Notes on writing course

Some notes from the writing course I’m taking.

Lecture 1, 14 November

Resources

• Searching phrases/alternatives in quotes in Google Scholar can tell which one is more frequently used.

• https://ozdic.com contains collocations: words frequently occuring together with the searched word.

• https://www.english-corpora.org/iweb another resource for looking collocations; more scientifically rigorous than Ozdic.

• https://books.google.com/ngrams counts ngram usage over time, and compares usage over time. Also allows e.g. * difference* to find the most common word before difference.

• https://scholar.google.com: Allows search quoted terms for frequency count in papers.

• Cambridge and Oxford dictionaries are good enough. They not only give definitions but also typical usage and e.g. common proposition.

Reader friendlyness

• Keep subject and verb close to each other.
• Avoid unneeded words; keep things brief.
• Avoid multiple reasons (in order to, owing to, due to). Even avoid In order to completely; just To suffices.
• Avoid complicated words; no unneeded repetitions.

Typical problems

• Object far from verb
• Front-loading
• Dangling modifiers
• Lack of parallelism
• Redundancy: A, which B, that C, so that D.
• Stacking
• Turgid sentences: overstuffed.

Lecture 2, 21 November

Paragraph level expectations

• Topic sentence: 1st sentence of paragraph creates expectations about the content of the rest of the paragraph.
  • don’t have to, but recommended
  • makes implicit expectations explicit
  • should not be too specific. Following sentence make things more precise.
  • simple, wide, not specific, not too vague
• Preview sentence / Framing sentence
  • establish expectations about the structure of the paragraph
  • Can give the number of items following: We distinguish two cases.
• Topic and preview sentence may be merged.
• Possible paragraph structure
  1. Topic sentence
  2. Preview sentence
  3. Aspect 1
  4. Detail 1
  5. Aspect 2
  6. Detail 2
  7. Conclusion (optional)
• Other paragaph structures:
  • general -> specific
  • specific -> general
  • situaion - problem - solution - evaluation
  • compare - contrast
  • advantages - disadvantages
  • cause - effect
  • chronological

Flow

Beginning of sentence follows up on very end of previous sentence.

Default flow: old to new.

• Begin with old information (possibly repetition)
• Move on to new information.
• Repetition because of this is OK, and can help reader understanding.

Sometimes this is not possible, or we have a focus shift, use a linker / transition marker, e.g. however.

Starting with new information can be used for special effect, but should be used sparingly.

Flow strategies:

1. Exact/partial repetition: variation of a word; synonyms; pronouns (it, they, these, …).
2. This/These + summary noun, e.g. these ideas.
3. Fronting: place a phrase/clause at the start of the sentence, e.g. In England, it rains a lot.
4. Passive voice to move new information to the end.

But: sometimes beginning of sentence refers to beginning of previous sentence.

• e.g. multiple comments about the same thing.

Conclusion: multiple possible information progressions.

• argumentation: linear progression

• description: constant progression

• For technical terms, exact repetition (or possibly partial repetition) is preferred over synonyms that may end up being confusing.

Assignment for next week

2 paragraphs of texts for a paper/thesis/…., by monday.

Lecture 3, 28 November

• Repeating things is a good thing. Helps reader.
• Don’t be afraid to repeat e.g. procedure a few times. Synonyms are not

Bad organization

• chronological

• Bundling all proofs/results in one section and discussion elsewhere

• rambling introduction on tangentially related research

• Unfounded claims of relevance

• Disproportionate attention to minor details

• Not sufficient context

• No motivation

• No signposting

  

Figures

1. Introduce fig: Figure X shows …
2. Describe: As can be seen, …
3. Highlight key points: The most common …
4. Commenting on the results:

Commenting from strong to weak:

• shows
• suggests
• indicates
• implies (in an informal sense, rather than mathematical sense)

Modal verbs and adverbs:

• can stronger than could
• may stronger than might
• *would* seems
• probably

Don’t be too weak! You do want to explain the properties of the data.

• Figure 5 shows X: indicative, what is shown

• Figure 5 shows *that* X: informative, conclusion drawn from what is shown.

• is shown in table 1: 1.8M

• Table 1 shows: 3.3M

• (see table 1): 4M

• As shown in Table 1: 1.6M

References to figures

• We report .. in table 1
• Table 2 shows …
• In Table 3a we report …
• Table 3a is presented to highlight …
• Figure 1 shows an example of …
• Figure 2 shows the average number of …
• This is graphically evident from Figure 2, looking at …
• Figure 3 shows an example.
• At the other end of .. visible in Figure 4,
• In Figure 4 we show
• As already noted in Figure 4
• as shown in step 3 of the pseudocode

Conclusions:

• All indicative, none informative
• No imperative
• No parens
• All present tense
• Verbs: shows
• Examples: in ... we report

Indicative vs Informative (ex. 7)

• indicative: Table 1 shows X
• informative: Table 1 shows that X

Lecture 4, December 5

Introduction

Functions in introduction

• Problem
• Solution
• Research context
• Results
• Benefits
• (Limitations)

Moves:

1. Establish research territory

   • Show that the area is important/problematic/relevant in some way (almost always)
   • Review related work.

   ‘claiming centrality’; emphasize importance

   • present perfect: has been studied, started in the past and still now
   • present simple: remains

   both talk about the importance of the work in the present

2. Establish a niche

   • something is missing
   • something needs to be added
   • something isn’t good enough
   • ‘mini-critique’
   • indicate contrast

   Examples:

   • Little work has been done
   • Few studies have …
   • less attention
   • studies have emphasized A as opposed to B

3. Occupy the niche

   • outline the structure of text
   • outline purpose
   • listing research questions
   • principal findings
   • indicating value

Introduction phrases: https://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/introducing-work/

• Move 3 takes most of the space. Move 2 takes very little space.

Conclusion

• looking back
• looking forward

Example structure, specific to general:

• restatement of aims
• summary of methods/results
• comparison to other research
• limitations
• implications/impact
• recommendations/future research

Tense

• we solved, we presented (past simple), is in the past but somewhat detached from the now.
• we have solved (present perfect) makes it more relevant for now. (Either works.)
• Don’t use use present tense (we conduct).
• More research will be needed ...

Lecture 5, December 12

Abstracts

Possible structures:

• AMRC
  1. (Background)
  2. activity/purpose
  3. methods
  4. results
  5. conclusion
• B/SPSE
  1. Background/situation
  2. problem
  3. solution
  4. evaluation

Titles

• Most often a long noun phrase.
• Sometimes two parts.
• Rarely a question.

Punctuation

Comma

Do use comma:

• Before and, or, but, yet, for, and so when connecting two main complete clauses.
  • Not: A does not rely on X but on Y.
• Around non-defining relative clauses (i.e. when it can be removed without losing meaning):
  • The teacher, who is called Mark, is cool.
  • My girlfriend, who lives in spain, … (My only one, who happens to live there.)
• Oxford comma
• When subordinate clause with (although, because, when, if, unless, until, since, before) precedes main clause:
  • When you do X, you may do Y.
• After introductory phrase:
  • Additionally, …
  • Before submission, …
• Around inserted phrase/interruption:
  • A, or sometimes B, is special.

Do not use comma:

• Between incomplete clauses:
  • I wrote a book and read it.
• Between defining relative clause:
  • Clauses that are not connected …
  • My girlfriend who lives in Spain, … (The one in spain, not the other one.)
• When the main clause precedes the subordinate clause:
  • We eat until we are all finished.
• Not before that … if the subclause is the object/subject.
  • We believe that …

Dashes

• hyphen: to join inseperable words.
• n-dash: for ranged and periods of time. calais-dover, 1999-2019.
• m-dash: to separate and insert whole phrases. No spaces around it in British English.