Webinar Duration: 60 minutes
RECORDED: Access recorded version only for one participant; unlimited viewing for 6 months (Access information will be emailed 24 hours after the completion of payment)
SPEAKER: Hope J. Lafferty
OVERVIEW:
Modeled after David Letterman’s Top 10 List, this session outlines best practices in contemporary biomedical writing. After counting down each mistake, useful and immediately applicable solutions help audiences view their own writing in new ways.
To equip researchers with the most contemporary practices in medical and science writing, the program outlines:
– The importance of word choice to break the monotony of repetition and make the content more compelling
– Contemporary term usage, to shift away from using the shorthand and antiquated terms that scientists and physicians use to quickly communicate in less structured types of writing
– How best to convey one’s argument by simply understanding and modifying how sentences are structured
– How-and why-to write with the audience in mind, especially in a world where our research reaches a global audience at many stages of their careers
– Various ways to demystify and approach the writing process, by knowing how to prepare, where to start, and when to revise
– By outlining common mistakes and identifying simple solutions, early career scientists and medical researchers will have tools to improve their ability to write, edit, and organize their manuscripts, grants, and presentations, and ultimately increase their academic and research productivity.
This fun and informative program is designed to help researchers at all levels improve their writing so they may fund their research, publish their results, and ultimately develop and provide innovative treatment options for patients.
Why should you attend: Fear: After years of education and planning to be a research scientist, early career researchers might find that their writing skills are limiting their ability to publish their research, receive funding for their work, and pursue the research careers they had envisioned.
Uncertainty: The writing style that they used to complete their PhDs seems cumbersome, difficult to read, and obfuscating. Some early career researchers question the quality of the writing style that they learned from their mentors, especially if it’s unnatural to write and difficult to read.
Doubt: Some early career researchers, after receiving rejected manuscripts and unfunded grants, might lose confidence in their writing, not know how to improve their writing, or find themselves unable to continue or even start new writing projects.
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Areas Covered in the Session:
– Contemporary Usage & Word Choice
– Sentence Structure
– The Writing Process
Who Will Benefit:
– MDs
– PhDs
– Early Career Researchers
– Postdoctoral Fellows
– Junior Faculty
– Statisticians
– Department Chairs
SPEAKER PROFILE:
Hope J. Lafferty, AM, ELS As a board-certified Editor in the Life Sciences, Hope has more than 20 years’ experience as a science editor. In the mid-1990s, Hope served as marketing director for one of the first Internet broadcasters in Austin, Texas. From there, she worked for many years as a technical writer at the Department of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, where she developed a style guide for standards and practices in the process industry. She then worked as an editorial manager at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York in the Departments of Urology and Medicine. In 2009, Hope started her own consultancy, where she works with scientist-writers in the pharmaceutical industry and in academic environments.
Hope has led seminars at the annual conferences of the Council of Science Editors and the American Medical Writers Association, as well as at the University of Houston, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
