Wednesday, September 17

• Organizing Content

• Designing Your Document

• Guidelines for preparing and submitting manuscripts in IPHY 3700

IPHY 3700 Writing Process Map

Questions about Structure

What are all of the parts of my paper?

How should I put the parts together, to build a conceptually unified and coherent paper?

What will I write about first, in the middle, and at the end of my paper?

How will I organize ideas in the sentences that compose my paragraphs?

How much space should I devote to each part of my paper?

A Process for Organizing Content

Decide on a design, or layout, for your “organizing plan”

Take a principled approach to organizing content

Organize your paper’s major sections

Organize your paper’s subsections

Decide which parts of your plan to emphasize and allot space to those parts

Organizing Principles

1. Follow instructions that come with your assignment

2. Follow discipline-specific conventions

3. Apply recognizable organizing themes

4. Arrange your paper's parts to serve its overall function

5. Apply your audience analysis

6. Reinforce global unity

7. Use good old-fashioned common sense

Organizing Themes

1. Goal-based

2. Topic-based

3. Chronological

4. Sequential

5. Spatial

6. Most-to-least important

Your Brain on Our Paper

7. Least-to-most important

8. Whole to part

9. Part to whole

10. General to specific

11. Specific to general

12. Compare and contrast

Decide on a design, or layout, for your organizing plan

An informal outline

1. Introduction: Define the Issue (~2 pages)

-- Convince readers that the issue is unresolved

-- Convince readers that the issue is important

-- Present my claim supporting strength training

2. Convince Readers to Accept My Evidence and Reasoning (~4 pages)

-- Increased muscle mass and strength

-- Improved postural control

-- Independence in daily living

3. Acknowledge Opposing Lines of Evidence and Reasoning (~1 page)

-- Studies showing no mass/strength increase

-- Increased risk for injury

4. Refute the Opposing Argument (~2 pages)

-- Methodological flaws in studies showing no effects

-- Relatively low injury risk

5. Sum up My Main Arguments in a Conclusion (~1 page)

Decide on a design, or layout, for your organizing plan

A bubble diagram

Determine the Optimal Order of Sections and Subsections

1. Reframe the research issue

2. Answer the research question

3. Relate your findings and conclusions to those from previous studies

4. Explain your results in terms of underlying physiological mechanisms

5. Discuss methodological limitations

6. Suggest future research

1. Reframe the research issue

2. Answer the research question

3. Explain your results in terms of underlying physiological mechanisms

4. Relate your findings and conclusions to those from previous studies

5. Discuss methodological limitations

6. Suggest future research

1. Reframe the research issue

2. Answer the research question

3. Discuss methodological limitations

4. Relate your findings and conclusions to those from previous studies

5. Explain your results in terms of underlying physiological mechanisms

6. Suggest future research

Which passage is more effectively written?

Severely obese subjects with a high prevalence of diabetes or the metabolic syndrome lost more weight during six months on a carbohydrate-restricted diet than on a calorie and fat-restricted diet, with a relative improvement in insulin sensitivity and triglyceride levels, even after adjustment for the amount of weight lost. This finding should be interpreted with caution, given the small magnitude of overall and between-group differences in weight loss in these markedly obese subjects and the short duration of the study. Future studies evaluating long-term cardiovascular outcomes are needed before a carbohydrate-restricted diet can be endorsed.

Conclusions Severely obese subjects with a high prevalence of diabetes or the metabolic syndrome lost more weight during six months on a carbohydrate-restricted diet than on a calorie and fat-restricted diet, with a relative improvement in insulin sensitivity and triglyceride levels, even after adjustment for the amount of weight lost. This finding should be interpreted with caution, given the following two factors:

(1) the small magnitude of overall and between-group differences in weight loss, in these markedly obese subjects; and

(2) the short duration of the study.

Future studies evaluating long-term cardiovascular outcomes are needed before a carbohydrate-restricted diet can be

endorsed.

Hints for Drafting

Draft at times of the day when you do your best thinking.

Draft in a comfortable and familiar place, where you've been especially productive at thinking and writing tasks.

Draft with your favorite stuff: pens, chair, beverage, clothes, and so on.

Set goals for your drafting session: how much time to spend, how much work to get done, and when to stop.

Use your planning materials, but don't let them constrain you.

Start by drafting the easiest parts of the paper.

Outline ideas at the paragraph level (see example on next slide).

Draft without being critical of your ideas and without worrying about grammar.

When you get stuck on a difficult part that slows your drafting, put it aside and move on to more manageable parts.

If you're having trouble expressing an idea in a sentence, say it out loud quickly.

Note what you need to do in the revision process. *

A Sample Paragraph-level Outline

Power Goal for the Paragraph(s): To discuss methodological limitations of the study and their impact on the findings and conclusions

Sentence (or Set of Sentences)

Purpose Basic Idea

1 State main finding of experiment No effect of caffeine on power output

2 State interesting difference between my finding and previous findings

Most previous studies: caffeine improves power output

3 State key limitation to the experiment Muscle fatigue and soreness, caused by test on day 1, could have reduced power output on day 2; effects of C may have been covered up by fatigue and soreness

4 - Introduce the physiological mechanisms for why fatigue and soreness could have overridden the effects of caffeine

All-out exercise on day 1depleted glycogen stores, caused micro-tears in muscle fibers

5-9 Develop explanation of the physiological mechanisms for why fatigue and soreness could have overridden the effects of caffeine

Depleted glycogen stores fatigue on day 2 because . . . Micro-tears in muscle fibers fatigue by . . . .

10- Suggest alternative designs for future studies, to avoid this limitation

Need to allow sufficient time for subjects to recover from testing on day 1

Or, could "counterbalance" the order of testing this way: half of the subjects perform with caffeine on day 1 and without caffeine on day 2, while the other half gets the reverse

Preparing and Submitting Your Draft

Indicate your 2 rhetorical goals on the

grade form

Read the handout, “Instructions to IPHY

3700 Authors”

Check out the instructions for

submitting a digital copy of your draft in

CULearn