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Research Methods and Techniques
Lecture 9
Technical Writing 2
© 2004, J S Sventek, University of Glasgow
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 2
Reminders/Notices
Web site: www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~joe/Teaching/RMaT.html
Course director: Prof J S Sventek [email protected]
Assignment due Thursday, 9 December 2004 Annotated bibliography – topic “Redundant Arrays of
Inexpensive Disks”
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 3
Your Research Career
Success in your research career will depend upon: Your technical knowledge and research
skills Your ability to convey your results
verbally and via the written word How well you are known!
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 4
Technical Writing
Writing should be a regular part of the research process it is very difficult to “do the work” and then “write it
up” “the work” is never done; it is constantly changing writing helps pin down the details, and helps to
focus ongoing research
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 5
Paper Summaries
Writing one-page summaries of papers you read: makes writing the related work part of your
dissertation much easier creates a record of your understanding of the
paper (because you WILL forget the details) helps you to organize and synthesize the threads
of related work encourages you to analyze and think about prior
art and its limitations
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 6
Procrastination
Procrastinate – to delay intentionally and habitually the doing of something that should be done
Procrastination-busters: write something every day, even if it’s an outline, a paper
summary, or a “trivial” bit of commentary schedule your writing before something that you really
enjoy doing, and force yourself to complete the writing before rewarding yourself
write sloppily and fix it later (organize well, though, since bad organization is much harder to fix later)
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 7
General rules for scientific writing
Readers interpret prose more easily when it flows smoothly, from background to rationale to conclusion
Use standard abbreviations for units instead of writing complete words (hr, min, sec) abbreviations should NOT be written in plural
form (i.e. 5 ml, not 5 mls) With two exceptions (degree symbol and percent
symbol), leave a space between numbers and the accompanying units (5°, 8%, 12 ml)
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 8
General rules for scientific writing (cont)
Results described in your paper should be in the past tense (you’ve done these experiments, but your results are not yet accepted “facts”)
Results from cited published papers should be described in the present tense (published results are “facts”)
Experiments you plan to do in the future should be described in the future tense.
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 9
General rules for scientific writing (cont)
Third vs first person First person is accepted in scientific writing, but it
should be used sparingly use it to emphasize things that “you” uniquely did
Most text should be written in third person to avoid sounding like an autobiographical account
Avoid use of the impersonal pronoun “one”, as it often seems noncommittal and dry
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 10
General rules for scientific writing (cont)
Use active voice rather than passive voice e.g. use “Figure 5 shows …” rather than “… as shown in
Figure 5”. Ambiguous referral to concepts in the preceding
sentence often use “it” or “they” to refer to a concept in the preceding
sentence; if there is more than one concept in that sentence, reader will be confused; repeat the concept name
often use “this” to summarize sense of previous sentence; almost always clearer if “this” is followed by a noun – e.g. “this result”
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 11
General rules for scientific writing (cont) Eliminate empty phrases. Replace occurrences of
the LHS phrase with the corresponding RHS phrase adding together → adding cancel out → cancel during the course of → during for the purpose of → for in view of the fact → given the vast majority → most a number of → several whether or not → whether it can be seen that → it is a fact that →
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 12
General rules for scientific writing (cont) Eliminate single numbered subsections (e.g. 5.2.1 in
section 5.2) – either fold the text into section 5.2, or change the text that precedes the subsection into another subsection
When referring to chapters, sections, figures, and tables, capitalize when referring to a particular instance – e.g. Chapter 1, Section 5.3, Table II, Figure 1-5
Label percentages in tables with %, currency with the appropriate currency symbol
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 13
General rules for scientific writing (cont) Each sentence should consist of one or more
complete thoughts – subject verb object when two complete thoughts make up a sentence, there
are two forms of legal punctuation First thought; second thought. First thought, <connector> second thought.
<connector> can be “and”, “or”, “but”
Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas e.g. The best way to see a country, unless you are pressed
for time, is to travel on foot.
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 14
General rules for scientific writing (cont) A paragraph is about a single idea, with a single,
key, topic sentence The topic sentence is almost always the first
sentence, but may sometimes be the last sentence. The rest of the sentences in a paragraph support
the topic sentence. Note that you can get a quick summary of a section
by reading just the topic sentences (if the author has followed this rule).
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 15
General rules for scientific writing (cont) Don’t write overly long words, sentences,
paragraphs, or sections Know what each section, paragraph, and sentence
is about, and stick to the subject Define your terms and use boldface or another font
format convention to make them stand out (in particular, do not use quotes)
Expand your acronyms on first use (and use as few as possible); if you must define and use an acronym, you must use it at least three times
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 16
General rules for scientific writing (cont)
Avoid slang and idioms “crop up”, “lose track”, “it turned out that”, “play
up”, “right out”, “run the gamut”, “teased into” “lots”, “a lot”, “write up” “get” Avoid contractions (considered too informal for
technical writing)
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 17
General rules for scientific writing (cont)
Avoid qualifiers and adverbs “very”, “rather”, “simply”, “possibly”, “of course”,
“naturally”, “obviously”, “just”, “pretty”, “pretty much”, “more of”, “extremely”, “seriously”
particularly avoid qualifying non-qualifiable words such as “unique”, “intractable”, “optimal” and “infinite”
avoid personalizing your remarks with phrases like “I think”, “I feel”, “I believe”, “It seems”
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 18
Logical connectives
but however although even though in spite of nonetheless nevertheless
while whereas
in addition to not only … but besides as well as too
Furthermore Moreover Also
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 19
General rules for scientific writing (cont) its (something that belongs to “it”) vs. it’s (a
contraction for “it is”) which vs. that
that is the defining, restrictive pronoun – e.g. The lawn mower that is broken is in the garage.
which is the nondefining, nonrestrictive pronoun – e.g. The lawn mower, which is broken, is in the garage.
between (two items) vs. among (more than two items)
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 20
General rules for scientific writing (cont) affect vs. effect
effect – as a noun, “result”; as a verb, “to accomplish” affect – as a verb, “to influence”
utilize vs. use – there is never a good reason to utilize
hyphenate compound adjectives e.g. the database is a knowledge base, while the
component that provides access to the knowledge base is known as the knowledge-base component.
commas, commas, commas, commas, … (298 errors in 263-page PhD dissertation)
25 November 2004 RMaT/Technical Writing 2 21
General rules for scientific writing (cont) Parallel construction
expressions similar in content and function should be outwardly similar; the similarity of form enables the reader to recognize more readily the likeness of content and function: the French, Italians, Spanish, and Portuguese OR the
French, the Italians, the Spanish, and the Portuguese in spring, summer, or winter OR in spring, in summer,
or in winter His speech was marked by disagreement with and
scorn for his opponent’s position.