Find a sample of your writing, either your first draft or something you already finished. Follow the Point First Checklist items and tasks under #2 “The Big Picture Read” to see how well your writing suits your the context, audience, and purpose.

• What is the context? – a report, journal article, proposal in an application?
• Who are the readers? – present and future readers, their characteristics and needs?
• What is the purpose? – inform, recommend, update, warn, advise or persuade?
• Write a note beside each paragraph on what the paragraph is about. Then use the notes to check that it meets the context, audience, and purpose.

This exercise is from Point First and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Find a sample of your writing, or use the paragraph below. Highlight all the important information, then restructure your paragraph so that those sentences are at the beginning or end of the paragraph. Watch the Point First video below to guide you (transcript).

This exercise is from Point First and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Writing Sample from Rice University “Chemistry” (CC-BY): In ionic compounds, electrons are transferred between atoms of different elements to form ions. But this is not the only way that compounds can be formed. Atoms can also make chemical bonds by sharing electrons equally between each other. Such bonds are called covalent bonds. Covalent bonds are formed between two atoms when both have similar tendencies to attract electrons to themselves (i.e., when both atoms have identical or fairly similar ionization energies and electron affinities). For example, two hydrogen atoms bond covalently to form an H₂ molecule; each hydrogen atom in the H₂ molecule has two electrons stabilizing it, giving each atom the same number of valence electrons as the noble gas He.

Find a sample of your writing or use the sample below. Use the following strategies to check your transitions.

• Highlight all the transition words and phrases. Check for wordiness and repetitiveness, and remove any unnecessary words. [Video explanation]
• Rewrite the second paragraph topic (first) sentence to create a better link to the ending of the first paragraph.

“By and large, organometallic compounds find wide use in commercial reactions, both as homogeneous catalysis and as stoichiometric reagents. For instance, organolithium, organomagnesium, and organoaluminium compounds, examples of which are highly basic and highly reducing, are useful stoichiometrically. These compounds, however,  also catalyze many polymerization reactions.

Consequently, almost all industrial processes involving alkene-derived polymers rely on organometallic catalysts. The world’s polyethylene and polypropylene are produced, for the most part, via both heterogeneously via Ziegler–Natta catalysis and homogeneously, e.g., via constrained geometry catalysts.”

Even if you tried to get this right in your draft, you probably still have some confusing sentences. Find a sample of your writing or use the sample below.

• Highlight the subject, verb, and object in each sentence.
• Are the sentences in the order Subject-Verb-Object?
• If the Subject too far from the Verb?
• Rewrite sentences to improve clarity.

This morning you, after checking the solvent containers, need to set up the HPLC for analysis. You can refill the solvent if it is less than half full. After I turn on the instrument, you need to record the pressure of the column. If you have a good reason to skip this step, but this goes against our best practices, then you will be responsible if the column fails.

In the example above, the first sentence is hard to follow because the subject is far from the verb and object. The last sentence has the same problem.

This exercise is from Point First and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Get rid of the clutter! Cut out or move any content that is irrelevant to the main message of the paragraph. See the example below, which is a modified text from the Wikipedia entry on Marie Curie (word count = 44).

Due to the fact that international recognition for her work had been growing to new heights, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, overcoming opposition prompted by the Langevin scandal, honoured her a second time, with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in the year 1911.

Suggested rewrite for clarity (word count = 18):

In 1911, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honoured Marie Curie with her second Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Make sure you don’t have any misplaced modifiers! Modifiers are words that modify the meaning of a noun (e.g.,  “veggie burger”). From the sentence below, it’s hard to tell exactly what Alice did this morning, the reaction or the purification.

Alice purified the mixture obtained from a reaction she ran in the glovebox this morning.

For clarity, move the modifier closer to the noun it is modifying.

This morning, Alice purified the mixture obtained from a reaction she ran in the glovebox.

Rewrite the following sentences to fix unnecessary nominalizations. Then check your own writing! Removing nominalizations has the bonus effect of fixing passive voice and helping with wordiness.

1. The calculations were performed on the cluster using density functional theory (DFT) and are in agreement with prior work.
2. The intention of this approach is to create new materials with high stability.
3. This result showed the dependence of our process on temperature and supported our implementation of the infrared control system.