2. How to Approach Technical Writing
• You can’t throw all your time
into a paper at the last minute
and expect a good result
3. Gray’s 12-step program
• Foundation: write for 15 to 30 minutes every day.
• Supportive Recommendations
– make notes about the points to be covered in your new writing, doing this a
day or week beforehand.
– close or remove all books, articles and other polished text.
– close the door, turning off the telephone, closing email and web applications
and generally removing all distractions.
• begin each 15–30 minute session by writing new words,
for 5 to 20 minutes, and only doing other writing
activities, such as taking notes or editing previous text,
after the new words have been produced.
• motto: “Write before you’re ready!”
4. Technical writing must be clear and
concise
• Bad: “Problem X is clearly a critical area that impacts our
research agenda and hypothesis. Our ideas about problem
X are embryonic and still evolving, and doubtless our
ongoing work in this area will quickly yield fruitful results.”
• Better: “We recognize that problem X is central to our
agenda, but we have only begun to investigate it.”
• Omit needless words
• make clear precisely what your new contributions are, and
how they are different/better than existing approaches to
this or similar problems?
• Are you able to capture the non-experts in the audience
with the opening of your paper, and impress the experts in
the body of the paper?
5. Technical writing must be clear and
concise
• your paper will make only a small number of
discrete points–say 2 to 4.
• Each important point should appear 3 times:
once in the abstract/introduction, once in the
body of the paper (where it is explained in
detail), and once in the conclusions (where
you derive some implications of this point for
the future of systems research, or whatever).
6. Start from Outline!!
• Start with a short 5-10 minute talk to your colleagues before starting to
write
• Make the outline reflect the level of subsections: for each subsection, write
no more than two lines describing the purpose/goal of that subsection.
• for each subsection, map out specific paragraphs: for each paragraph, write
one sentence that explains the topic or main goal of just that paragraph
• Do not get caught up in detail bullets and incomplete sentences are ok.
You will fill them in later
• Read through everything you have written and see if it has a logical flow, ie
if you believe it represents your work adequately
• Give what you have written to a technical colleague,
• As you write your section organization will change, it means you’re
understanding what presentation order works best
7. Components of a Technical Paper
• Title
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Main Body
• Conclusions
• Acknowledgements
• Citation/References
8. Paper Title
• Titles can be long and descriptive: or short
and sweet
• Don’t even try to write the title or abstract
until after the whole rest of the paper is
written
9. Abstract
– State the purpose/problem, your approach and
solution (a brief description of the work), and the
main contributions of the paper (primary results
and conclusion).
– essentially the “selling point” for the paper
– stand-alone mini-summary of the paper
– clear and concise, a single paragraph, typically 200
words maximum
– Can you read only the abstract and conclusions
and be able to give someone else a 30-second
digest of what the paper claims it says?
10. Introduction
• typical Introduction includes four paragraphs
1. giving the reasons for and importance of the work, and
why someone would want to read the paper
2. second and third paragraphs contain a brief description
of the background to the problem and the connection of
the present work to the background
3. One error that is frequently found in paper submittals is
that little, if any, research was done by the authors to
determine that the work is indeed new and original. This
is a comprehensive review of related work.
4. final paragraph includes a clear statement of the purpose
or goal of the work; it is an expansion from the Abstract.
A statement of the hypothesis (question being
addressed)
11. Main Body
• The Main Body
– includes the work done which consists of; methods, results, analysis,
and discussion sections. The exact layout and section titles will vary
depending on the topic.
– description of the methods used is important for repetition and
comparison to other work. Methods typically include field sampling
techniques, laboratory methods, data analysis methods; i.e. how the
work was performed
– results should be given and analyzed. The results section is sometimes
separated from the discussion section, but usually they are combined
– Tables, graphs, and diagrams should be used to help visualize and
explain the results and analysis. Each table and figure needs a written
explanation determine which graphs that will convey the results you
think are important
– Discussing the results is also important, but leave the conclusions for
the Conclusion section
12. Conclusion
– No new information is presented
– How did the work support the purpose or validate
your research hypothesis?
– make the original claims more concrete, e.g., by
referring to quantitative performance results
– Bulleted conclusions can help
– Can you read only the abstract and conclusions
and be able to give someone else a 30-second
digest of what the paper claims it says?
– Future work some times part of conclusion
• how the work sets new research directions.
13. Acknowledgements
• important if funding has been received from a special
source for the work and research that was
performed.
• Co-workers who assisted in the work but were not
involved in the final writing may also be listed here.
14. Citations/References
• All references in text must be in reference list
• No references in the list that are not cited in
the text
• Identify the format used by the organization
and follow it explicitly.
• Cite, cite, cite! Give due credit to those whose
efforts you build on, as well as pointing out
how your approach is different from (and
better than) previous ones
15. Peer Review
• Have you had it read by at least one person
familiar with each of the areas the paper
impinges on?
• Walk away from your writing for a day or two
then give it a full top-to-bottom reading to
evaluate its coherence and flow of ideas.
• Global Science Share (add web site and show
in class)
– http://globalscienceshare.org/
