Some of the most common errors made in refining take-home messages are listed below, as a list of DOs and DON’Ts
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DOs | DON’Ts |
DO expect your take-home message to take time and mental effort to define, draft and refine. | DON’T expect your take-home message to be a quick and easy step in your paper-writing adventure. It is possibly the most difficult part of your whole paper. |
DO expect to require feedback from multiple people (e.g., friends, relatives and/or co-authors, colleagues) in order to finalise your take-home message. | DON’T expect that that you can define, draft and refine your take-home message all on your own, even if you are the only author of your paper. |
DO use translated jargon that intelligent people can understand e.g., reports to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals about instances of animal cruelty (i.e., RSPCA cruelty reports) | DON’T use untranslated jargon e.g., RSPCA cruelty reports |
DO use the complete word for things | DON’T use acronyms. If you absolutely must use an acronym (e.g., for a term that is longer than about a third-of-a-line and is used more than about 3 times in the take-home message), don’t forget to define it upon first use. |
DO use the same term when referring to the same thing. | DON’T try to vary your language. |
DO put the current study into the broader context of the field: state explicitly the big underlying question or problem that led you to do this research. | DON’T go straight into the specifics of your research (e.g., WHAT you did and WHAT you found), without telling your reader WHY you did this research. |
DO think hard and show the real and compelling reason why you did the research you are presenting in your paper. | DON’T use ‘there is little knowledge’ as the rationale for the research you are presenting in your paper. |
DO ensure the opening sentence of your take-home message gets straight to the point of WHY you did this study. | DON’T give waffly background information. |
DO give enough detail so your reader can understand WHAT you actually did in your research. | DON’T omit essential details, such as what type of research you undertook, what your comparator was, what outcomes you measured, etc. |
DO remember to write your actual results into your take-home message. | DON’T write your take-home message like the blurb on the back of a book (‘in this book, we will cover topic X, Y and Z’). |
DO conclude with something that is specific to your results. | DON’T conclude with something generic that someone could have told you without even reading what your results were. |
DO make sure your conclusions are supported by the actual results you present in your take-home message. | DON’T conclude anything that is over extrapolated from your data. Don’t be afraid of having a ‘small’ conclusion. There’s nothing ‘small’ about making an incremental gain in knowledge when that gain in knowledge is strongly supported by the data. All research is incremental. |
DO ensure your take-home message is concrete and tangible. | DON’T succumb to waffly hand-waving at any point in your take-home message (common at the end of the take-home message) |
Check the above DOs and DON’Ts as your refine your take-home message.