Wrap up

The key things I’ve learned about science communication from this course are techniques for writing position papers, strategies around editing of others’ work, and how careless I am with referencing.

The initial section on position papers was gold: go through the opposing viewpoint fairly, clearly, point by point, and then address each point with contradictory evidence. Simple! But writing an argument this way was not something I’d consciously explored before. I’m respectful enough of others to argue similarly in real life (unless you really push my buttons) but I’ve realised I’m a lot more self-righteous and ‘show-offy’ on the page; I need to take care that I don’t get carried away. The ability to stand back and dispassionately weigh up the opposing positions without getting snarky will be a definite gain.

Concentrate! Photo credit: thevintagenews.com

I also learned about my limits around working with other people’s writing, which I found more difficult and stressful than I expected.  If I were to do this again I would insist that only finished material was given to me to work on, and refuse to accept any re-writes while in the process of revision. Having others change their material while I was in the midst of revision, trying to stitch the sections together, was frustrating. And I’ll admit – I was already proofreading, while revising, when I should have left that til last. Can’t. Help. Myself. This made version control a nightmare, and ultimately the version I submitted as the final report had errors I was sure I had already corrected, including a MISSING APOSTROPHE. The Shame.

Finally, I’ve learned that I need to get my referencing right the first time and check

Photo credit: freelancers union.org

the prescribed format there and then. Journal articles drive me particularly mad. Why does it have to be so complicated?  

Twice (twice!) I made the mistake of deleting non-crucial material from the text, but leaving the reference on the list. I checked the team’s sections against their references carefully for this but overlooked my own. On the plus side, very glad to have learned the ‘command T’ trick for reference list formatting. Genius.

What I still need to learn about writing/communicating in science is the editing of my own work: what to focus on and what to leave out. I think I’m so good at it, but I still include a lot of extraneous words and details that just don’t need to be there. Oh! Just did it again. In blog 8 I sang Carl Sagan’s praises for leaving the right gaps, but I still have a lot to learn about this. ‘Stop giving reasons’ is my focus now. So much can be inferred, and I need to trust my readers to join the dots for themselves - without forgetting the difference between general knowledge and specialist knowledge that I might need to explain.  Knowing what to spell out and what to leave people’s imaginations is what I still need to learn. More haiku practice might help.