Should you use “I” or “we” or neither in your thesis or paper?
Thoughts on this have changed over the years. Traditionally, using personal pronouns like “I” and “we” was frowned on. Instead of saying “In Section 3, I have compared the results from method X with those of method Y”, you were expected to write [...]
Posts about writing
Squeezing space with LaTeX
Oct 14
I’ve been writing a grant application with a 10-page limit, and as usual it is difficult to squeeze everything in. No, I can’t just change the font as it has to be 12 point with at least 2 cm margins on an A4 page. Fortunately, LaTeX is packed full of powerful features that help in [...]
Writing an abstract
Sep 27
The abstract is probably the most important part of a paper. Many readers will not read anything else, so you need to grab their attention and get your main message across as clearly and succinctly as possible. It is not meant to be an introduction to the paper, but a summary of the paper. In [...]
Writing mathematics
Sep 18
Mathematics has its own particular conventions and rules when it comes to writing. There have been several attempts to write them down. The most famous is Halmos’s excellent essay “How to write mathematics”. Other good sources of advice are the following two books:
(I reviewed these two books in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of [...]
Sight what you cite
Aug 13
There seems to be a widespread practice of researchers citing papers they have never even seen, let alone read. For example
Some papers claim to do something new when it has already been done in one of the papers cited.
Some articles are cited that apparently have little to do with the reason given for the citation, [...]
I’ve been spending time writing response letters lately. I’ve also been reading lots of response letters from authors wanting their stuff published in the International Journal of Forecasting. I thought it might be useful to collate a few thoughts on the subject.
No grovelling. I sometimes get response letters that start off with a paragraph of [...]
For years I’ve been telling everyone who would listen that MS-Word may sometimes be useful for short notes or for making a “Back in 5 minutes” sign to stick on your door, but if you want to write a serious document like an academic paper, a book or a thesis, then you should use a [...]
Words to avoid
May 28
According to Andrew Gelman, we should avoid these words in research writing:
Note that
Interestingly
Obviously
It is clear that
It is interesting to note that
very
quite
of course
Notice that
I agree with him that all of these are overused, but that doesn’t mean they should be banned. The words “very” and “quite” are useful for conveying the strength of a statement. Similarly, [...]
