Day: September 28, 2010

At the start of this post, I link to the site where I saw the news website article, and selectively quote a piece of it:

In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of “scare quotes” to ensure that it’s clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever.

In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research “challenges”.

If the research is about a potential cure, or a solution to a problem, this paragraph will describe how it will raise hopes for a group of sufferers or victims.

In this sentence, I raise several overlapping criticisms, ostensibly of the article, but actually of a superficially-similar article that the journalist did not in fact write, ranging from accusations of basic misunderstanding to having completely misrepresented the research process. In the middle of this paragraph, I critique the way in which the journalist has used emotional manipulation to add spice to their article, I attempt to morally blackmail the journalist with the plight of the group of sufferers and victims, which I implicitly assume actually exist, and I make an inflammatory rhetorical demand of the journalist in retaliation, seemingly unaware that this really isn’t likely to help. Here at the end of the paragraph, I make a series of contrived links to previous posts on my blog, in the vain hope of directing traffic to them and making it look like I have a coherent subject to talk about.

Here I realise my sentences are far too long. Fragments better.

And shorter paragraphs.

Yes.

At this point I insert in a pretty but entirely arbitrary image I found on Flickr by searching for a word or phrase from the subject and picking something eye-catching, because it makes my blog look nicer than if it was just a relentless stream of text.

Here I make a misrepresentation of my own point, if in fact it turns out I have one, and put a break in to spare my blog’s home page from being overwhelmed by what is manifestly too long a piece of writing for the genre.

Continue reading “This is a blog post about a news website article about a scientific paper”