Unit 10: What advice would you now give to someone writing his/her first scientific paper?

The advice I would give to someone writing their first scientific paper is to find a scientific topic that first will interest them and to figure out what they want to argue reqarding the subject and to come up with three things that will support their position. They should also be aware of plagarism and be advised how critical it is to give credit to their sources.

They will need to make time to research the subject and to be sure they make plenty of time for this and to try using note cards using numbers to identify what reference goes to what note card. For instance I would make out reference cards with all the information and number then jot down useful information on note cards with the number on top from which source it came from. Why? Because if you don't do this you will waste a lot of time going back and forth in books or notes and can become quite an irritation.

Then once they have done some research they will need to brainstorm ideas that will be coordinated into the paper by using a list, informal outline, bubblling, or just simply writing down questions. Now that brainstorming is done you will have an idea about where you want your paper to go and what you want to include.

The next step is writing an outline and this is going to be a map to the success of writing the rough draft.

Now write the rough draft inluding the intro, thesis, and follow outline with main ideas followed by supporting evidence and then complete the conclusion and of course references.  After this you will want to revise and edit the rough draft by looking for grammar, typos, punctuation and spelling mistakes. Not only this check citations are they correct and read paper aloud to see if it flows, and wheter or not each paragraph flows intor the next one.

Once all of these steps are done fix the nooks and cranies and then it is complete.

It is a timely process but if you stay organized and make time to do things logically instead of trying to rush through it will make things much easier on you.

Well this is what I would tell someone when writing a scientific paper.

Hope you all do well this is the last blog post and and last week of the term so I hope you all have enjoyed this class as much as I have and best of luck to you all,

Honey