How to Write
Jun. Prof. Alexander Markowetz
How to Write
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Writing Science
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Structuring the Paper
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Its Sections
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Writing Paragraphs
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Writing Sentences
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Formatting
Writing Science
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We do not write poetry
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You do not have to be a “genius”
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Small vocabulary
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Few expressions
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It can be formalized
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Following the formalism will yield a readable paper
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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Formalism
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Be creative in your scientific ideas
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Do NOT be creative about the presentation
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This is a conservative business
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Follow the rules!
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Once you are a tenured professor, you may
deviate from the rules
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But probably would not want to
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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Formalism
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I am soooo creative
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My work is amazing, it needs more pages
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Stick to the rules
Stick to the page limit
But then I have to leave out most of my
innovations...
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No, you don't
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We will preserve all content
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Brevity will further increase readability
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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Haikus
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Traditional Japanese poetry (since 700 AC)
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First part of a Tonka
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Fixed schema
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Three lines
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Five moras (~ syllables)
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Seven moras
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Five moras
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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Haikus
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初しぐれ
猿も小蓑を
ほしげ也
the first cold shower
even the monkey seems to want
a little coat of straw
Bashō
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Haikus
●
●
富士の風や
扇にのせて
江戸土産
the wind of Mt. Fuji
I've brought on my fan!
a gift from Edo
Bashō
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Haikus
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The schema is super restrictive
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Yet, it induced awe inspiring poetry
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Similarly, think of the formalism in your paper
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It makes for a more elegant paper
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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No Mistakes, No Excuses
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Picture a reviewer
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An insanely busy professor
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He receives 15 papers to review for a conference
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He ignores them for the next seven weeks
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Now he has one week to write the reviews
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He will want to reject your paper
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Quickly
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To get it of his desk
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Preferably on formal grounds
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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No Mistakes, No Excuses
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Don't give any excuse to reject your paper
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Make no obvious mistakes
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Do not leave any “holes”
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Leave a good first impression
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Visually, with a clean layout
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Textually, in clean short sentences, sound orthography
Now he knows:
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“This is a decent paper, I have to take a closer look.”
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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Take Responsibility
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●
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Getting your paper accepted is your
responsibility
It is not the fault of the reviewer if he does not
appreciate or understand your paper
It is your responsibility to make it attractive
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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Mathematicians Cannot Write
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Definition 1
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Definition 2
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Lemma 1
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Lemma 2
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Theorem
Finally they tell us what
they are trying to achieve
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We Often Share these Troubles
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Describe Software Component 1
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Describe Software Component 2
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Describe Software Component 3
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Describe Software Component 4
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Putting it together,
we can do this-and-that
Finally, ... the purpose
of the system
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Problem Driven Writing
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Start With the Problem
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Then show the solution
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From the big picture, drill down to detail
–
–
–
–
–
–
This is the problem P
To solve P we have to solve sub-problems SP1 and SP2
To solve SP1, we must solve sub-prob. SP1.1 and SP1.2
After solving SP1.1 and SP1.2, we have solved SP1
Next, we solve SP2
We solved SP1 and SP2, and thus the original problem
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Problem Driven Writing
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Start with the problem
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After all, we are engineers
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Our day starts with a problem
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And ends with a solution
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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Storytelling 101
Most Important
IN
BODY
OUT
Biggest
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IN
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You introduce
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The problem
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The setting
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Your solution
Pick-up reader at his present knowledge
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Do not assume previous knowledge
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Tell him what you will show him next
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Shaped like a funnel
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Start with the very big picture
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Gradually drill down on detail
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BODY
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Say what you have to say
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Deliver what you promised in IN
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In a linear fashion
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OUT
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Summarize the Body
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Place it in a broader picture
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Provide an outlook to the future
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Classic Western
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IN
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Introductory wide-angle shot:
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A market square in a dusty Western town
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Two men facing each other
Close-up Shot: Eyes
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Close-up: hands on guns
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B
O
D
Y
OUT
They hate each other
They will shoot each other
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Some conversation
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Some shooting
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One dies
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Lonely sheriff mounts his horse and rides into sunset
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This part actually takes the longest.
He will face new adventures
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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Writing Recursively
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Apply the above model recursively
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Top-Down
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Divide the paper into sections
–
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Divide sections into paragraphs
–
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Introduction, some more sections, conclusion
Introductory paragraph, some more, a final one to summarize and connect
Divide paragraphs into sentences
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Thesis sentence, body of evidence, final sentence
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The paper thus assumes a tree-structure
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For every node, know precisely what you want to say
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You can collect your thoughts in the nodes, before you decent
and write them out in full length
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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Budget Your Text
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Each node is associated with a space budget
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The space you can afford to get your point across
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Know the space budget before you start writing
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A section can only be so-and-so long
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A paragraph can only have a certain length
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Variable, depending on the section
Fixed, due to human capacity
A sentence has a maximal length
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Fixed
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Linear Writing
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Writing is linear
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Not circular, or jumpy
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You must bring your points into a linear order
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You may encounter circular dependencies
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Between software components
Cut smartly, and order them linearly
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Be Concise
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Say everything precisely ONCE
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●
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Never, repeat anything
Remove any content that does not directly
support your argument
Use as little words as possible
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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The Mantras
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“The point, the point, get to the f***ing point!”
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“The crap, the crap, cut the f***ing crap!”
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Recite these, while you write
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This builds character
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And makes you a better writer
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Now we know the basic rules of writing
Next, let's look at how to structure a paper
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Structure of the Paper
1) Abstract
2) Introduction
3) Related Work
4) Formal Problem Statement & Definitions
5) Algorithms
6) Further Optimizations
7) Experiments
8) Conclusion and Future Work
9) Bibliography
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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Structure of the Paper
1) Abstract
IN
2) Introduction
3) Related Work
B
O
D
Y
4) Formal Problem Statement & Definitions
5) Algorithms
6) Further Optimizations
7) Experiments
OUT
8) Conclusion and Future Work
9) Bibliography
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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The Budget
12 page paper
1) Abstract
~ 3p
2) Introduction
3) Related Work
4) Formal Problem Statement & Definitions
~5
5) Algorithms
6) Further Optimizations
~ 2p
~ 2p
Ideas from
other people
are restricted
to these
three pages
Your
Contribution
is measured
in pages
7) Experiments
8) Conclusion and Future Work
9) Bibliography
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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Not Everybody is Made Equal
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Some sections are more important than others
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Focus on the important ones
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Reviewers read the paper in a certain order:
1) Abstract
2) Introduction
3) Conclusion
4) The rest of the paper
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The first three are most important
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Now we finished the structure of the paper
Let's look inside the sections
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The Title
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Cover the main points and contributions
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Keep it short
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Avoid:
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“Towards ...”
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“On …”
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This is entirely redundant
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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Author Lists
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Ordered by the contribution
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Commonly students first, professors later
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First author is the main author
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The paper should be based in his idea
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He should do most of the work, and takes most credit
Second authors
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Professors have a career, students still need publicity
Have done supporting writing and implementation
If you have two main authors
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Switch positions for the next paper
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Abstract
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180 – 200 words
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ONE paragraph
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Do not split into two or more paragraphs
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Start with the problem setting
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Then say what you do
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How you do it
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What is special about your system
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I.e., your contribution
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Introduction
1) Motivate Problem
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Why this is important in
the real world
4) Your solution
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2) Explain problem
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●
6) List contributions
Formally
Why this is of scientific
interest
3) Previous solutions
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Briefly outline your
approach, techniques,
etc.
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What is novel
8) Table of contents
Summarize and indicate
their shortcomings
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Motivation
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Build a funnel
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Start with the world
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There are 7 Billion people
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Some 500 million play computer games, especially on-line
Then gradually drill to the topic
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Efficient server architectures are crucial for the profitability of a
gaming companies
One aspect that cannot be overestimated is moving data to
secondary storage ...
●
Now remove the first one or two sentences
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You just finished the first paragraph
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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Focus
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The introduction is the most important section
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Its first paragraph is the most important
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Its first sentence is super-most important
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Make sure all three are increasingly
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Brilliant
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Crisp
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Bold
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Inside the Introduction
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Examples are helpful
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If you have one, illustrate it with a figure
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Do not use equations
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This goes to Section 3 and 4
Do not cite
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You will give proper credit in Section 2
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Contributions
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●
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Finally, list your contributions
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2-5 bullets, no more
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Be brief, 1-3 sentences per bullet
Help the reviewer find the novelty in your paper
Bring him in a position where he cannot deny
that you are making a contribution
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Conclude Your Introduction
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With a table of contents
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Wrapped in a single paragraph
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Formalized:
“The remainder of the paper is structured as
follows. Section 2 outlines related work and
previous system implementations. Then,
Section 3 introduced basic concepts and … .
Finally, Section 8 concludes the paper.”
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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Related Work
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All discussion of previous work should go here
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In case you need formal concepts from previous work
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Define them in Section 3
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Clearly mark them as citation
After Section 2 (3), all content should be 100% yours
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This should be after the 3rd page
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Allow reviewer to estimate size (in pages) of contribution
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DO NOT ever mix other people's ideas in Sections 4-8
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Related Work
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●
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Related work can be super messy
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Different assumptions
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Different requirements
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Different notation
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Especially, if the topic is new
You have to order (cluster) them
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By timeline
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By application area
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By algorithmic approaches
Create and impose your frame of reference
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Related Work
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Be polite (impartial) towards other people
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Champion other people's work
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Avoid negativity
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If you have nothing positive to say, just write a short
neutral sentence:
“Markowetz et al [2009] investigate the topic from a spatiotemporal perspective.”
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But, do not assume anything that is not clearly stated
●
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Especially for confusing papers
Be firm regarding your contribution
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What to Cite
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You need to cite all relevant papers
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Show that you have read all relevant literature
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You don't want your paper rejected because the
reviewer claims that you should have
“compared your work with the paper by XY et
al. [2009]”, when you have not cited the paper
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What to Cite
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●
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ALL relevant papers
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From big conferences (ACM, IEEE, VLDB)
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From leading journals (TODS, TOIS)
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From specific workshops (WebDB, GeoIR)
Not necessary to cite
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Posters
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Minor workshops
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Bullshit conferences
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Textbooks
If its not in DBLP, it does not exist, … and needn't be cited
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You don't have to cite technical reports, master of PhD theses
Unless you actively want to, for whatever reason.
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What to Cite
●
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Sometimes there is a series of consecutive
workshop, conference and journal publications
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The conference papers subsume the workshops
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The journal papers subsume the conference onces
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Its OK, just to cite the journal
Cite papers from members of your PROGRAM
COMMITTEE and their famous friends
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Inner Sections
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Recursively
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One paragraph to introduce
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Some paragraphs to explain
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One paragraph to conclude and connect
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Order the inner paragraphs, before you write
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Have a strategy before you touch the keyboard
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Subsections
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●
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You can divide longer sections in subsections
Essentially replace inner paragraphs with
subsections
Subsections are structured like sections
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One paragraph to start
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Some in the middle
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One to conclude and connect
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Subsections
●
●
Do NOT use SubSubsections
Do not use two
consecutive headings
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Put some text inbetween
Wrong:
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Title of Section 4
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Title of Section 4.1
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Some text
Good:
●
Title of Section 4
●
●
A short paragraph
Title of Section 4.1
●
Some text
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Experiments: a Non-Empty Section
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It is difficult (impossible) to make meaningful
experiments, especially in IR
●
What use is a user study, conducted on 25 PhD
students from a cs department?
–
–
Very small
Not representative
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You still need to have an experimental section
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Do not leave obvious excuses to kill your paper
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Use Real Data
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Use real data whenever possible
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You may use synthetic data to play with parameters
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Use real data in parallel
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Don't give an excuse to reject your paper
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Use real queries whenever possible
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Be careful, if you have to create synthetic queries
●
●
Equally important effectiveness and efficiency
Don't randomly pair terms to create two-word queries
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Start the Experiments
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Outline the section
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Explain experimental setup
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Data
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Queries?
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Users?
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Machine
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Evaluation metric
–
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CPU consumption, memory consumption, precision, recall,
Parameter under investigation
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Number of terms in query
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Number of concurrent users
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Etc.
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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The Actual Experiments
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Fix all parameters at default values, alter one
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Write like a forensic scientist
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State the obvious
–
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“As shown in Figure 3, the number of false positives quadratically
increases with the number of drunken participants.”
Then explain why this happens
–
“This is due to... “”
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Explain the impact of one parameter
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Then show the figure with the graphs
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Then continue to the next parameter
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Finish the Experiments
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Summarize your experimental findings
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All in all …
●
●
How is your system expected to behave in a
different environment?
Give recommendations to someone who builds
a similar system
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Conclusion & Future Work
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Summarize your paper and contribution
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Briefly
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“The introduction in past tense”
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Place your work in a broader picture
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Indicate the direction in which it could move
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Do not give away concrete ideas
●
●
Someone will steal them
Do not mention obvious next steps
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The reviewer will ask, why they are not in the current paper
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Formatting the Bibliography
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Research all relevant information
●
●
Including the conference, city, page-number, etc.
Homogenize the format
●
●
If you use full first-names once, do so in all entries
If you call it ACM SIGMOD once, do not call it “the ACM
SIGMOD International Conference on Management of
Data” in another entry
●
Actually, keep the same format for all ACM conferences
●
In Bibtex, protect upper-caps by using {PARENTHESES}
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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Now we finished sections.
Next: paragraphs.
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Save your words
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Use as little words as possible
●
Can you remove this sentence?
●
Can you remove this word?
●
●
Can you replace this word sequence with a
shorter one?
Can you replace this word with another one that is
more precise?
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Painter vs. Surgeon
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A painter smears
paint up and down,
●
then left and right
then up and down
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In the end, he has
“covered” all areas
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A surgeon makes
small, precise cuts
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Minimal
●
Effective
He gets things done
with minimal efforts
You want to be a surgeon.
Think of every word, and every sentence as an incision.
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The Paragraph
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The paragraph is a unit of meaning
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Larger than a single sentence
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Smaller than a section or chapter
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Thus, it conveys a single organized thought
●
It commonly contains several sentences
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Yet, it is reasonably short.
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10 sentences
●
200 words
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The Paragraph
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Is similar to a programming function
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It provides a small and precise functionality
●
●
Function: it does something
●
Paragraph: carries ONE thought
It is described by its first line of text
●
Function: signature
●
Paragraph: thesis sentence
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The Structure of a Paragraph
Thesis Sentence
Body of Support
Last Sentence
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The Thesis Sentence
●
●
●
●
Summarizes the meaning of the paragraph
States the hypothesis that you will further
explore in the rest of the paragraph
The system by [AB99] is a complete disaster.
First, it fails more often than not. Second, …
Although the systems fails, it made a significant
contribution. Most notably, it illustrated how ....
In addition, it did something weird.
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The Body of Support
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Illustrates why the thesis sentence is true.
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Provides the argument in full length.
●
Provides examples and further evidence.
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The Last Sentence
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Can summarize the paragraph.
●
Or provide a transition to the next paragraph.
●
Sometimes, it may be missing; i.e., the last
sentence is still part of the body of support.
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Structure a Paragraph
●
Think WHAT you want to write
●
●
●
Do not start before you know what you want to say
Lay out the structure.
●
What is the topic of the paragraph?
●
What are the arguments in its support?
●
How are these best ordered linearly?
Then, start writing.
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Now we finished paragraphs.
Let's look at how to write sentences.
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Direct Speech
●
Avoid passive speech, like in the following BAD
examples:
●
●
●
The data is cleaned by the next component.
These experiments were devised to show the
extreme benefits of our algorithm.
Instead, use active speech:
●
●
The next component cleans the data.
The experiments show the extreme benefits of our
algorithm.
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Use Present Tense
●
Consistently use present tense
●
Avoid past or future tense (… the other two tenses).
●
●
BAD: Later sections will show how to accelerate the
system.
GOOD: Later sections show how to accelerate the
system.
●
BAD: This data structure was too slow.
●
BETTER: This data structure is too slow.
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Short Sentences (1)
●
A sentence should have at most two parts, like
in the following examples:
●
●
●
The system performs poorly, even though we are
genius scientists.
The algorithm, shown to be incorrect, is hailed as a
major breakthrough.
And NOT like this:
●
Although entirely unnecessary, we perform several
tests, and prove the algorithm, which has been
shown to be incorrect, to be quite efficient.
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Short Sentences (2)
●
In particular, do not use cascading subclauses,
like the following:
●
●
●
The system, which has been shown to fail frequently,
although it has been tested extensively, and never
really works, finally is put to sleep.
We devise large scale experiments, that run on a
database, which is filled with synthetic data, in order to
prove its poor performance.
Actually, there are no commas before “that”, I just
put some to illustrate a sub-clause
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Short Sentences (3)
●
Just count the number of words.
●
If the sentence has too many, it should be split.
●
This sentence is too long:
We thereafter slowly continued to enlarge the
already excessive number of over-sized spatial
data points from our earlier preliminary
experimental setup.
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Never Repeat a Word
●
Never repeat a word within the same sentence.
Like in these BAD examples:
●
●
●
One particularly bad example is the following
example.
The system is robust against network failure or
misconfiguration of system properties.
Do not even repeat similar words:
●
●
We store the data in a database.
In the follow-up paper to [MYP07], the authors
showed the following theorem.
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Words in Consecutive Sentences
●
Avoid using the same word in two consecutive
sentences. Like in these bad examples:
●
●
We download 100,000 web pages. Then, we store
the web pages in a special repository.
We designed the system to scale to arbitrary size.
Therefore, the system lends itself particularly well to
certain applications.
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Avoid Colloquial English
●
●
In particular, do not use:
●
Stuff
●
A lot
●
Many
●
Much
Think of something smart, like:
●
Numerous
●
Substantial
●
Significant
●
etc.
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Very
●
●
Avoid the word “very”
You may only use it, if otherwise, you'd be
saying:
●
Damn
Or
●
F***ing
Jun.Prof. Alexander Markowetz - How to Write
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Which Hunting
●
Avoid the word “which”
Like in these BAD examples:
●
●
●
●
The system, which was designed by geniuses,
failed frequently.
The genius held on to his strategy, which was not
very smart.
Avoid “which” at all cost
After you finish writing, go “which”-hunting, and
replace all occurrences
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Numbers, Symbols and Equations
●
Never use numbers, symbols, equations or
citations at the beginning of a sentence
●
Nor directly next to each other
●
Like in these BAD examples:
●
S is a set of things.
●
4 students are not as smart as one professor
●
●
Next, we reduced the size of S, T however remained
unchanged.
The poorest design was published in [XYZ99]; [AB07]
however performed significant research.
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Abbreviations
●
Are best avoided at the beginning of a sentence
●
●
WWW pages commonly contain pornography.
Do not have a plural “s”
●
The ROVs are submerged to a depth of 1000m.
●
The ROV are submerged to a depth of 1000m.
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Introducing Abbreviations
●
Introduce the concept in italics
●
Followed by the abbreviation
●
●
Like so:
●
●
●
In parentheses, not in italics
The armored battle vehicle (ABV) is …
The authors of [AB99] introduce the notion of an
grumpy algorithm (GA), akin to ....
If you introduce a concept in the introduction, you
may have to do it a second time in a later section,
when you are really going to use it.
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Optimality
●
●
Optimal, and Optimality are fixed concepts in
computer science
NEVER use these words, unless you provide a
formal proof that your algorithm is indeed
asymptotically optimal
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Objects, Functions and Systems
●
●
●
These words are so generic, they could mean
anything
They thus lead to vague writing and confuse
the reader
Use more specific terms whenever possible
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i.e. Id Est
●
●
Means “that is”, or
●
"that means"
●
"which means"
●
"in other words"
And is used like this:
●
We then increase the dataset set further, i.e., we introduce
another million points.
●
Note the use of commas after the abbreviation.
●
Never start a sentence with i.e.
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e.g. Exempli Gratia
●
Means “for example”
●
And is used like this:
●
●
Some students can hide their intelligence really well, e.g.,
Bob or Carol.
One can easily improve the system, e.g., by adding a
simple counter.
●
Note the use of commas after the abbreviation.
●
Never start a sentence with e.g.
●
IE and EG are often confused. Get them RIGHT.
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Sections and Figures
●
“Section 2” is the name of the second section
●
Thus, it should always be capitalized.
●
●
Next, Section 2 introduces related work.
●
BUT: The next section introduces related work.
And NOT be abbreviated
●
●
And NOT be separated by a line-break
●
●
Next, Sec. 2 introduces related work.
Some words. Next, Section
2 introduces related work. Some more text.
The above equally applies to figures and tables.
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Enumerations (1)
●
You may use bullets or enumerations to list your arguments.
●
For example:
“We address the above challenges through the following
contributions:
- We devise a new powerful algorithm. It outperforms its
competitor by the order of several magnitudes.
- We formally prove its correctness and provide lower as well as
upper bounds for its runtime.
- We experimentally show the tremendous practical benefits of the
proposed approach.
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Enumerations (2)
●
●
Bullets should be short.
If there are more than two short sentences, turn
them into normal paragraphs.
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Enumerations (3)
●
You can use in-line enumerations, to save space
●
Especially inside the abstract
●
●
●
The proposed algorithm is shown to be (i) correct, (ii)
complete, i.e., generate all results, and (iii)
asymptotically optimal.
These bullets can have short subclauses like
(“i.e., generate ...”)
But they must be kept really short
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Enumerations (4)
●
●
●
Or, you can enumerate by starting the sentence
with a number.
We address these challenges through the
following contributions. First, we reduce runtime
by the order of several magnitudes. Second, we
improve robustness. Third, we support datasets
of arbitrary size. Finally, we devise more
informative experiments.
Do NOT use “Firstly”, “Secondly”, etc.
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Typos
●
Are entirely unacceptable
●
Do not rely on a spell-checker
●
You may sue it, but it will not work to well
●
Accept complete responsibility for everything
you write, all the way down to your typos
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Never Copy
●
Not even a single sentence
●
Certainly not from other authors
●
●
Certainly not from Wikipedia
●
●
You will face disciplinary action
You will face disciplinary action
Not from your own papers
●
You will look like a complete idiot
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But Imitate
●
Imitate the style of successful authors
●
Look at how they write
●
Learn common expressions:
●
●
Assume an user trying to find …
●
Thus, we …
●
Hence, the above ....
●
Finally, Figure 8 shows …
But never copy and paste !!!
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Recite
●
When you think you are done: READ the paragraph
OUT LOUD
●
Again
●
And again
●
And again
●
Memorize
●
Fix whatever sounds awkward
●
Grind and polish
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Now we know how to write a paper.
Quickly, two slides on formatting it.
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Page-Numbers
●
Include page-numbers
●
Help the reviewer talk about your paper
●
●
●
The original Latex template may not contain
page-numbers
Find a way to include them
After acceptance, remove page-numbers for the
camera ready version
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Figures, Tables, Equations
●
●
●
●
Should be placed AFTER they are referenced
for the first time
Should not be bunched together, but be equally
spaced between text
Should look neat
Should be readable in black&white as well as
color, as well as on a projector
●
Use dark colors, with a pattern
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Orphans and Widows
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Orphans and Widows
●
●
Remove orphans and widows
●
First Line of a paragraph is last line of a page
●
Last line of a paragraph is first line of a page
By changing the wording
●
●
Insert or remove some words to eliminate the orphan
The other orphan
●
Last lines of paragraphs that consist of a single word
●
Should be eliminated equally
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That's it.
Now you have all the rules.
And one more piece of advice.
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Practice
Like programming,
writing is an art best learned from practice.
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Thank you for your patience.
And now go, write a paper.
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