Steps in Paper Writing
- Pre-writing (content dump) - 70%
- Writing - 10%
- Revision (rewriting, formatting) - 20%
- Cut the clutter
- Remove clunky words/phrases - important, as it is well know that, and it should be emphasized that
- Remove hedge words - e.g. very and appreciable
- Remove unnecessary jargons and acronyms.
- Remove repetitive words/phrases.
- Eliminate negatives.
- Omit needless prepositions - e.g. that
- Use adverbs sparingly - e.g. really, basically, and generally
- Shorten long words and phrases - e.g. due to the fact that to because
- Use the active voice
- Write with verbs - Use strong verbs. Don't turn verbs into nouns. Don't bury the main verb
- Sentences - Sentences should be reasonably short and not too complex. In order to rearrange sentences, use compound sentence structures and complex sentence structures.
- Vocabulary
- In general, prefer short words to long words, ordinary words to grand words, familiar words to unfamiliar words, non-technical words to technical words and concrete words to abstract words.
- Use jargons only if they are genuinely necessary.
- Avoid fashionable words such as functionality, enhance (improve/increase?), parameter (value/variable?), peripheral, viable or inhibit (stop/reduce?) because they have become unreliable units of information exchange.
- Phrases
- Avoid roundabout phrasings that uses abstraction or nominalization. Avoid abstraction by being as being as specific as possible. Avoid nominalization, thereby getting rid of colorless verbs such as achieve, perform, accomplish, carry out, conduct, observe
- Avoid unusual phrasings that use words such as having and being
- Avoid excessive use of adjectives as premodifiers. Usually, one or two adjectives, especially number adjectives and color adjectives, come before the noun, and other modifiers come after it.
- Avoid excessive use of nouns as premodifiers. Premodifying nouns are less explicit than postmodifying prepositional constructions. Confusion may also arise when nouns are used as premodifiers along with prepositions, transitive verbs, and to be and to become. The trick is to introduce the agent as soon as possible.
- Verbs
- Tense - Use past tense to state what the objectives were, what equipments were used and what procedures were used. Use present tense to state ‘eternal truths’ and in discussions of data or results.
- Voice - Use a proper mixture of active and passive voice. Use active voice as far as possible. Use passive voice only when the agent is unimportant, when the agent is not known, when we do not want to state who the agent is and while stating a generally-held belief. Improper use of passive voice can lead to distortion in meaning, roundabout phrasing and ambiguity. Active writing does not have to be personal. It may be desirable to ensure objectivity in scientific and technical writing, but not at the cost of clarity. Avoid it...that constructions.
- Punctuation
- Use right punctuation at the right places. Punctuations are an integral part of written communication.
- Add comma after discourse markers such as however, well, since, ...
- Tone - Avoid cheap attempts at producing user-friendly text that may come across to the reader as overly-patronizing. A comfortable, conversational user-friendly tone is best produced by use of simple vocabulary in direct address to the user.
- Don’t wait, just start writing - forces us to be clear and focused; open the way to initiate dialogue with others; a way to develop ideas, instead of an output medium
- Identify your key idea - a paper is an idea-conveying mechanism; the paper should have exactly one clear, sharp idea; “the main idea of this paper is...”, “in this section we present the main contributions of the paper.”
- Tell a story
- narrative flow: (1) here is a problem, (2) it is an interesting problem, (3) it is an unsolved problem, (4) here is my idea, (5) my idea works, (6) here’s how my idea compares to other people’s approaches
- structure: (1) title, (2) abstract, (3) introduction, (4) the problem, (5) my idea, (6) the details, (7) related work, (8) conclusions and future works
- Nail your contributions to the mast - first page of the paper is very important; describe the problem and state your contributions; use an example; idea vs. contribution;
- Related work - put it at the end of the paper; explain your idea first, along with details and then compare to existing work; acknowledge weaknesses in your approach; be generous to the competition;
- Put your readers first - use examples, figures well
- Listen to your readers - internal review; experts and non-experts; use the guinea pigs carefully; “just put one mark where you get lost and then we’ll talk about it”;
The three important elements of successful academic writing are punctuation, paragraphing and style. This post deals with structuring paragraphs.
Body Paragraph - The three important elements of successful paragraphs are shown below:
- Unity - All sentences should focus on one main idea of the paragraph. Start the paragraph with the topic sentence. The topic sentence should contain the topic and the controlling idea. Ask the question words to come up with the controlling idea. If the paragraph is too long, then it is good to have a concluding sentence.
- Coherence - All sentences should be clearly related to each other. Repeat key words. Use synonyms. Use pronouns. Use transition words
- Development - All sentences should develop the one main idea. Use details and explanation. Use examples and evidence. Use references
TEE Rule - Topic Sentence, Explanation, Examples/Evidence
Introductory Paragraph - State the topic of assignment and comment on its importance. State the main argument. How you intend to answer the question?
Concluding Paragraph - Summarize the main points. State the main conclusion. Has the question been answered?
Concluding Paragraph - Summarize the main points. State the main conclusion. Has the question been answered?
