lecture01: Writing

Topics covered

• Why write?
• Philosophy of this course
• Meta-rules
• When do you plan to start writing your ?
• Getting started
• Showing people
• Writing productively
• Sometimes its fun to write badly
• What's your story?
• Logic isn't just for maths %
• A rough template of a paper or technical report
• Don't waste my time
• Don't waste my time
• Precision
• Concrete nouns preferred over abstract
• Repeatability
• Try this
• Repetition is good %
• The Spiral
• More on the literature review
• The role of references
• KISS
• An Example (from \cite[p.46]{gowers86:_compl_plain_words)}
• Simplicity is hard
• KISS, part II
• Rules
• Good English
• Good English, part II %
• Good English, part IIa
• Good English, part III
• Read stuff
• Write, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, ... \cite[p.73]{knuth89:_mathem_writin}
• Editing
• Pitfalls
• Avoid excessive prepositional qualifications
• Active verbs preferred to passive
• Gap words %
• Just for interest
• Avoid verbal ticks
• Conclusion