The content of the article reflects the type of work you have done: experimental, theoretical. It is intended to help people who are struggling with their first article, or people who have written several but are finding it difficult. They expect details of all the relevant parts of your research: why you did it, the background to it, your thoughts, what you did, your conclusions and your vision of where it is going.
When you can't write, it's because you don't know what you want to say. But not that - this is the moment to be creative in whatever way your ideas may lead. It's a mess, notes to yourself, but it leads to the next, more tedious, part of the journey.
This premise may not work for you, but try it several times before giving up. It's the best way I know to break through writer's block and get into real newspaper writing.
THE ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
METHOD
RESULTS
Highlight in the text the most important aspects of the tables, graphs or figures. Poor: It is clearly shown in Figure 3 that the shear loading had caused the cell walls to suffer ductile fracture or possibly brittle failure.
DISCUSSION
Most of the research we do is aimed at why materials behave the way they do, and this requires ideas about mechanisms, models and associated theory. The function of the Discussion is to describe the ideas, models and theories and guide the reader through a comparison of these with the experimental or computational data.
CONCLUSION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Brown of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, for suggesting this review and I acknowledge my indebtedness to the books listed below. The research was supported by the EPSRC under grant number EJA S67, the DARPA-ONR MURI program under contract number N, and a research grant from the National Research Council of Canada.
It is conventional courtesy to refer to the originators of key ideas or theories or models, even if you modify them. For books: Name, initials, year, title, publisher, city and state of publisher, chapter number, page from beginning to end (if applicable).
FIGURES
Anyone who scans your paper will look at the figures and their captions, even if they don't read the text. Ensure that the axes are correctly labeled, that units are defined, and that the figure tolerates reduction in size without becoming unreadable.
APPENDICES
Good figures are reproduced or imitated by others, often without asking - the sincerest compliments.
5 DETAIL I: Grammar
- The parts of speech
- Sentence structure
- Phrases and clauses
- Compound sentences
- Complex sentences
Prepositions go before nouns, which usually have to do with place or time: on the table, after this procedure, on the graph, from the appendix. Phrases and clauses are groups of words that do the work of the parts of speech listed in Section 5.1. A sentence made with a main clause linked to one or more subordinate clauses, which cannot stand.
5.6 “that” and “which”
6 DETAIL II: Spelling
7 DETAIL III: Punctuation
- The comma ,
- The semi-colon ;
- The colon
- The exclamation mark !
- The question mark ?
- The hyphen -
- The dash —
- The quotation mark “ ”
- The apostrophe ’
- Italics italics
- Parentheses ( )
- Brackets [ ]
The semicolon is used to separate when the comma is not enough and the period is a more complete fraction than the sense requires. At one time the optical microscope was the main tool of metallography; today it is the scanning electron microscope. This conclusion—and it is a significant one—appears to violate the first law of thermodynamics.
The apostrophe shows possession or contraction; thus the possessive forms: Sutcliffe's theory; everyone's idea. Book titles are often printed in italics: 'The Theory of Shell Structures' by C.R. Calladine, just like words in foreign languages. But don't let them take over, clouding the meaning of the sentence with too many asides.
8 DETAIL IV: Style
- Be clear
- Write from an appropriate design
- Define everything
- Avoid empty words
- Revise and rewrite
- Do not overstate, over emphasise or apologise
- Avoid being patronising, condescending or eccentric
- Use appropriate language
- Good first sentence
- Seek helpful examples and analogies
- Linking sentences
- Observe good writing
- Finally…
Tell them what they want to know, not what they already know or don't want to know. Avoid clichés (standard formalized expressions): they are corpses without the vitality that makes the meaning jump off the page: In short, digital methods are the flavor of the month; the bottom line is that analog calculations are old-fashioned. avoid it like the plague.
These ideas can easily be extended to the nonlinear case. it makes the reader wonder why you didn't. Don't be afraid to write the first draft with the simple goal of getting all the facts down on paper. You can then see what you have and extract, revise and distill a paper, conference report or research proposal from it as needed.
This article questions the basic assumptions of fracture mechanics. this from a real manuscript) fills the reader with distrust; After all, fracture mechanics works. Write in a way that draws attention to the meaning and content of the writing, not the author's mood or whimsical humor. It's been a great term for good things - there's more going on here than ever before... The author says nothing and shows off, drawing attention to himself.
Comparison of experiments with models shows that the measured intensities are lower than predicted. The first sentences are platitudes; the second and third involve the reader in details whose relevance is not yet clear; it is only in the fourth that the essence begins to show. Models that describe polymer foams well overestimate the strength of metal foams by a factor of 2 to 5.
Only use a quotation if it is correct; inappropriate quotes give the impression that the writer is trying too hard. It's like cycling through sand: the rubbing sand particles dissipate energy that is approximately atomic or molecular. It helps the reader if a paragraph ends with a device that connects it to the next: a word or phrase picked up in the first sentence of the next paragraph, or an explanation of what comes next (although you can be sparing with this , it can get boring).
Acknowledgements
9 FURTHER READING
Texts on how to write technical prose
Instructions on preparing scientific papers
Grammar
Punctuation
Spelling—the friendliest dictionary is
Quotations
APPENDIX: Some examples of effective and ineffective writing
Good Abstract
Good opening sentence
Good analogy (1)
Good analogy (2)
Avoid Waffle
The fear of sounding trivial, of not being serious enough, haunts all writers when asked to write for an audience they are unfamiliar with. The temptation is to use long words, to sound sophisticated, to become fancy; and the effect is to dilute the message until its true flavor is lost. Design is a creative activity that requires a sound foundation in mathematics, physics, chemistry, mechanics, thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, electrical engineering, production engineering, material technology and design theory, together with knowledge and practical experience in specialist areas.
The authors want to convey the idea that design is an interdisciplinary activity and that it has technical, managerial and social aspects, but they have done so in a way that is intimidating.
Jargon (1)
Jargon (2)
CHECKLIST FOR MONITORING PROGRESS
