MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

Between now and May 1, you will rework your review text into one of two design platforms.  We will take about ten minutes each day to look at some aspects of document design.  Note:  in real life, when you are in high stakes design environments (conference, for example), you may want to hire a designer.  

The two design genres are

• Review in template (text-heavy but with design elements)
• Slide presentation (your choice of platform)

Here are some guidance readings for you on slides.  "CrossTalk" at Cell features this good overview .  Do you know that 10/20/30 rule?  Nice write-up here hosted by the Slideshare platform.   What does Tufte say about slides (Power Point started this)? Tufte is famously anti-slides.  I think we can know his critique and still embrace slides. 

Slides PLUS persona! TED talks are worthy study objects for the interplay on slides, persona, and presentation. This short article offers a simple critique of the TED genre of slides.

Case study:  I am working on slides for a short "TED talk" at the August Ecological Society of American meeting. December 2016 National Park Service competition "A Science Tale of Wonder" (Google Presentation)

• Articles based on this slide competition, posted at NPS website
• Overview slides from NPS on Science in Parks project 
• Samples of the TED-like creature, called an Ignite Talk

 Questions:

• Stand alone slides v. presenter-essential slides
• Too much "junk and stuff" 
  • Slide Share is one place to see bad stuff, especially that labeled as bad
  • UC Davis PDF-PPt of bad slides

Friday: We will analyze the second option of design into a template.  This is what we aim at. Here is a checklist for what needs to happen in this assignment option.

You will need three or four images for this work; Make a folder and start looking for images; save them to this folder.  Candidates?

• journal cover (two articles, two covers)
• web logo from journal site
• images of lead authors (NEED evidence of permission)
• visuals from the articles
• quotes from article designed into a pull quote
• useful figure from government or open access website
• copyright-free conceptual diagram (Google images, with permissions filter is your friend)

Start collecting visuals for your design document. 

8-10 in this Google Doc.

 Here is a prose version of the lemon-pear shaped document discussion we had last week:

Documents have beginnings, middles, and ends.  For this work, think LEMON-shaped.  Here is a good way to arrange your analysis:

Beginning: 1-3 paragraphs that prepare the reader to understand and trust the center portion of your analysis (three or four body paragraphs).  Use a cognitive wedge strategy aka "lemon nipple." Think:

• • Opening (see the seven strategies -- you can combine them.)
  • Ethos of lead author
  • Definitions/descriptions or backgrounds, which is largely common knowledge. 

Middle: 3-4 body paragraphs. Start with one paragraph per point BUT you may need to divide complex material into two shorter but connected (by transition) paragraph. These are your larger paragraphs.  You MAY need to nest small definitions -- use the appositive technique -- near the material.

End: Taper off, with some useful information or thoughts for closing.  For example, brief critique (this is hard and will NOT count against your work grade-wise), applications, further line of inquiry, implications for society.

New links for class discussion today:

Academic language phrase bank (really useful for analysis and writing). Spend some time here AND save the link.   Thank you to the fine folks at Manchester University, UK.

Opening moves for technical documents: (seven ways! With examples.)

Citation/ethos/introduce your lead researcher:  in class, we will talk about the conventions of citation in a close read of an article.  Basically, the steps are:

1. first mention, full name (in the ethos paragraph that also introduces the article).
   • (author, date)
2. last name throughout
3. Example:  Marybeth Shea is a professor of technical writing at the University of Maryland. She studies stasis theory in environmental policymaking.  Her research article appears in the Journal of Conservation Biology and is the subject of this review (Shea, 2014). Then, in rest of document, refer to the work using the last name:
   • Shea's approach...
   • Her findings...
   • What Shea's inference fails to account for...

Handful of language conventions:

1) That-which: which takes a comma; that does not! See this  handout on choosing which and that.

2) What is an appositive? 

What is an appositive? A bit of information you insert in between the subject and the verb.  You need commas or other sorts of punctuation to set this off.  This image of bunny paws can help you remember to do this:

3) Alot v. A lot: Grammar moment: the abomination of alot. alot is not a word.  Let's see what this blogger says about remembering to use a lot and not alot(click into image to access her website).

Here is the slide set (Google Presentation) we looked at today at through slide 17 or so. We will continue with this on Monday, focusing on IMRAD format.

Read your article this weekend.  Seek three or four points that you could use to place in the center portion of a:

• lemon-shaped document
• pear-shaped document

• Lemon
• Pear

Document design and directions (the next assignment): Here is a guide to planning the directions assignment. We divide the material into three sections:  Directions, like the resume, rely on "document design."  The way we arrange the material for the audience, context, and purpose is as important as the content.Audience/Context/Purpose -- essential aspects of all documents.  In designing directions or procedures documents, think of the audience as a user more than a reader.