Organization
Transcript
James Christensen: I think the structure of the writing kind of suggests itself after I get the rough material down. Then somehow you can look at it and just get a sequence that makes sense, and that isn’t particularly difficult for me. Organizing it is a lot less difficult than getting it out. It just takes more time.
Claudia Laycock: We have a format that is very basic that you learn during law school and you always start with the facts. I base my decision on the facts and the application of the law to the facts. And so the first thing I must do is outline what my facts are: if I’ve listened to a trial, and it’s not a jury trial so the decision is mine, the first thing I must do is sift through all the evidence and the first thing I do is type up the facts one by one. And standard practice is that you list them one by one, I try to do it in chronological order, and once I’ve got my facts in place, then I can start to analyze the law. So issue by issue, I will write in question form “the issue is la da da da” question mark and then I will analyze the law that I find applies and then I will apply the law to the facts and at the end of that section I’ll announce whatever decision I make with regard to that particular issue. And then at the end there’s always a conclusion where I once again state every important decision I’ve made and then I assign whichever attorney is going to turn this into the official findings, conclusions, and order, and then I date it and sign it. It’s the same format the appellate courts use, it’s the same format that you use in law school when you’re analyzing cases, and so everybody is familiar with it, and you really don’t want to toy with it too much because people want to read it who are legally trained in that context and in that order.
Susan Meyer: The standard for just a regular research paper, reporting research results—it has to have an abstract to summarize the results, key words, a short introduction with a literature review saying what the background of the study is, a detailed materials and methods so if someone else wants to repeat your study they have enough information then you report your results which is usually in tables and figures with just a little accompanying text and then at the end you discuss your results and then you have your literature cited. That’s how they are set up.
The format of a grant proposal depends on what agency or what entity. What happens is they send out a request for proposals, they tell you what the format has to be and you have to meet their format. Usually the main thing that they are anal about is the length limitations; they don’t want it too long. In fact, in all science writing, the more you can say in fewer words, and still be clear, the better it is.
I tend to like the sound of words and I can go on for a long time about things! You have to be disciplined and just go for the jugular.
Geoffrey Germane: To draft a report, we have a template that we have developed over the years. That becomes sort of the structure for what we do, but the process involves summarizing the facts.
The document is historical in the sense that we summarize our work as well as also give a brief synopsis of the motor vehicle collision. We also provide our analysis which results in opinions that are very specific and quantitative usually but some qualitative opinions, upon which others can rely for their work.