Popular writing (e.g. op eds)

[darkstarrynight]

There are a bunch of free workshops on public scholarship for those who are interested: https://proctor.gse.rutgers.edu/making-scholarship-public?fbclid=IwAR3Vrg2DFldhKgfm2RerPNW1C-Q-r09RXlJclBP5AVdF3veGuf7ClJkeg3I

[Kron3007]

As others have noted, many people write themselves into their concludion-not only for the whole piece, but in each paragraph. If you're one, fine, do that in your first draft, but then pull up your inductive conclusions by their bootstraps and make them the opening sentence of a deductive paragraph.

M.

So much this!  I'm trying to teach this to all my students, too, for their academic writing.

This may have just blown my mind....

I am in the midst of writing a paper and have never considered approaching it like that (but see potential value).  I will have to play around with this and see what happens.

[mamselle]

As others have noted, many people write themselves into their concludion-not only for the whole piece, but in each paragraph. If you're one, fine, do that in your first draft, but then pull up your inductive conclusions by their bootstraps and make them the opening sentence of a deductive paragraph.

M.

So much this!  I'm trying to teach this to all my students, too, for their academic writing.

This may have just blown my mind....

I am in the midst of writing a paper and have never considered approaching it like that (but see potential value).  I will have to play around with this and see what happens.

Happy to oblige. A long-ago journalist/editor taught me that.

M.

[Hibush]

As others have noted, many people write themselves into their concludion-not only for the whole piece, but in each paragraph. If you're one, fine, do that in your first draft, but then pull up your inductive conclusions by their bootstraps and make them the opening sentence of a deductive paragraph.

M.

So much this!  I'm trying to teach this to all my students, too, for their academic writing.

This may have just blown my mind....

I am in the midst of writing a paper and have never considered approaching it like that (but see potential value).  I will have to play around with this and see what happens.

This is very sound advice for anyone who thinks the reader matters. One technique to check whether you pulled it off is to go through the piece reading just the first sentence of each paragraph. Is the story still solid?  A second check is to do the same, but stop after 10 paragraphs (which many readers will do.) Does the reader understand what you want them to conclude? 

[Kron3007]

As others have noted, many people write themselves into their concludion-not only for the whole piece, but in each paragraph. If you're one, fine, do that in your first draft, but then pull up your inductive conclusions by their bootstraps and make them the opening sentence of a deductive paragraph.

M.

So much this!  I'm trying to teach this to all my students, too, for their academic writing.

This may have just blown my mind....

I am in the midst of writing a paper and have never considered approaching it like that (but see potential value).  I will have to play around with this and see what happens.

This is very sound advice for anyone who thinks the reader matters. One technique to check whether you pulled it off is to go through the piece reading just the first sentence of each paragraph. Is the story still solid?  A second check is to do the same, but stop after 10 paragraphs (which many readers will do.) Does the reader understand what you want them to conclude?

Good suggestion.  I guess it is important to be consistent throughout the manuscript then.

After reading this it seems so obvious, and I am a little ashamed that I missed the memo.  This honestly has not crossed my mind as a possibility, although in retrospect I have seen this approach many times.  I am in STEM and regrettably avoided anything writing related throughout my education.  Never too late though...

[Hibush]

After reading this it seems so obvious, and I am a little ashamed that I missed the memo.  This honestly has not crossed my mind as a possibility, although in retrospect I have seen this approach many times. 

Only a tiny minority of scientists read the memo, and a smaller minority have tried it.

[Hibush]

There are awards for academics who do quality popular writing! This one just came to my attention.
https://advanced-hindsight.com/blog/2020-hindsight-awards/

Among the 2020 Hindsight Awards are excellent examples of popular writing in many fields. The organization, the Center for Advanced Hindsight, is actually a serious behavioural economics and psychology group. (Puget & Malarkey, how serious psychologists are they?)

They took the effort to point out that this year's awards are special because "hindsight is 2020."

[adel9216]

Op-eds that Ive wrote have helped me to gain exposure as a young scholar and foster academic collaborations for conferences, papers, book chapters, etc. It's useful. But if you're paid to do it, it's even better although it's rare unless it's a freelance job.