Tài liệu Mastering the craft of science writing part 16 pptx

abuses the body’s stress response, while the traditional

writer’s death is to be found slumped over the keyboard.

Don’t you think there must be a connection? ... which is

why I suggest that you not make a habit of the bash. I wish

I hadn’t.

Is the piece so rough that you cannot see what you have

beneath the surface jumble? This problem is familiar to ed￾itors, less so to writers. Still, you might see it if you tried to

write too early, by talking to a tape, or when very tired—a

text so garbled that you feel impelled to pitch it. For example,

here is a chemist talking about impediments to learning

chemistry:

The first one—I haven’t read anything about it, most of it

is intuitive—is how symbols become tyrannical and intim￾idating. I’ll move back and forth. I’d like to give you an ex￾ample of that. I’m going to start off with showing you a

few symbols to terrorize you. Then I’m going to show you

what the symbols mean. [Shows slide.] Here’s something

plus something else equals something or another. These

look pretty formidable, and they really are very simple.

This is the story of symbols: They really are very simple

ideas that just code for a very simple idea. Now what this

means is, this is Phoenician, this is hieroglyphic Egyptian.

But they both represent two apples plus two bananas equal

four fruit. But when you see the symbols, they are so in￾timidating. If I had written it this way: [2a + 2b = 4c.]

you might not have been so frightened.

Before we pitch this mess, why not see what we can salvage,

starting with a simple cleanup?

The first impediment to learning is that symbols become

tyrannical and intimidating. I’m going to start by showing

you a few symbols to terrorize you. Here’s something plus

something else equals something or another. They look

formidable, but they really are simple. This is the story of

symbols: they are just codes for very simple ideas. Now

this one is Phoenician, this is hieroglyphic Egyptian. They

both represent two apples plus two bananas equal four fruit.

But they are so intimidating! If I had written it this way: [2a

+ 2b = 4c.] you might not have been so frightened.

Ideas

into

Words

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