Tag Archives: Emily Theys

Forging an Alliance between Forensic Science and the Reader: An Analysis of the Writing Techniques Used in Forensic Science

By: Jennifer Huang and Emily Theys

For the better part of this semester, we’ve read lengthy and example-laden texts of distinguished true crime scholars, perused horrific images of death, and written (and re-written) drafts comparing and contrasting the presentation of a specific true crime case through four media outlets (Odendahl-James). Through this all, we have come to recognize that historian Jean Murley’s quotation from the beginning of the year sums it all up:

True crime was more than just another formula, another genre, another story – it was about real things that happened to real people, and the stories of murder were both terrifying and oddly reassuring. (Murley 1)

Reading about crime, for whatever reason, was fascinating. However, as the semester progressed, we discovered that there was more to crime than just the true crime genre. In its simplest terms, narrating a crime event can be split into two distinct genres: the first being the true crime narrative, which had been the focus of our analyses for the past three months, and the second, which David Owen’s Hidden Evidence: 50 true crimes and how forensic science helped solve them exemplifies, the forensic science narrative. While these two genres are kept separate through differences in style and vocabulary, Owen, as a forensic science writer, attempts to mediate this discrepancy through the use of two techniques adopted from true crime narratives – active readership and selectivity of cases. In writing the chapter entitled “Frauds and Forgeries”, Owen somewhat modifies the manner in which these techniques are applied, and this slight alteration creates a noticeable distinction between the true crime and forensic science genres.

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