before a sentence(As it is well known, It should be emphasized that…)
2. Put many nouns rather than verbs(Adiction, Accumulation, …)
3. Empty words or unecessary adverbs(basic tenets of, methodologic, quite, …)
4. duplicated parts that convey the same logic(studies/examples, challenges/difficulties, successfull solutions,…)
5. 头重脚轻
6. jargons and acronyms created by yourself

Day 2

Some more tips of cutting

1. turn “not” to possitive(not harmful->safe, not different->comparable)
2. cut “there be”
3. prepositions for grammar(She say that->She say)

Some practices

Anti-inflammatory drugs may prevent/protect against Alzheimer’s Disease.
Clinical seizures occur in 0.5% to 2.3% of newborns.
Besides preventing cancer, P53 plays roles in aging, differentiation, and fertility.
It is most devastating and most expensive to treat injuries to the brain and spinal cord.(Injuries to the brain and spinal cord are among the most devastating and expensive)
An IQ test measures an individual’s verbal communication, reasoning, and/or motor and saptial perfomance.
From Figure 2, if/Figure 2 shows that the return kinetic energy is less than 3.5 $U_p$,(yields) two electron trajectories will be associateed with it.

Day 3

How to use active voice

advantage: cut more words and force you to be direct

Some practices

The DSMB commitee recommends that the study be halted.
We found(observed) major differences in the reaction times of the two study subjects. (The two study subjects differed in reaction times.)
The editors concluded that the authors falsified their data.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible-light snapshot of a planet circling another star.
Therefore, we rejected the hypothesis that …

Write with verbs

1.Use strong verbs
2.Avoid turning verbs into nouns
3.Don’t bury the main verb

Day 4

Verb practice example

Some teachers fear that using canned computer programs would prevent learning statistics well. would在这里是虚拟语气
We monitored student achievement levels before and after the introduction of computers in our course and found no detriments(damage or injury) in performances.

Review of each center’s progress in recruitment is important to ensure that the cost involved in maintaining each center’s participation is worthwhile.
We should review each center’s recruitment progesss to make ensure its continued participation is cost-effective.

These proportions mainly reflect mildly injured persons outside a hospital rather than increases of moderate and severe injuries.
Shifting proportions in injury severity may reflect stricter hospital admission criteria rather than true increases in moderate and severe injuries.

Studies have begun to describe the epidemiology of autism, including recent changes in the disorder’s prevalence and characteristics.

Multiple other mechanisms play a small role or work by impacting one of the three primary mechanisms.

Rejecting paths with poor signal-to-noise ratios left 678 velocity measurements of 7.5-second waves and 891 of 15-second waves.

A few grammar tips

data pl.n.
compared to = point out similarities between different things
copmare with(used more often in science) = to point out differences between similar things

that/which修饰定语从句 描述，多个中的一个/特指，额外信息，可被逗号隔开

单复数一致：Each student worries about his/her grade. -> All students worry about their grade.

Day 5

Punctuation

Use them to vary sentence structure.

dash(—): emphasize or to insert an abrupt description

colon(:): introduce sth., the part before a colon has at least a subject and a verb

semicolon(;): link similar small sentences, or to seperate items in a list

parenthesis(()): extra material or interesting tidbit, the reader can skip over it

Parallelism

and, or, but
parellel parts should have the same structure

Day 9

One more tip

break writing task into small and realistic goals

writing procedure

1. tables and figures; 2. results; 3. methods; 4. introduction; 5. discussion; 6. abstract

Day 11

Introduction

1. Background, known information
2. Knowledge gap, unknown information
3. Hypothesis, question, purpose statement
4. Approach, plan of attack, proposed solution
   not too professtional, not the results

Day 12

Discussion

more freedom

1. answer the question asked
2. support your conclusion(your data, others’ data)
3. defend your conclusion(anticipate criticisms)
4. give the “big-picture” take-home message

Abstract

put out snippets out of your paper
give the highlight of each part of your paper
should stand on its own