So you’re compiling the weekly email alert for Nature’s Signaling Update, and you’re choosing a paper of the week.
The paper involves a growth factor binding protein that promotes cardiac development.
So what do you do?
You call the article summary IGF binding proteins: Make another little piece of my heart now, baby, of course.
Nice work!
O, frabjous day. Glad to see my colleagues know how to write an amusing headline. Years ago when the world was young I wrote Nature‘s press release and had all sorts of fun of that kind.
I love cheesy puns, especially if they’re geeky cheesy puns. Some journals seem to attract them more than others, especially in review articles.
So how would one get a job writing cheesy geeky puns for Nature? Is it possible to do it on a freelance basis? Pay-per-pun?
I don’t know about Singaling Update in particular, but the headlines in Nature are written by the subeditors (sometimes the commissioning ed and the author will log a suggestion). These are staff positions but we advertise vacancies when they come up! (I put them on the NN Ask the Nature Editor forum when I remember, but there is a company webpage for its jobs, which is linked at the NN A the N E forum).
Writing the puns is probably a jealously guarded perk, but you could certainly try contacting the Signalling Update editors to offer your services!
Singling update?
Singalong update?
Singing update?
Signaling update, that’s it!
A Singalong update sounds like fun.
Realistically I won’t be able to apply for any Nature jobs until you have a Vancouver office. A girl can dream though!
I once wrote a press release about a paper about a mouse model for a distressing human condition called Usher Syndrome, which results from mutations in myosin VII, an essential component of the widgets in your ears that help you balance. The mouse model kept falling over, so I came up with the headline … no, you’re way ahead of me …
The fall of the mouse of Usher?
Did that get past the censors?
Yes.
It did.
Ah, happy days.
It was the “distressing human condition” bit that made me wonder…
Dr Gee’s muse has never been constrained by such things as ‘taste’.