ELEMENTS OF FEATURE WRITING AND
SCIENCE WRITING
Feature Writing
- It involves writing featured articles
on trending topics, great
personalities, and relevant issues.
This form of writing is generally
longer than a specific
news story and more informative in
nature.
Elements of a Scientific Paper
Elements of Feature Writing
 Personality Profiles – Used to
create connection between the
reader and the person of interest in
an article. Almost always includes an
interview and can include clips and
write-ups about the person’s past
endeavor and achievements.
 Human Interest Stories -  It
presents people and their problems,
concerns, or achievements in a way
that brings about interest, sympathy
or motivation in the reader or viewer.
 Trend Stories – Focuses on the
latest pop culture. It can be anything
from fashion, to food, to gossip. This
is a great example of when to be
timely with a report, because if
you’re one day late, the trend is
already long gone.
 In-Dept Stories – Are made up of
extensive research, interviews, and
first-hand accounts that put it far
beyond a normal feature story in
relation to detail.
 Backgrounders - They give the
background information in a
developing news topic. This help to
catch up viewers and readers who
are just finding out about news story.
Backgrounders are also called
analysis pieces.
Science Writing
- Science journalists report news
and other information about
science to the public. This involves
writing informative and often
entertaining summaries of relevant
findings, consulting with expert
scientists and researchers and
conveying the information in ways
that a non-specialist audience can
understand. 
 The Title. The title should headline
the main result described in the
paper, not the main effort. That is, a
title that describes what you did will
likely attract far fewer readers than a
title that describes what you
learned. 
 The Introduction. The introduction
has precisely one purpose: to
convince your readers that they
should read your paper. To do so, it
must first convince your readers that
you have identified an important,
open scientific question that they
should care about. Following this, it
should prime your readers to expect
an answer to that question,
encouraging them to read on.
 Results. The results section should
typically start with a paragraph
describing your approach in broad
terms. It is critical that the results
section provide your readers with a
broad enough outline of your
approach that this alone gives them
sufficient context to understand your
results. It is also important, however,
that you do not go into too much
detail here; give them the conceptual
tools to understand your work but
not more.
 Discussion.  A separate discussion
section allows you to reiterate your
point bluntly and concisely and thus
 provides an additional forum in
which to get your point across. It is
also the only place you are allowed
to speculate widely on the
implications of your work.
 Figures and Figures Caption.
Good writing involves more than just
writing: the vast majority of scientific
papers employ figures to illustrate
important concepts and present
supporting data.
 Abstract. The abstract is the entire
paper in brief. Indeed, a badly
written abstract almost guarantees
that no one will read the paper itself.