Writer's Lab: Editing your writing, paperless-style

After finishing my PhD last June, I've been working on the articles that I would like to publish from my dissertation.
I've left my home in Delft after my defense, and since then I've been homeless living in different houses. All my writing needs to be done on my personal laptop, and I'm limited an external backup, a Kindle, a smartphone, scratch paper, pens, my planner and my calculator as office-tools.

Within these limitations, I've needed to go paperless as much as possible. Writing my most recent draft articles has been a fully digital work.

I used to print out every single draft, mark it up in pencil while reading in a quiet place, and then making the changes into the file again. Without a printer and a space to leave paper, my good old workflow process was not an option anymore.

In the past, I used to think that I could only catch typos when I print out my work and read over it.

Myth is debunked.

If you are to review a paper, and want to use a digital method, here are a few tips I can give you:

1. Check your figures in a PDF at 400% magnification

If you want to check how your images will be printed, convert them into a PDF (assuming that you will deliver your final draft in PDF form), and use a 400% magnification tool in your Adobe Reader. At 400% magnification, you get an idea of the quality of your figure in print. If the image has blurred lines at this 400% zoom, then alter your figure. Ideally, use the .EPS format for your images.

2. Use full screen reading

Throw out the distractions and read by using the full screen reading option. Most word processing programs allow for making changes while you use the full screen reading mode, so make your changes immediately as you see your mistakes.

3. Try to convince co-authors to use track changes

If you want to go from a printing-marking up-editing type of workflow towards a fully digital method, try to convince your co-authors to use track changes or to add their comments to your document. Implementing the changes from co-authors through track changes is about the simplest thing out there to accept their feedback.

4. Enroll your tablet or e-reader

If, for some reason, you need to read your document and gather information from it, consider using your tablet or e-reader. When I needed to compile the list of notations from a paper, I converted the file to PDF, put it on my Kindle, and hunted for notations, while typing out the list into the active document in MS Word.

5. Use your digital signature

You really don't need to print, sign, and scan documents anymore when you write your consent to publish. Almost all publishers now accept a digital signature in a PDF. It's super easy to set up your digital signature, and you'll create a password to safeguard your signature.

6. If necessary, scan with a smartphone app

If, for some reason, your digital signature is not accepted, and you need to print and sign a document, but don't have a scanner available, then consider using your smartphone as a scanner. I've used DocScan, and even though the quality is not ideal, it serves the purpose.

7. Get a second screen

If you can, get a second screen. I'm spending too much time in different places, defined by what I can put into my carry-on bag, but if you try to go paperless from an office, add an extra monitor. It's the best thing since slices bread.

8. Use reference management software

For quick citing, use a reference management software tool that is incorporated into your word processing software. I used Endnote and MS Word (very basic), and it makes citing the easiest thing in the world.

Have you writing and editing all from one machine, without printing the draft and marking up? Share your experience and tips!

Writers' Lab: A drastic revision strategy for improving your paper's story and organization

Today, I once more have the pleasure of hosting Nicole K.S. Barker in the writers' lab. Nicole is a Ph.D. student at Laval University in Québec, Canada, working with Ducks Unlimited Canada and the Boreal Avian Modelling Project. While technically a Forestry student, she classifies her research as "applied ecological modelling". 

Within her Ph.D. she is investigating various methods for quantifying patterns in waterfowl populations over space in time. 
Alongside her research, she continually searches for ways to improve her writing, productivity, and R programming skills, and has found social media to be instrumental in this regard. You can read more about Nicole on her blog or Twitter. 

It seems like revising a piece of writing should be easy. You’ve completed the hard part in actually writing a draft, so it should be simple to fix the grammar and simply be done with it. However, depending on how long it took to write your paper and how much your thinking changed over that duration, you may find some hidden challenges.

If your vision, objectives, or "pitch" differed during the outlining or drafting stages from where it ended up, you’ll have a somewhat disjointed piece of work or section of work. I find that this happens most often for introduction sections. For example, it might not set up your paper’s objectives correctly, or perhaps it provides all of the details but not in an easy-to-follow story.

I recently adopted a new strategy, and now I recommend it to everyone I know. It’s based on chapter 3 of a book by Michael Jay Katz called From Research to Manuscript: A Guide to Scientific Writing. Any time I read a disjointed section of a paper, I remind people about this strategy. I also use it myself for all sections of a manuscript, from methods, to results, to discussion and introduction (keep in mind I’m in the sciences, but this strategy should be relevant for all types of papers, essays, and other writing).

The general procedure is somewhat drastic. It involves start from scratch – yes, a blank page! – once you have already written a draft. It can be intimidating and even discouraging to start from a blank page after spending the time to write a draft, but I guarantee it will lead to a better organized paper.

Steps: Within this new blank document, identify the main idea of each of your paragraphs and write it in sentence form. Ensure that these main sentences tell a story before you add any other detail. Fill in sentences one at a time from your rough draft to the correct paragraph in your new document in a coherent order. Edit each sentence for grammar and wordiness, but keep it in bullet point form. Once you have copied over all sentences and edited for coherence, you can change the sentences to paragraph form instead of point form. Ensure that each sentence flows into the next. Your “main idea” sentences become the topic sentences of each of your paragraphs. Katz’s book leads the reader through a detailed example of what this process looks like, and it’s quite illuminating.

Advantages: Starting from a blank page frees your thinking from the confines of your rough draft. Starting with main message of each paragraph ensures that your work has a flow and tells a story from start to finish. Reworking each sentence individually focuses your energy instead of breezing over individual sentences’ awkwardness or wordiness as can happen when reading a paper as a whole.

Disadvantages: It can be time consuming because you’re starting over. However, keep in mind that much of the work in your rough draft will be kept in this draft – it’s just moved around or reworked.

Let Eva or me know if you’ve tried this method or if you use another strategy for drastic revisions.

Writers' Lab: A Quick Tip for Proofreading

When I was proofreading my dissertation, I felt as if I could constantly fall asleep (every now and then, I literally feel asleep above my print). I experienced the editing and proofreading stages, especially towards the end, as incredibly tedious and boring.

No coffee (even though by that time I was more or less caffeine-free), loud music or other stimulants seemed to help me get through this terrible stage of going over the same sentences for the umptieth time.
I got distracted the entire time, fiddling around with my smartphone, staring out of the window, catching up with colleagues, taking on other tasks - you name it, anything to avoid the dreaded proofreading stage was a reason for escape.

And then I remembered how I used to study courses that had a lot of text in them. Most courses forced me to sit down and take notes, work my way through exercises and basically needed me to sit behind my desk.

But for courses with a lot of text, I used a different strategy. And I discovered that this strategy worked very well for proofreading my thesis as well, and for adding those little edits here and there in the final stages.

Here is what I did:

I walked up and down while holding the text in my hands (and reading it).

Getting some movement helped to get my concentration back together, and it distracted me from wanting to do any other activity that might distract me. While walking around, I didn't feel like picking up my smartphone, for example. I felt more energized, focused and with adding this little bit of activity, I also felt less like a constantly-sitting-lazy-bag.

If you struggle to stay awake to study a text-heavy course, or you need to proofread your dissertation for the twentieth time, then consider taking your printed copy for a walk up and down the hallway. Your concentration might thank you!

Have you tried pacing up and down while reading/studying.proofreading/editing? How is your experience?

Writers' Lab: Writing for non-native speakers

As a non-native speaker, you face additional challenges when preparing an academic publication. The author of this guest post is Evelyn Cowan from Enago, a company specialized in English editing and proofreading for scientific manuscripts. She agreed to share some of her best advice for non-native writers of English.

 


The academic style of writing, as opposed to informal writing, involves the expression of a paper/article/essay’s meaning without blocking the reader’s sense of clarity. Hence, it is always best to simplify the language, formulating sentences without heavy wordplay, which in some cases could lead to the muddling of meaning. Even simple misused homophones, words with similar spellings and/or pronunciation but with different meaning such as its/it’s and affect/effect, may alter the impact and meaning of the written word. It is always best to reconfirm the meaning of a given word to avoid its awkward positioning.

The best ways to avoid this is to follow seven simple steps for writing academic papers. Though it is not an in-depth analysis of the writing skills needed in the academic style, it builds a fair idea on what is needed.

1. The first most important task is to select a manual of style/style guide (Chicago/APA/AMA/ASA/MHRA/MLA…). This will streamline the form your paper needs to follow.

2. Always try and list your idea/argument before framing it. This would help understand its order of importance, enabling a simplified, comprehensible flow of the paper.

3. It is not mandatory to have complex sentence constructions in your paper. Thus, the readability could be enhanced by simple and concise sentences.

4. Avoid using abbreviations without defining them in the first instance. Though the use of parlance is common, only technical papers encourage the use of abbreviations or words known in a particular field.

5. Use the right punctuation to avoid loss of meaning, abrupt endings or long continuous sentences. The right punctuation is necessary for a clearer, meaningful sentence, which may otherwise disrupt the flow of the entire paper.

6. Another important rule of thumb is the appropriate choice of words as it is important for the meaning of the written word. The right choice of word also makes an impact with the reader and enhances the readability of the paper.

7. Finally, get your paper reviewed by someone fluent in the language to highlight any gaps in meaning or content due to incorrect use of any technical aspect of the language. Also, developmental changes may be suggested by them, giving you greater insight for future references.


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About Enago:
Enago is the world's leading English editing service provider to ESL authors. Enago's professional editors are native English speakers and subject area experts with an average experience of 19.4 years in academic editing in the areas of medicine, engineering, economics, physics and more. Enago has been consistently delivering high quality, i.e., 100% error-free edited manuscripts, to its clients in a timely manner for meeting its ultimate objective of academic paper acceptance in international journals.
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