This section aims to develop your stylistic competence in emphasis, momentum, and semantic marking.
First, however, to check that you have understood the conventions of paragraphing and written syntax, identify the topic and main point in the following two paragraphs. Are the paragraphs coherent and in a style appropriate for an academic essay?
Many manufacturing companies have people working for them whose job it is to do work in research and development. We can call these kind of people scientists, engineers and technologists. Very often you will see the abbreviation SET. When you do see this it means just such scientists, engineers and technologists. SETs are really quite important for a company, especially one that wants to try to increase its profits as much as possible because SETs will probably do some activities which will cut the costs of a company or they might be able to improve the quality of some of the things the company makes. If the company is lucky then the SETs might do both, that is cut costs and improve quality at the same time.
However, there may be a problem with SETs and that problem is diminishing returns. These activities that the SETs perform in the company, which have been mentioned in the previous paragraph, may be subject to diminishing returns. This should not necessarily mean that the SETs will be unable to raise the profits of the company that they are working for, but, on the other hand, it may mean that the profits will not be so big as would otherwise be expected. Indeed the expectation with SETs is that while they can be counted on to increase company profits, this increase will probably be at a diminishing rate in line with the diminishing returns pertaining to the activities of the SETs.
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© 2002 Martin Paterson