[Music] here at UBC as part of an ambitious project involving instructors staff and talking squirrels we are developing videos to help you with your writing skills because communicating science effectively is an incredibly important part of being a good scientist [Music] an old friend of grammar squirrels has just discovered an interesting piece of video footage while looking for evidence of the Sasquatch in British Columbia so grammar squirrel newly appointed as journalist for the school paper the nton post has decided to write an article about it but she quickly realizes that this article needs to be written in a very different style to her lab reports if it's going to appeal to a wider audience she first decides to get the facts of her story straight and interviews Hazel to get the answers to some all important questions and then she types up a transcript of the interview after listening to it on playback she calls her editor who gives her the green light for the story but she also tells her she only has 300 words of space in the newspaper grammar squirrel realizes she is going to need to make every word count but she's not quite sure where to start she has over 600 words of interesting quotes from Hazel alone so she decides to go and get some expert advice one great strategy when you're writing a science article for a general audience is to include the five W's in your first two paragraphs so that's the who what where why and when of your story if you include this information up front then people know what they're going to be reading and you'll be surprised at how few words you need to use to describe the content of the article for example I bet you can include all of that information on the Sasquatch scoop in less than 50 words that'll leave you a 250 words to develop Your Story by quoting and paraphrasing material from your Source Hazel digsy grammar scorel looks over her transcript and notes again and has a go at doing just this it does take more than one attempt but she's soon successful in fact she only needed to use 37 words to cover the five W's in the opening to her story grammar squirrel writes local naturalist Hazel dibur might have caught a Sasquatch on film for the first time while exploring the mountains of Squamish dibur was hiking with friends on Sunday when she spotted a mysterious figure in the forest so in this sentence the who is Hazel digsy the what is the Sasquatch the where the mountains of Squamish the when Sunday and the why which you can think of as why is this interesting is that this was a sasot being caught on film for the first time but what next what should she include as she adds to the story and how should she do it once youve introduced the important elements of your story it's time to use some of that background information and quotes from your Source this will liven it up and develop the story and it'll Engage The Audience by making it more personable you should do this by working down the So-Cal inverted pyramid As you move down the pyramid you can start to add depth to your paragraphs and decrease the breadth within them by this I mean you can focus on one main point per paragraph and provide more detail about this one point much of that information can come direct from The Source if you're able to use some interesting and personal quotes but there's a real art to it because your transcript will likely show that Hazel spoke with gaps in her story and she wasn't always clear and concise in what she said you should try to avoid using long-winded quotes those that are tricky to interpret and those that contain unnecessary words or jargon the gems that you're looking for are short succinct quotes that add something to your story and it's okay to change the order of her quotes around as long as you don't misrepresent her in some way always remember that it's very important not to take sources out of context this applies to academic science writing too grammar squirrel looks over her transcript and notes again but it's still a bit unclear as to what makes a quote suitable or unsuitable so she decides to ask for some examples and also for some advice on what to do with all the useful information that her old friend gave her but which isn't suitable for quoting for one reason or another I've looked at the transcript and there are several Snappy quotes that would work for example when Hazel says I I don't know if it was a Sasquatch but it was huge and running towards me would work really well but there were also parts that were confusing where the English was broken or she was repeating herself you don't want to be repeating information that you have already introduced in your story and now for the last tip all that interesting information that you couldn't quote directly paraphrase it say it in your own words just attributed to her for example instead of quoting that part where she talks about the animals Footprints where everything sounds a little bit confusing paraphrase it say something like Mrs dify said that the animal footprints were a lot wider than a human's grammar squirrel fresh from her trips to see the experts gets back to the story with real excitement she submits the finished article to her editor and was even able to use a few words less than her limit of 300 and a few days later she is delighted to see that her article is giving many of her peers a lot of enjoyment as well as bringing science news to those who might otherwise not have been exposed to it