A glimpse of my "Writing with New Scientist" class - a paragraph makeover. 🌼🌼🌼

A story of how a good paragraph can become a superb one with the help of ideas.

Topic: What problems might exposure to excessive amounts of noise lead to?

First, look at the original:

📝 "High levels of noise have been linked to a multitude of health issues, ranging from insomnia and anxiety to hearing loss. Clearly, people living in big cities are at particularly high risk of suffering from these, as exposure to industrial and especially transport-related noise is virtually unavoidable in urban areas. As leaving the city for a quieter place is not an option for the majority, they have to stay where they are and constantly put their health at risk."

It's a good paragraph in terms of language, but what it lacks is real ideas. The ideas here are very obvious and the underlined part basically tells nothing new to the reader. Who doesn't know that noise exists in cities? So I told the student to establish the link between noise and health issues, thus developing the idea of health issues.

And here is the second version:

📝 "High levels of noise have been linked to a multitude of health issues, both physical and mental. Biologically, the brain has been trained to constantly monitor the surroundings for signs of danger. Noise can be perceived as such and cause the brain to release stress hormones into the bloodstream, increasing the heart rate and blood pressure. Prolonged exposure to noise, therefore, leads to permanently high levels of cortisol and other stress-related hormones, keeping heart-beat and blood pressure abnormally high. This, in turn, results in health problems ranging from heart conditions and strokes to anxiety and depression, which considerably reduce the quality of life and life expectancy of those who have to experience noise frequently."

Isn't it absolutely superb? I asked to student to add ideas - which she did - but the final result has even more great language and even better cohesion. Ideas are important - they are the starting point of everything else! 👑