Writing Tips¶
Note: These came from a lab handout produced by Charles Johnson. The handout notes that the information itself is credited to Nathan Woodbury, while Charles added further comments about doing a literature review.
Lessons from writing technical papers¶
- Organization: Make sure the paper is well organized to tell a simple and easy-to-follow story
- Story: All elements of the paper must support the central story
- Notation: You need consistent, clean, and simple notation, otherwise the paper is hard to follow; don't use too many acronyms
- Highlight: Highlight important points with bullets
Lessons from writing fiction¶
Simplicity¶
To paraphrase/translate from the author Antoine de Saint-Exupery (author of The Little Prince):
Perfection is obtained not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Show, Don't Tell¶
This was the mantra that Brandon Sanderson (New York Times bestselling author of fiction) drills into all prospective writers, though it isn't original to him. For technical writing, this means we should use short equations, proofs, and examples instead of long paragraphs.
Balance Novelty with Familiarity¶
Another tip from Brandon Sanderson, people are looking for something novel, something different from what they've seen before. However, if the work is 100% novel, nobody will understand a word of what's going on. Most of the work will actually need to be familiar, Sanderson recommends 85% for fiction, in order for the reader to be able to follow along. You also need to be familiar with the audience to judge what is familiar. Learn this through your literature review.
Novelty Must Be Significant¶
You need to justify any novelty. Why should the reader care? For your research, make sure you are doing something significant, not a minor perturbation of existing work. Check the significance of your results when you do your literature review.
Learning Curve Must Be Managed¶
Related to the first two, you need to manage the rate at which new information is presented to the reader; otherwise they will get lost at the beginning and never care about the work. For technical writing, new concepts, definitions, notations, etc. need to be introduced gradually in order to keep the reader focused on the work.
Copy Editing¶
Nothing ruins a good story more than a misspelled word. Before submitting, have an editor read the work. You will be surprised at how many spelling or grammatical errors you will have, even after several passes through your paper. You may also consider hiring a professional editor for significant works. See the Editors page for a list of possible choices.
Editing¶
Editing is different than copy editing. It is intended to check the structure and semantics of the work, as opposed to the syntax. Have someone familiar with the field read the paper to verify that the story is easy to follow and that the math is correct. This is the main point of the peer-review process; however, it would be good to have a fellow lab member help out with this before going through the submission process only to find flaws that could have been corrected earlier.