Finalizing Your Written Work

Only in this way can their ideas unfold clearly for the reader. 

As you work through the chapter, the Revising and Editing on Your Own tasks will guide you as you do the following  

18A Prepare to finalize your work 18B Check organization 

In this chapter, we ask you to look again at your written work, but this time as an entire document. Rather than write and rewrite section by section, we ask you to take a step back and reflect on your work as a whole. The goal is to achieve a coherent and fluent piece of writing that reads well from start to hnish. To facilitate this process, we have created a checklist of nine items (listed below). We present each item and ask you to review your entire work from the perspective of this item, making changes and improvements as needed. As you become familiar with these items, you will become a better and more efficient editor of your own written work, a necessary prerequisite for becoming an effective writer. 

Because the goal of this chapter is to help you finish your work, we forgo the usual read-analyze-write tasks, exercises, and chapter review. Likewise, we include only a few excerpts, and we have replaced the Writing on Your Own tasks with Revising and Editing on Your Own tasks. The latter are designed to guide you in the final revision process. 

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Finalize your written work so that it meets the expectations of your target audience... 

Finalizing your written work requires that you reflect on your work as a whole and read through it many times, each time focusing on a different area. 

Chapter 16 Formatting Figures, Tables, and Schemes Chapter 17 Formatting Citations and References Chapter 18 Finalizing Your Written Work... 

In almost every high school or college class, you can expect at least part, if not all, of your evaluation for the term to be based on your written work. In a college literature class, for example, 100% of your grade will probably be based on two out-of-class essays, an in-class midterm, and a final essay, which maybe a timed exam. In a political science class, your midterm and final exams might include multiple-choice, short answer, and essay questions. Your success in school depends heavily on your ability to write effectively, both in and out of the classroom. 

This final section focuses on the strategy, craft, and presentation of the academic essay. Chapter 7 describes the most effective way of presenting information about your topic to the reader. Chapter 8 shows you how to evaluate your written work and to improve your use of basic tools such as words, sentences, and paragraphs. Chapter 9 evaluates the essay as a whole and suggests ways that you can improve its style and presentation. 

It is always best to begin with an idea of the units you will need in your final answer. When working through the Sample Problems, keep track of the units needed for the unknown quantity. Check your final answer against what you ve written as the unknown quantity. 

A historiography, on the other hand, does not examine each book individually but instead, looks at a body of work and assesses how many books examine and interpret a particular topic or issue. This allows your reader to be aware of particular trends and interpretations that were popular during different eras. Finally, an abstract provides a succinct and precise summary of your entire paper at the beginning so that a reader knows exactly what you plan to discuss and the conclusions that you have drawn from all your research. Written professionally and thoroughly, they function as extremely helpful tools and valuable resources for your reader. 

Another way of approaching this is to read a counterparty s licensing term sheet as if you had written it, looking not just for what it says but for what is omitted, either deliberately or by mistake, and so work out your counterproposals to match their desires with your own. The term sheet is just a sketch of the final agreement and so there is much room for manoeuvre as the negotiation is planned. 

This book was written to fill a need, hopefully, your need. It was designed to help the beginning as well as the experienced chromatographer in using an HPLC system as a tool. Twenty-five years in HPLC, first as a user, then in field sales and application support for HPLC manufacturers, and finally working as a teacher and consultant has shown me that the average user wants an instrument that will solve problems, not create new ones. 

Second, work in the sample matrix. Choose a sample matrix for automating the manual SPE method that is free of analyte. Thus, all the interferences and other problems associated with the matrix will be addressed immediately. Third, spike the clean sample matrix to a known concentration so that recoveries may be calculated. Samples should be spiked to a midlevel concentration range. Finally, run samples in triplicate. Triplicates will give the percent relative standard deviation and are some indication of the reproducibility of your automated procedure. Samples that show a low relative standard deviation typically prove that the method is a well-written automated procedure. High relative standard deviations suggest problems with the matrix and recovery of the sample. 

You are given an assignment that involves writing a report that is to be completed and presented in two weeks. You work diligently and feel confident you have come up with a respectable solution. Y)u present the written report personally to your director (boss), who asks you to summarize only your final conclusions. Immediately after providing this information, your boss declares that your results must be wrong and returns your report unopened and unread. 

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