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Writing well is a valuable skill, but one often lacking among higher and lower level employees. Most people recognize good writing when they see it, but are at a loss to define exactly what it is. I define it as writing that's easy to follow and understand.
This brief provides the basics to help you write easy-to-read materials. Writing in an easy-to-read manner is a skill. It takes years of experience to make it part of your everyday writing habits. This brief gives you some background information and "tricks of the trade" to get you going.
Writing for publication is an important way to contribute to the knowledge base for professional nurses. This paper reviews the process of writing a professional paper from identification of a topic to the time the paper appears in print. Web-based resources to facilitate the writing process are highlighted.
In spite of a popular belief that every scientist knows how to write a professional paper, it is a sad fact that only a few scientists are really good writers. Hence the need for this paper. The process of writing is divided in three general steps (preparing, writing, and editing). In the first step, it is necessary to comprehend the future text as the whole. In the next step, one has to deal with its composition. In the third step, it is important to divide editing in precisely defined actions (adding and checking data, grammatical and stylistic corrections, spell-checking). The article also addresses certain differences between English and Croatian related to the meaning of words of Latin origin and provides examples of stylistic editing of scientific texts.
The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics Dietetic Internship Program has developed a series of workshops and assignments to enhance the writing skills of interns. Three workshops cover basic writing skills, development of materials for the lay public, and basic elements of journalistic writing for professional audiences. The interns received a variety of assignments throughout the year to build competencies learned in these workshops. Evaluation forms have been developed to make assessing the assignments easier for the instructors and to give feedback to the interns. Evaluation reports from interns and graduates indicate that the program is effective and appreciated.
A method of identifying the writing age of blue ballpoint ink has been established for imperative demand of forensic laboratory. The content of the volatile component in blue ballpoint ink was determined by gas chromatography (GC). The absorbance of the dye in the blue ballpoint ink was measured by ultraviolet-visible spectrometry (UV-Vis). A writing age curve of the blue ballpoint ink has been established by the ratio of the content of the volatile components and the dye, based on the identification of 74 kinds of blue ballpoint inks, from both domestic and international origins. The change of benzyl alcohol or phenoxyethyl alcohol was tested with the writing age. Blue ballpoint inks of different kinds were detected and the repeatability of the experiment was investigated. The results indicated that the method is reliable and systematic, and especially suitable for practical cases.
As it is a frequently encountered problem in the laboratory of forensic science nowadays to distinguish whether the questioned documents, such as deeds, contracts, and receipts, written in ballpoint pen inks are true or not, and identify the writing age of them, it is very essential to establish a simple, sensitive and accurate method to examine the similarities and differences of the ballpoint pen inks and identify the writing age. The present paper introduces a technique that allows identifying the kind and the writing age of the blue ballpoint pen inks. The technique is based on using a high performance liquid chromatographic method for distinguishing the similarities and differences in dyes of blue ballpoint pen inks and determining changes in dyes of blue ballpoint pen inks developed with age, and these changes can be evaluated by the ratio of peak areas.
Graduate and postgraduate health-care professional training and postdoctoral fellowship programs that deny trainees opportunities to practice both oral and written communication skills produce an incompletely trained health-care provider unable to compete for faculty positions at university hospitals and affiliated staffs. Therefore, it is imperative that program directors make medical writing a prerequisite to successful completion of postgraduate training programs. To make trainees as well as administrators and faculty aware of the importance of oral and written communication skills, a variety of oral abilities needed for presenting medical findings prior to publication are detailed. The use of 2 x 2 slides to support a presentation as well as transparencies, movies, and videotapes are considered. The poster session/scientific exhibit, now becoming more visible because of increasing attendance at professional meetings, is also explained. Written communication abilities are discussed. Consideration is given to the writing of professional manuscripts for publication in a refereed journal. Other types of written communication include case reports, clinicopathological conferences, letters to the editor, book reviews, books, and book contributions. The opportunity to learn needed skills must be offered in the postgraduate health-care curriculum. Mandatory medical writing will maximize the marketability of black health-care professionals for faculty staff placement. Moreover, the establishment of a "track record" early in a professional career will increase the likelihood that black health providers are awarded grants for research.
Using US Department of Defense text sampling procedures, nine allied health journals were analyzed for readability and selected writing style indices via Right Writer, a commercial software program. Two indices of readability were computed for each journal as were several indices of writing style. The computed readability ranged from 13.0 to 15.4, depending upon the journal in question. Two journals showed the highest levels of readability (15.4) compared to the other seven journals. The writing style analyses indicated generally normal ranges for the descriptive and jargon indices, but seven journals showed below recommended strength indices. Sentence structure analyses indicated a need to reduce sentence structure complexity. Implications for journal editors and authors are discussed.
The purpose of this paper is to provide the novice nurse author with guidelines to follow for preparing and writing a manuscript. Nurses are responsible for the education of other nurses, and writing and publishing play a major role in providing current knowledge within the profession. By illustrating the mechanics of the writing process, it is hoped that more nurses will approach the task of sharing their ideas on paper.
Medical writing and publication are important in developing the scholarly base of family medicine, as well as being integral to an academic career. The author must choose the best format for the topic-research report, review article, book chapter, or other. The five steps in writing for publication are: 1) conceptualization of the topic and how best to present data; 2) organization of material; 3) composition; 4) revision of drafts; and 5) manuscript preparation and submission. The author must overcome the impediments to scholarly activity, such as lack of time, and resolve to ascribe a high priority to medical writing and publication.
The purpose of this article is to assist family medicine researchers in writing organized and concise articles. While the basis of any good article is the quality of the study it describes, the chances of the article being published and communicating results effectively to readers can be improved through effective writing. The IMRAD (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) format is used to instruct authors as to the contents of an article. Suggestions for improving the writing and publishing of articles include: outline the article, format the article for submission in the style specified by the journal, obtain reviews from coauthors and colleagues, and use an editor.
Writing skills are an important asset to the allied health professional. In this article the author presents the rationale that writing assignments should not be limited to English courses, but should span across the curricula. Several types of writing assignments are described, as well as their specific application in radiography programs.
Although courses in technical writing are no longer suggested in the Curriculum Guide for Programs in Radiologic Technology, the writer believes that writing is essential to the growth of the profession and development of the professional. Emphasis is placed on some of the benefits that accrue to students who are exposed to technical writing as part of their technology curriculum.
The ability to communicate in writing is a critical component of effective leadership. Yet, available "helpful hints" about business writing are often oversimplified, unspecific, or even misleading. This article, abridged from Harvard Business Review, identifies all the elements of business writing and provides a practical, commonsense discussion of each, to help you improve both upward and downward written communications in your organization.
This study investigated the development of nonvocal teaching of reading and writing in severely retarded children. Fourteen subjects were selected who demonstrated limited communication skills, and were randomly placed into two groups. Group A received training procedures utilizing abstract plastic symbols which were arbitrarily assigned to represent specific words. The training program was divided into three phases. Phase I consisted of training left to right sequencing of four color--coded forms; Phase II consisted of training of matching symbols to stimulus pictures; and Phase III consisted of training of fading from symbols to printed words. The subjects completing this training program demonstrated the ability to learn selected reading and writing skills, i.e., they learned to sequence an article, subject noun, auxiliary verb, and verb. They also demonstrated functional semantic comprehension of five nouns and five verbs. Thirteen subjects finished the communication training program in less than four months with a mean training of 7 hours and 55 minutes. This is approximately 2 hours of training a month per subject to learn these skills. The data showed that Group B (rebuses) required fewer trials than Group A (abstract symbols) to meet criterion for Phase II, matching symbols to stimulus pictures. This suggests that Group B subjects may have had a meaningful association for the rebus signs which generalized to stimulus pictures. Group A (abstract symbols) required fewer trials than Group B (rebuse) to meet criterion for Phase 111, matching printed words to stimulus pictures. This indicates that perhaps Group A's training with abstract symbols positively affected learning to read printed words. The success of the visual nonvocal treatment program with the severely retarded is encouraging. Indeed, this is a different and viable approach in teaching communication skills (reading and writing) to the retarded.
Writing at adolescence has a non negligible part in identity's construction. Vertical writing as tags, graphs and graffiti refer to a narcissism deficiency and express a pulsional necessity, whereas, horizontal writing as private diaries, letters and novels express object's search and are made in dreaming attitude.
Successful dissemination of your research requires planning. Your abstract is a succinct presentation of a portion of your research specifically designed to capture the attention of the audience you have chosen. The art of writing a successful abstract involves planning, like any other work of art, and is accomplished in stages. This article provides pointers for dissemination of research, describes the stages involved in writing competitive abstracts, and suggests alternative approaches to writing abstracts.