Assignments: Revision Exercises
Exercise 1
Please read the following paragraph. In a 150-250 word e-mail written to me — jim.collier@vt.edu — I would like you:
1) To analyze why this paragraph is difficult to read; and
2) To make specific recommendations as to how someone, with little or no knowledge of the science, might begin to revise the prose.
Beyond the technical vocabulary, please examine sentence shape, sentence structure, and the placement of subjects and verbs. On analyzing these elements, I would like you to give me your hypothesis as to why this paragraph is hard to read, even if you assumed audience has the necessary expertise. Finally, I would like your ideas on how you might approach revising this paragraph.
Please e-mail your analysis and comments to me no later than noon on February 3.
The smallest of the URF's (URFA6L), a 207-nucleotide (nt) reading frame overlapping out of phase the NH2-terminal portion of the adenosinetriphosphatase (ATPase) subunit 6 gene has been identified as the animal equivalent of the recently discovered yeast H+-ATPase subunit 8 gene. The functional significance of the other URF's has been, on the contrary, elusive. Recently, however, immunoprecipitation experiments with antibodies to purified, rotenone-sensitive NADH-ubiquinone oxido-reductase [hereafter referred to as respiratory chain NADH dehydrogenase or complex I] from bovine heart, as well as enzyme fractionation studies, have indicated that six human URF's (that is, URF1, URF2, URF3, URF4, URF4L, and URF5, hereafter referred to as ND1, ND2, ND3, ND4, ND4L, and ND5) encode subunits of complex I. This is a large complex that also contains many subunits synthesized in the cytoplasm. Support for such functional identification of the URF products has come from the finding that the purified rotenone-sensitive NADH dehydrogenase from Neurospora crassa contains several subunits synthesized within the mitochondria, and from the observation that the stopper mutant of Neurospora crassa, whose mtDNA lacks two genes homologous to URF2 and URF3, has no functional complex I.
Exercise 2
Please read the following short essay. I would like you to revise it in two ways:
First, revise the essay by changing the passive verbs into active verbs where appropriate;
Second, cut the essay to roughly half its length — it's 409 words — while trying to preserve the essential argument.
Please integrate your revisions into one document.
Please e-mail your final revision to me — jim.collier@vt.edu — by noon on 17 February. I have provided a document file of the essay with which you can work.
Technological civilization has reached its present "advanced" state by the trial-and-error behavior of those who lived before us. Many of the most useful discoveries and inventions were the result of mistakes when people were looking for something else. The New World was found by Columbus, who was really looking for India. The discovery of penicillin was speeded by somebody who left a loaf of bread out to get moldy. Think how far behind ourselves we'd be now if mistakes were impossible for us to make.
Our knowledge is also increased by our mistakes, if only because once a mistake has been made, a way of correcting it must be found. If the mistake had not been to learn how things are done. As I wrote the first version of this essay, I made a few minor errors. As a result of my mistakes, since I did discover them, I learned the difference between continuous and continual; I learned that useful has only one 'l' (and that the rule goes for hundreds of other words, like wasteful, harmful, spoonful); and I learned how to use a semicolon when a comma won't do.
Had I made no mistakes in the first place, I might have had a pretty good essay, but I would still not have known why. Of course, mistakes have to be recognized for what they are. If Columbus had thought San Salvador was India and let things go at that, the world would be smaller today. Had the moldy bread been tossed to the birds, the birds might have become healthy while human life went on suffering from raging diseases. (I realize these statements are somewhat doubtful, but now I'm so curious about Columbus and penicillin that I'm going to learn the real facts tomorrow.)
Mistakes are made by computers, but only rarely by comparison with the human brain's continual bumbling. Human beings, one might say, have emotions and desires and prejudices that mistakes are the result of. Those quirks, are not things that computers have. Distractions, and fatigue are suffered by human beings but not by computers. So it is possible to say that we are in a bit of danger. If the time should ever come when most of the world's work is done by computers rather than by people, fewer mistakes will be made. And fewer mistakes will mean fewer of those useful discoveries and inventions brought about by the stumblings of the human species.
(This exercise was adopted from "Choosing between Active and Passive Voice Verbs when Writing" at the University of Arkansas)
Exercise 3
Let's recall Gopen and Swan's advice for analyzing and revising scientific prose:
• Follow a grammatical subject as soon as possible with its verb.
• Place in the stress position (the sentence end) the "new information" you want the reader to emphasize.
• Place the person or thing whose "story" a sentence is telling at the beginning of the sentence, in the topic position (the sentence beginning).
• Place appropriate "old information" (material already stated in the discourse) in the topic position for linkage backward and contextualization forward.
• Articulate the action of every clause or sentence in its verb.
• Provide context for your reader before asking that reader to consider anything new.
• Try to ensure that the relative emphases of the substance coincides with the relative expectations for emphasis raised by the structure.
Please revise the following two, unrelated paragraphs following Gopen and Swan's advice.
Please e-mail your final revision to me — jim.collier@vt.edu — by noon of March 24.
The enthalpy of hydrogen bond formation between the nucleoside bases 2'deoxyguanosine (dG) and 2'deoxycytidine (dC) has been determined by direct measurement. dG and dC were derivatized at the 5' and 3' hydroxyls with triisopropylsilyl groups to obtain solubility of the nucleosides in non-aqueous solvents and to prevent the ribose hydroxyls from forming hydrogen bonds. From isoperibolic titration measurements, the enthalpy of dC:dG base pair formation is -6.65±0.32 kcal/mol.
Transcription of the 5S RNA genes in the egg extract is TFIIIA-dependent. This is surprising, because the concentration of TFIIIA is the same as in the oocyte nuclear extract. The other transcription factors and RNA polymerase III are presumed to be in excess over available TFIIIA, because tRNA genes are transcribed in the egg extract. The addition of egg extract to the oocyte nuclear extract has two effects on transcription efficiency. First, there is a general inhibition of transcription that can be alleviated in part by supplementation with high concentrations of RNA polymerase III. Second, egg extract destabilizes transcription complexes formed with oocyte but not somatic 5S RNA genes.
Exercise 4
First, please go to the following web site. You need not be afraid — these scientists are not really naked (they are "shy" British researchers ...):
www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/articles/
Next, select an article may be of interest to you.
Choose a passage from the article of about 175 words to 250 words in length. I would ask you to do three things with the passage you've selected:
1. Copy and paste the passage into your word processing program;
2. Revise the passage for greater clarity and coherence — insomuch as the passage lacks these qualities — considering our previous discussions and work regarding style;
3. Tell me in a short paragraph — 50 to 100 words — the passage you have selected works — or does not work — as a piece of popular science writing, what you did in editing the passage, and how your editing may have improved the passage.
Please send the original passage, your revision and your short paragraph to me at jim.collier@vt.edu by noon on April 7.
