Scientific writing 3.0: A reader and writer's guide - Jean-Luc Lebrun, Justin Lebrun 2021

Troubleshooting progression problems
Set progression tracks for fluid reading
The reading toolkit

Unstructured paragraph

Sometimes it is possible to have every sentence in a paragraph be fluidly connected, and yet the whole paragraph remains difficult to follow. This is often because sentences progress from one topic to another through chain transitions without first exhausting all relevant mentions of that topic.

Interrupted topic

Sometimes, the progression breaks as in the example below. It stops for a sentence or two, and then is resumed. In such situations, readers rapidly lose their sense of direction. Somewhere, somehow, one or two links in the progression chain are broken, but where? How does one identify a broken link?

(1) After conducting microbiological studies on the cockroaches collected in our university dormitories, we found that their guts carried staphylococcus, members of the coliform bacilli, and other dangerous micro-organisms. (2) Since they regurgitate their food, their vomitus contaminates their body. (3) Therefore, the same microbes, plus molds and yeasts are found on the surface of their hairy legs, antennae, and wings. (4) To find such micro-organisms in their guts is not surprising as they are also present in the human and animal feces on which cockroaches feed.

The topic of sentence 1 is about cockroaches, so links nicely to sentence 2 which reuses cockroaches as a topic. Sentence 2 and 3 are nicely linked through a logical connection “since” -> “Therefore”. However, the fluidity breaks when attempting to move from sentence 3 to sentence 4. Can you identify why? Did anything feel familiar when reading sentence 4?

Sentence 4’s topic concerns the micro-organisms that are found in cockroach guts. This also happens to be the stress of sentence 1, so a chain connection is possible here. If you restructure the paragraph to restore this connection the text becomes fully fluid:

(1) After conducting microbiological studies on the cockroaches collected in our university dormitories, we found that their guts carried staphylococcus, members of the coliform bacilli, and other dangerous micro-organisms. (4) To find such micro-organisms in their guts is not surprising as they are also present in the human and animal feces on which cockroaches feed (2) Since they regurgitate their food, their vomitus contaminates their body. (3) Therefore, the same microbes, plus molds and yeasts are found on the surface of their hairy legs, antennae, and wings.

The next paragraph is about a tropical and sub-tropical disease called dengue fever. Compare the original version with the final version to discover how the text improved.

Original text

(1) The transmission of the dengue virus to a human occurs through the bite of an infected female Aedes mosquito. (2) In addition, the disease spreads rapidly in densely populated areas because of the lack of effective mosquito control methods, the increase in air travel, and poor sanitation in areas with a shortage of water. (3) The mosquito becomes infected when it feeds on a blood meal from a human carrier of the virus. (4) The virus multiplies inside the infected mosquito over three to five days and resides within its salivary gland.

Follow these steps to analyze the original text.

· Identify the author’s intention, and the main points of the paragraph.

· Identify closely related sentences by the words they share.

· Identify potential sentence topics — usually the words repeated from one sentence to the next.

· Restructure the text to achieve progression and set desired expectations around one topic.