Research Methods and Techniques Lecture 9 Technical Writing 2 © 2004, J S Sventek, University of...

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”


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!


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


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


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)


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)


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.



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



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”


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 →


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


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.


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).


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



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)



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”


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


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)


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)


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.

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