Notes on writing course

November 2023 7-minute read

Ragnar Groot Koerkamp

misc note

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:

Exact/partial repetition: variation of a word; synonyms; pronouns (it, they, these, …).
This/These + summary noun, e.g. these ideas.
Fronting: place a phrase/clause at the start of the sentence, e.g. In England, it rains a lot.
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

Introduce fig: Figure X shows …
Describe: As can be seen, …
Highlight key points: The most common …
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

	indicative	informative
show	y	y
illustrate	y	y
reveal	n	y
indicate	n	y
demonstrate	y	y
suggest	n	y
give	y	y
present	y	n
display	y	y
summarise	y	n
provide	y	n

Lecture 4, December 5

Introduction

Functions in introduction

Problem
Solution
Research context
Results
Benefits
(Limitations)

Moves:

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
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
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.