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Titles in Food Science Posters: A preliminary Survey

from the ChimAlsi_2012 Book of Abstracts

Eugenio Cianflone

 Gastronomic Science Degree, University of Messina (Italy)

ecianflone@unime.it

Abstract

Titles, the first point of contact between authors and readers, provide concise and exhaustive information on the research and on the findings. Analyses in different disciplinary fields indicate that the structural construction conforms to four different layouts: nominal, compound, full-sentence and question. The aim of this paper is to report preliminary results from ongoing research on title encoding practices in Food Science. Previous research in this disciplinary field has surveyed titles in research articles and in short communications. Results have shown the prevalence of nominal and compound titles, and a mean length of 15.3 for research articles and of 14.6 for short communications. This paper wants to offer a further contribution to extant literature by examining 241 poster titles presented at a conference. Findings indicate the mean word count in 12.02 words per title and the exclusive use of the nominal and of the compound format.

Key-words: Titles; Poster presentation; Food Science; LSP

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