Bài giảng Technical writing and presentation - Chương 10: How to write scientific texts in English

Technical Writing and Presentation

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Contents

° Simple rules for writing

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC BÁCH KHOA HÀ NỘI

HANOI UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

° Parts of a sentence

° Sentence

Technical Writing and Presentation

How to write scientific texts in English

° Combining clauses

° Punctuation

SOICT - 2020

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Simple rules for writing

Parts of a sentence

° Have one idea per sentence or paragraph and one

° Skeleton

topic per section.

° verbs

° nouns

° pronouns

° numerals

° adjectives

° Have a straightforward, logical organization.

° Use short words.

° Use short sentences with simple structure.

° Keep paragraphs short.

° Avoid buzzwords, clichés, and slang.

° Avoid excess, in length or style.

° Omit unnecessary material.

° Additional stuff

° Adverbs

° Prepositions

° Conjunctions.

° Be specific, not vague or abstract.

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Verbs

Number and person

° Two important rules

° When the subject is singular third

° The number of subject determines the number of

verb

° Do not mix inconsistent tenses

person (she/he/it), the verb needs suffix

-s

° The auxiliary verbs have their own

special forms (is, can, has, does).

° Uses of verbs

° Number and person

° Active or passive voice, which person?

° Tenses

° When the subject is composed of a

singular and a plural noun by ”or” or

”nor”, the verb agrees with the noun

that is closer.

° Noun syndrom

° Irregular verbs

° Notes

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Notes

Tenses

° Be careful with special phrases:

° Default: the present

”A number of new experiments were done” (plural)

° It is possible to combine perf ect (has been)

(and future, will be) if needed, but not the

other tenses

”Plenty of time was spent...” (singular)

”A few data points belong to cluster X” (plural)

° Past or present prefect (but not both) when

you describe previous research (literature

review)

° If the number of the subject changes, retain

the verb in each clause.

° Past tense to describe the experiments and

UThe positions in a sequence were changed

their results

and the test rerun

° Notice: Use ”would” with care! It expresses a

conditional action.

VThe positions in the sequence were changed,

and the test was rerun.

° E.g.”it would appear” → ”it appears”

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Active voice vs passive voice

Passive voice

° It is often recommended to use active voice,

° In scientific writing passive voice is

° Usually we want to begin with a familiar

word and put the new information in the

end.

sometimes convenient.

° Passive voice allows us to draw the reader’s

attention to the phenomenon or the event,

instead of the actor.

E.g. before an equation or a definition, we can

say ”The model is defined as follows”

° Do not overuse passive, and do not chain

E.g.

passive expressions.

”The probabilities are updated by Bayes rule”,

° Use only one passive per sentence

”The score is assessed on the basis of the training

data.”

° Often the purpose determines the voice.

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Passive expressions

Other expressions

° ”You” is sometimes used as passive, especially in

manuals. Don’t use it in scientific text!

° ”People” when you refer generally to people.

Quite a vague expression, not recommendable!

° ”It is”

° E.g. ”It is often recommended [reference]

that...”

° Typical verbs in this expression are: say,

suppose, consider, expect.

° ”There is/are” is used when the real subject (what

is somewhere) comes later and we haven’t

mentioned it before.

° “We” can be used as passive.

E.g. ”In Chapter X, we define the basic concepts.”

should be replaced with

E.g. ”There was only one outlier in the data set 1” v.s.

”The outlier was in the data set 1.

° ”The verb is nearly always ”be” (sometimes ”exist”

”The basic concepts are defined in Chapter X.”

or something else)

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Person

Notes

° Basic rule: avoid the first person.

° Referring to yourself: you can talk about ”the

author”.

° Do not use short forms ”isn’t, can’t, doesn’t”, but ”is

not, cannot, does not”.

° Use ”be verb+ing” form when something is currently

happening or takes some time.

E.g. ”All programs have been implemented by the author”

E.g. ”Thread 2 can be started in the same time when

thread is still running”

° Gender-neutral language: when you refer to an

unknown user, student, etc. try to use gender-

neutral language.

° Some verbs require that the following verb is in -ing

form

– The most common way is to say ”she/he” or ”he or she

– ”One” is neutral, but sounds often awkward.

E.g.”Continue splitting until criterion X has been reached.”

E.g. ”The learner can define one’s own learning goals”

° ”Noun syndrom” = use of common verbs {be, do,

have, make, ...} + a noun ⇒ Prefer illustrative verbs!

° Sometimes you can avoid the problem by using

plural

E.g. ”We can get better understanding...” ⇒ “We can

understand better”

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Nouns

Plural Forms

° Plural forms

° Irregular plural forms

Plural form

Singular form

Plural form

analyses

Singular form

° Countable and uncountable nouns

half

life

halves

analysis

° Differences between British and American

lives

thesis

theses

English

axis

axes

parenthesis

basis

parentheses

bases

matrix

child

matrices

children

automata

vertices

Indices (indexes)

emphasis

series

emphases

series

automaton

vertex

index

medium

criterion

phenomenon

media

criteria

appendix

appendices

phenomena

(appendixes)

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Special cases

Notes

° If the suffix is {-s,-ss,-sh,-ch,-x,-z} in singular → -es in

° Data is originally the plural form of datum,

but nowadays it is frequently used as a

singular word.

plural,

E.g. research – researches, approach – approaches,

quiz – quizzes

° The same happens with most words which have suffix

-o, unless the word is abbreviated or of foreign origin.

° The same holds for hypermedia.

E.g.cargo – cargoes,

E.g.

° but photo – photos, dynamo – dynamos

° After consonant -y changes to -ies in plural.

E.g. floppy – floppies.

”The data is biassed”,

”Hypermedia offers a new way to implement

learning environments”

° Singular words which look like plural forms

The names of disciplines: mathematics, statistics,

physics.

”Statistics is the precessor of data mining.”

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Uncountable nouns

Compound words

° The practices vary, possibly words are written together, with a

hyphen -, or separately.

° Words expressing material: water, air,

wood, ...

° If the words have become one concept, they are usually written

together, e.g. ”software”, ”keyboard”, ”database”

° If the independent meaning of words is emphasized, they are

° Abstract words: life, time, work, strength,

hyphened,

e.g. ”non-connected”

...

° Exceptional: advice, information, news,

° Hyphen is often used when the concept consists of more than two

words:

equipment, money (Plural meaning)

”depth-first search”, ”between-cluster variation”, ”feed-forward

neural network”, ”first-order logic”

° Multiple word adjectives are usually hyphened, e.g. ”data-driven”,

”model-based”, ”class-conditional”

°

If the first part is a symbol or an abbreviation, the word is

hyphened,

e.g. ”NP-complete”, ”k-nearest neighbour method”, ”3-dimensional”

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Articles

Position

° Position

° Basic rule: before the noun phrase

° Exceptions:

° Definite and indefinite concepts

° Basic rules of using articles

° {what, such, quite, rather, half} + a/an + noun

phrase

E.g. ”Too great a distance”, ”so long a time”

° {too, as, so, how, however} + adj. + a/an +

noun

E.g. ”as big a difference”

° {all, both, double, twice, half} + the + noun

E.g. ”All the methods”

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Definite and indefinite concepts

Basic rules of using articles

° A concept is indefinite, when you mention it

first time, and it is not clear from the context

E.g.”There was a time delay between processes A

and B.”

° It is definite, when

° you mention it again

° the context defines what you mean

° the concept is familiar to everybody

° Usually this kind of expressions are defining: ”The

delay between two processes P1 and P2 is

tend(P1) - tstart(P2).”

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Refer to an indefinite concept

Notes

° When you refer to something generally

a plural countable noun or a uncountable noun →

no article

° a singular countable noun → a/an

° a plural countable noun + positive clause →

”Students need time to process new inforsmation”

some

° When you refer to the whole class

a singular countable noun → a/an

”The computer cannot solve all problems”

° Exceptional expressions

° a plural countable noun + negative or

interrogative clause → any

° a uncountable noun + pos. clause → some

Sometimes you can use a/an article with an abstract

word:

° when the word is proceeded by a describing relative

° a uncountable noun + neg. or interr. clause

→ any

clause ”There is a danger that the model overfits”

° expressions ”a /short/long time”, ”a while”

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“the” article with ordinal numbers and some adjectives

Decision tree for articles

° Definite article ”the” is used

° when the noun is preceded by an ordinal number

”The first attribute describes...”

° when the noun is preceded by an adjective expressing

order

”the next attribute”, ”in the following chapter”

° with adjectives same, only, right, wrong

”The results were the same”, ”The only model which has this

property is X”

° Notice: ”the” is not used with ordinal numbers or

adjective ”last”, when you refer to the

performance in a competition

”Program X came first and program Y was last when

the programs were compared by the Z test.

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Notes

Pronouns

° A noun can be used as a countable or an uncountable

concept

”It takes time...”, ”all the time”, ”one at a time”, ”many

times”

° Two important rules when you use pronouns:

° any or some before the noun, → indefinite” ,

E.g.”The disk contains (some) space for back-up files”

° Don’t use pronouns!”This x” → ”the x” (where x is a noun)

° ∃x ∈ C such that P(x), use article a/an. ”

° ∀x ∈ C,P(x), use article the. (only for countable concepts!

° A name without any modifying word → no article,

E.g.”X is independent from Y “

1. When a pronoun refers to a noun in the

preceding sentence, make sure that the referred is

obvious!

2. Each pronoun should agree with the referent in

number and gender.

° A modifying word like ”set”, vector”, ”model” etc. stands

before the name → Two habits:

1. No article when you mention the entity for the first time. After

that use definite article ”the”, or

2. Never any articles.

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Notes

Adjectives

° Pronouns which require singular verb

form

{everybody, anybody, nobody, everyone,

anyone, no one}

° Every + singular noun

° Two notes:

1. Avoid vague adjectives!

2. How to derive and use comparative and

superlative forms?

° All + singular or plural noun

° several < many

several ≈ some

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use the comparative

Adverbs

° Use as few adverbs/prepositional phrases as

° Basic structure:

possible!

° X is as efficient as Y (X and Y are equally

efficient)

° X is more efficient than Y

→ expressive verbs and nouns

° Use introductory adverbs like ”fortunately,

similarly, conversely, certainly” carefully

° Exceptional expressions:

° X is different from Y

° X is similar to Y

° Notice that ”importantly” and ”interestingly” are

not proper adverbs.

E.g.

”More importantly, the accuracy can actually

increse when the complexity is reduced”

→ ”More important, the accuracy can actually

increase when the complexity is reduced.”

”Interestingly, we found that...”

° X is the same as Y

° X is inferior/superior to Y

° X is equal to Y

→ ”An interesting finding was that...”

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Special cases of adverbs

Prepositions

still and yet

° Be careful with prepositions. A wrong preposition

can give a totally different meaning!

• Hint: When you use a preposition, visualize the

direction it is signaling and ask yourself if it is

appropriate.

° Still: before the main verb, but after be-verb.

”These enlargements are still unimplemented”

° Yet: at the end.

”These enlargements have not been implemented yet.

so and such

° So: before adjectives or adverbs which are not

succeeded by nouns

E.g. ”The time complexity is not so hard”

° Such: when an adjective is succeeded by a noun.

• If you are unsure about the use of a preposition,

ask yourself what a cat would do! (Fedor’s sciwri

book)

Cats sit on mats, go into rooms, are part of the

family, roam among the flowers

E.g. ”Such time complexity is infeasible”

° Notice the article ”a/an”, if the noun is countable:

”such a system”

”such an algorithm

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Expressing location

Expressing time

° Usually in, e.g. ”in set X”

° If an exact location, then at, e.g. ”at point (x, y)”

° If the location can be imagined as a line or a

surface, then on ”on the x-axis”, ”on a time line”

° Exact time: at, e.g. ”at the moment”, ”at

four o’clock”, ”at the same time”

° Longer period of time: in, e.g. ”in the

1970’s”, ”in the future”, ”in five minutes”,

° Special cases:

° ”on page 3”, ”on line 5”, ”on the Internet”

° ”A file is loaded from the hard disk into main memory.”

° ”results from the survey suggest...”

° over – under/beneath

° Notice: ”In the beginning/end” vs. ”At the

beginning/end” of something

° above – below

”X’s points were below the average points”

”The task is to optimize f under the given constraints”

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Expressing the target or the receiver

° to or for?

° Basic rules:

° Some verbs require either for or to:

1. If the verb is {bring, give, take, show, offer}

→ to

2. If the verb is {be, get, keep, make} → for

° Sometimes the preposition can be missing,

depending on the word order:

° When direct receiver, then to

”The values are assigned to variables”

° When the final receiver (for whom something is

meant) then for

”I gave the book for Belinda to Tersia”

”The messages for nodes F and G are transfered to

node D for rerouting”

i) verb + receiver + object

ii) verb + object + to/for + receiver

iii) verb + to/for + receiver (no object)

”A variety of methods have been developed for the

clustering problem.”

• When something is good or bad for something, then

for

”Problem-based learning is good for students”

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Parallel structures

Special phrases

° Parallel structure = words, phrases, clauses or

•

constraint on something

in spite of something (but despite

something)

sentences combined by commas and/or conjunctions.

independent from something but

dependent on something

regardless of something

take into account

in relation to something

in contrast with something

a proportion of something. (”a large

proportion of data”)

in proportion to something, proportional to

something (”The time complexity of f

proportional to n is...”)

the ratio of a to b = a/b

x% of y

under some conditions

by default

contrary to something

in contrast

by contrast (∼ ”however”)

on the contrary

at an extreme

° Here we call the combined items as parallel items.

•

different from something but similar

to something

° Parallel items are combined by parallel conjunctions

difference between something and

(and, or, but, ...).

something

° lists are also parallel structures!

•

prefer something to something

impact of something on something

influence on something

effect on something (but to affect

something)

° Often the parallel structure lists alternatives or makes

some kind of comparison: the items belong to the

same or similar classes or to two opposite classes.

focus on something

E.g. ”Method X has several advantages: it is easy to

implement, it works in polynomial time, and it can use both

numeric and categorial data.”

contains two parallel structures: three advantages (”it is, it

works, it can”) in a list and ”both numeric and categorial

data”

perform in some manner

generalize to something

a discussion about/on something

•

research on something but a study

of something

reason for something

opportunity of/for something

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Basic rules for parallel structure

conjunction pairs

° The parallel structure should be consistent in two

° Parallel items combined by conjunction pairs

° between...and,

ways

° Semantically: the concepts referred by parallel

° both...and,

° either...or,

items should be comparable

° neither...nor

° not only...butꢀ(also)

° Syntactically: the items should have similar

grammatic structure. All of them should be either

nouns, noun phrases, verb phrases, or clauses.

° Parallel items should be in the same form, e.g.

you cannot combine ”to” + verb and a verb

without ”to”.

”X solves the problems of traditional clustering

algorithms. Neither outliers nor missing values

affect the clustering quality.”

”The task is not only easy to solve but it can also

be solved efficiently

E.g. ”The problem is both hard to define and solve”

→ ”The problem is both hard to define and to solve

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The comparative – the comparative

Parallel sentences

° The sentences in the list begin by ordinal

° the + comparative + x + comma + the +

comparative + y, where x and y complete

the clauses

numbers ”First, Second, Third”

° ”X model has three important properties:

First, the model structure is easy to

understand. This is a critical feature in

adaptive learning environments, as we have

noted before. Second, the model can be

learnt efficiently from data. There are feasible

algorithms for both numeric and categorial

data.Third, the model tolerates noise and

missing values.”

”The more complex the model is, the

better it describes the training

data.”

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Sentences

Terminology

° Terminology

° A sentence consist of one or more clauses

° Sentence styles

° A clause contains always a subject and a

predicate, and usually an object

– An independent clause (main clause)

can make a sentence alone.

° Types of dependent clauses

° Sentence length

° Word order

– A dependent clause (subordinate

clause) needs an independent clause for

support

° Combining clauses

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Sentence types

Types of dependent clauses

1. Clauses beginning by sub-ordinating conjunctions (when, if,

because,while, ...)

° The sentence type depends on the type of its

main clause. The main types are following:

1. Statement (ends by a full stop: ”x is y.”)

2. Relative clauses (begin by relative pronouns which, who,

that)

3. Indirect questions (begin by question words or if/whether)

Examples:

2. Question (ends by a question-mark: Is x y?”)

3. Order (ends by an exclamation mark: ”Be x y!)

° In scientific writing the default type is the

”The dependency is trivial, because Y = f(X).”

”X and Y are linearly independent, if the correlation coefficient,

corr (X, Y ), is zero”

statement.

° Direct questions and orders are seldom used.

”Let ci be the cluster which is closest to x.

”Weselect the first model that fits the data.”

”First we should study what is the relationship between X and Y

.”

° Questions suit best to the introduction where

you state your main research questions clearly

and concretely

”The main problem is whether X can be applied in Z.”

”Weanalyze the conditions under which X can be applied.”

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Sentence length

Word order

° The order of words has a strong impact on

° always less than 30 words, preferably less

the meaning!

E.g.

”There is, however, currently no information about

than 20 words!

° 1-3 clauses

° expresses one idea

the limitations of quantum computers.” →

° If you tend to write too long sentences, try

the following:

”However, there is no current information about the

limitations of analog computers.” →

° Identify the main subject-predicate-object section

° Prune or compress everything else, which is not

needed

”However, the limitations of current quantum

computers are not known.”

° Check the verb structures and ask yourself if

they could be shorter

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Word Order

Word order in different languages

° Look at 3 examples:

”There is, however, currently no information

about the limitations of quantum computers.”

”However, there is no current information

about the limitations of analog computers.”

”However, the limitations of current quantum

computers are not known.”

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Basic Word Order

More details about word order

° The adverbs and prepositional phrases occur in order: way,

° subject-predicate-object (SVO)

place, time

° You can add attributes, phrases and

clauses, but don’t deviate too far from the basic

format

° Goal: put the most important information to the

beginning of a sentence or begin by a familiar thing

and put the new information to the end

° E.g. ”X is a new algorithm for the TS problem”

”The probabilities are updated by the Bayes rule:” +

the equation.

° ”The nearest neighbours can be identified efficiently (way) in a

dendrogram (place)”.

° ”The values can be updated easily (way) in linear time (time)”.

Verb modifiers: in the middle of clause

° Adverbs which express frequency: always, ever, never, often,

seldom, sometimes, usually

° Adverbs which can begin the clause

If the adverb expresses time, it can be also in the beginning:

”Next, the data is loaded to the main memory.”

This gives more emphasis to the word. It is also used, when

there are other adverbs/prepositional phrases in the end of

the clause.

° Often the sentence is most informative, if you express

the most important topic by the subject.

Introductory adverbs like ”obviously”, ”fortunately”, etc. are

always set to the beginning (if they are needed)

° This format helps to write clear and compact

sentences

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Combining clauses by sub-ordinating conjunctions

Combining clauses

° The basic form: an independent clause + a sub-ordinating

° Say the main message in the independent

clauses! Use dependent clauses only to add

details

conjunction + a dependent clause.

° The most common sub-ordinating conjunctions express

1. a chronological order: when, as, as soon as, while, after,

before,until, since

° Contents

”The search can be halted as soon as minfr proportion of data is

checked”

° Combining two independent clauses

° Combining clauses by sub-ordinating

conjunctions

° Relative clauses

° Indirect questions

2. a conditional relationship: if, unless. If-clauses can also

begin the sentence

”If the order is fixed, the episode is called serial.”

3. a reason: because (Recommendation: reserve word ”since”

to express chronological order)

”The method is time-efficient, because all the parameters can be

updated in one loop

4. a purpose: so that (You can also use in order to + infinitive

verb)

5. an admission: although, even if

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Notes

Relative clauses

° Relative clauses can be divided into two categories:

Restrictive or Non-restrictive

° When you combine

° who refers to a person.whose is the genitive form, it can refer

° an independent clause + a dependent clause

→ sometimes but not always a comma (e.g.

before but, but not before that).

to things and objects, too!

° whom is used as an object and with prepositions,

° which refers to things and objects, can be used as a subject

or an object or with prepositions.

° a dependent clause + an independent clause

→ always a comma

° In most cases, the genitive form can be either of which or

whose.

° that

° can be used only in restrictive relative clauses! → never use

comma before it!

° can refer to people or things,

° can be used both as a subject and an object.

° If you need prepositions, they have to be in the end of the

clause!

° what contains also the correlate

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Combining two independent clauses

Indirect questions

° A compound sentence= two or more independent clauses

which are combined by co-ordinating conjunctions or

(rarely) by semicolons.

° The dependent clause begins by a question

word what, why, when, where, how or

if/whether when the corresponding direct

question begins by a verb.

° Combine only two main clauses (unless the clauses have

the same subject which is mentioned only once).

”First we should study what is the relationship

between X and Y .”

° The ideas expressed in the clauses must be closely

connected (otherwise separate sentences).

”The main problem is whether X can be

applied in Z.”

° The most common co-ordinating conjunctions are and and

but.

• The word order is direct!

°

and links one idea to another.

• No auxiliary word do

° E.g. ”The data is sparse and the model overfits easily.”

but establishes an interesting relationship between the ideas →

a higher level of argument.

° E.g. ”The data was sparse, but the model did not overfit.”

(=”Even if the data was sparse, the modeldid not overfit.”)

• No comma!

• No question mark

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Punctuation

Comma is used

1. To separate introductory phrases and conjunctions

(however, thus, similarly, etc.)

° Goal: to make the text clearer.

”Despite the high time complexity, X is often used...”

° The English punctuation rules do not always

coincide with the rules of your mother

tongue.

2. When the sentence begins with a dependent clause.

”Since x is a statistic, it is also a random variable.”

3. When a non-restrcitive relative clause is embedded into an

independent clause or ends a sentence.

”X, which is responsible for data preprocessing, initializes Y .”

4. When two phrases with the same meaning are used side

by side.

° Usually you manage with just two marks:

full-stop and comma!

° The basic rules for other marks are:

• Use colon ’:’ only when needed.

• Avoid semicolon ’;’ and dash ’–’.

• Avoid unnecessary parantheses ’(’...’)’.

”One of the most useful statistics is x, the sample mean.”

5. When the sentence begins by an infinitive structure

”To find the lower bound for the confidence interval, we

isolate...”

6. To separate items in a list of three or more items.

7. To avoid ambiguity.

”Instead of hundreds, thousands rows of data is required”

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No comma is used

° When an independent clause is followed by a

restrictive relative clause or is embedded with a

restrictive rel. clause (especially before that).

Exception: ”It must be remembered, however, that...”

° Between two independent clauses (in British English).

° Before an indirect question.

° When you begin by a prepositional phrase expressing

the place.

° ”In this section we discuss...” ”In Chapter 3 we

defined...”

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Bài giảng Technical writing and presentation - Chương 10: How to write scientific texts in English - Vũ Văn Thiệu