
Ask HN: Your tips/hacks for great academic writing - scorchin
This is a little bit of a follow-on from a recent post about hired writers for various educational essays. Link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1901152<p>So, does anyone have any tips on how to produce great quality academic writing?<p>And no, cheating is not an option.
======
user24
Writing style is an important aspect of modern academia. This reply will
address the topic of academic style and will consider several ways to approach
it, while maintaining a focus on the conciseness generally preferred in this
medium.

In order to discuss this fully, it is first necessary to define the terms. The
word 'Academia' may have a wide range of interpretations and it is important
to distinguish in which sense we are discussing it. For this discussion, we
shall take it to mean formal study at graduate level or beyond.

As can be seen from the introduction, it is this author's belief that an
academic reply should begin with a short preliminary sentence framing the
topic in general, followed by a brief discussion of what the essay will
contain.

Following this, the discourse should flow from point to point, with joining
phrases such as "following this" to link paragraphs. Generally, points should
be kept short, building on each other in small increments.

In this way, an academic writer can slowly expose the reader to their
argument, without having their submission feel too heavy going.

Notice also that the previous paragraph was essentially filler, merely
recapping the previous points, and drawing out a conclusion for the reader. By
spelling out the conclusions throughout the text, the reader has to
concentrate less, and will take on board the argument more easily.

To conclude, writing academically is a combination of concise points repeated
in different ways for effect, statements of the conclusions throughout the
essay in order to make the reader comfortable, and several other tactics, not
least of which is the repetition of phrases from the title such as "academic
writing" to remind the marker that you're answering the question. Finally, you
can leave the essay on a slight tangent to 'wrap up', for example: It is this
author's wish that this work may have contributed in some small way to the
worthy goal of improving academic writing.

------
pwpwp
How to write a good research paper and give a good research talk by Simon
Peyton Jones: [http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/simonpj/papers...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/simonpj/papers/giving-a-talk/giving-a-talk.htm)

From memory:

1\. What's the problem? 2. Why is it an interesting problem? 3. What's my
solution? 4. What (great stuff) follows from my solution?

~~~
jdp23
there are several more good how-to papers linked from
<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mleone/how-to.html>

different disciplines (and sometimes even publications) have different
conventions and styles. look at some of the most-cited and best-reviewed
papers in your field -- and some of the recent ones you like too, just in case
styles have changed.

------
ericb
To write awesome papers, I used to create a draft, then edit out needless
words and find more succinct ways to say things. If I was short on length, I'd
repeat my initial brainstorming step and flesh out more content. By pruning
and then adding content, you end up with a paper that is denser and stands out
next to other filler-filled, font-inflated, 2.2 spaced papers.

------
grandalf
My suggestions:

\- The opening should always contextualize your work in light of the rest of
the field. It also communicates your mastery of the field.

\- Don't use big words when simpler, smaller ones will do.

\- Don't be verbose just to fill space, and don't make your paragraphs too
long (a common mistake).

\- Be sure the composition has a well-structured argument/flow.

\- Your style of exposition is important. The reader should arrive at your
conclusions a moment before you do... this makes the reader feel smart, which
is important if your audience is academic.

\- Your bibliography should be large and should communicate both breadth and
depth of research.

------
apu
In addition to the various tips and guides posted here, an important missing
ingredient is actually putting in the time and effort on writing. In computer
science, at least, I know many people who spend 4-8 months doing research and
getting results, and then 1 week writing. This is incredibly foolish, because
you're selling yourself short. It takes a lot of time and energy to write (and
rewrite) well, and unless you're a top-notch writer, 1 week is not going to be
enough.

It's just a matter of setting priorities -- writing should not be an
afterthought. You may have done the best research in the world, but if no one
can understand it easily from the paper, it won't matter. I try to spend a
month writing and editing my papers (often going through 15-20 drafts) to make
them as good as possible. It seems like a lot of time, until you realize that
if your paper is not well-written, it's not going to be read and understood,
and so you've lost 8 months of work, not 1 month.

The same thing applies to preparing presentations for academic conferences.
Most talks are terrible, and so it's actually not that hard to make one that
stands out. The main thing to remember in talks is that it's just an
advertisement to get people to read your paper; it's not a substitute! From
this, you can derive many of the rules for giving good talks: provide strong
motivation and background, skip very technical stuff, have a polished
presentation, keep it simple, don't be boring, etc.

------
candre717
Great quality academic writing doesn't always mean a great grade. If you want
a great grade (A- and above), know what the professor expects and mold your
paper accordingly.

Now, if you want to produce quality writing that pushes your intellectual
limits and makes you a better writer, develop a taste for good writing by
reading a variety of works, scholarly and non, practice consistently, and edit
religiously - by yourself and with others. Hopefully, then, you have a
professor or advisor who can appreciate your work even if they disagree with
it.

------
Tycho
If you're like me you probably find yourself Donny loads of reading and only
really underestaning it well after a long struggle and lots of rereading and
background reading, and _then_ when it comes to putting your knowledge down on
page you struggle even more trying to avoid a hodgepodge of facts and details
and observations with no real coherence, like although you understand the
words now, it's not given your own writing any real advantage. But the funny
thing is if somebody asked you a question about the subject you could probably
explain it pretty well. How do you get that sort of clarity into written/sassy
form?

Write a self-interview. Start with 'So what is X, briefly?' and answer it,
then 'Why is X necessary?', then 'What sub-catogories of X are there?' etc
etc. Particularly make sure you ask and answer any apparent assumptions,
natural follow-up questions, _some_ low-level detail/specifics to 'prove' your
not a faker, ask how one thing relates to other things already mentioned if
it's not obvious. Playing the role of interviewer really helps you catch all
this stuff. And because it's like having a conversation you don't stall, you
don't get writers block. And it keeps you honest.

Then go back through the interview and remove/reword the questions and
anything that's too converational, and your essay has practically written
itself.

------
unignorant
This is more of a long term strategy, but I have found it effective.

1\. Make a habit of reading books, often. Fiction or non-fiction, it's all
fine. The more you read, the better your "baseline" writing skills will tend
to become.

2\. Now read papers in your academic field. Look closely at the way each
author uses language. Try to emulate your favorites.

------
thesteg
Read other academic literature. I read a lot from Harvard and MIT.

------
s2r2
Enjoy doing it. For me this means trying ConTeXt at the moment and with great
pleasure.

------
bendmorris
Every discipline has a unique writing style. To figure it out I'd suggest two
things, one obvious and one not so much. First, read some recent academic
papers to get an idea of what the writing styles of authors who are publishing
today are like. Next, read some historical papers - I've read papers from the
20's, 50's, etc. and there is a huge difference. This will help you understand
how the writing style of your discipline has evolved over time. Now you have
two references, one to emulate and one to avoid.

------
tspiteri
Empathize with the reader, try to put yourself in their place. If you are
proposing an argument, imagine you are a reader and have no idea about it, and
try to make yourself understand it in the first reading. Many paper writers
write as if the reader already knows their argument and the text is just a
reminder, which makes the readers iterate over the text over and over again to
understand.

------
julietteculver
I highly recommend '"They Say / I Say": The Moves That Matter in Academic
Writing' by Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein and Russel Durst. It totally
reshaped how I looked at structuring academic writing and unlike lots of books
about how to write essays goes beyond common sense and the five paragraph
essay structure.

------
TobiasCassell
(I cant remember where I learned this from, might have been one of Guy
Kawasaki's essays.)

While writing-

Write "So What/Why" on a post-it note and put the post-it note on your
shoulder. Write "For Example" on another post-it note and put it on your other
shoulder... Every two or three sentences, look down and glance at your
shoulders...

------
vkdelta
You might want to read "Elements of Style - by William Strunk"

Amazon link: [http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-
Strunk/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-
Strunk/dp/020530902X)

------
tomkinstinch
Read without restraint, understand rhetoric, and have intuitive grasp of
proper syntax. Look to modern papers for terms of art. Study speeches,
classical and modern, to learn how to craft a cogent argument.

------
korbit
You might want to look through
[http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/the-science-
of-s...](http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/the-science-of-
scientific-writing)

------
roel_v
(Sorry if this post will sound cynical, I mean it mostly 'practical'. It is
also skewed towards topics that are not 'hard science', for example much of
this doesn't apply to proofs, since they're (mostly) either correct or wrong.)

First, you need to define 'great quality'. Will you measure 'quality' by (1)
what the reader will get out of it, or (2) what you (the writer) get(s) out of
it?

For most academics, the second one is most relevant in the end. But the
traditional view is that by fulfilling (1), (2) will automatically follow. You
need to examine this hypothesis early in your academic career and see if it
holds true in your field or publishing environment. Will you get name, fame
and tenure by writing easy to read papers? Early-career, idealistic academics
usually assume so, but finding out sooner rather than later (preferably
without having to test empirically) if this is true can save you a lot of
time.

In my opinion, for us mere mortals there are two ways to write a paper that
has great influence and is widely cited. (the third way is to write a great,
groundbreaking, genius-quality paper - let's face it, most of us are never
going to do that.)

\- Write one that is easy to understand and has broad scope. The topic needs
to be 'fundamental' in the sense that it needs to be a precursor or
prerequisite for research topics that are in itself (usually) much sexier.
This way, your paper will be a good 'filler' citation, i.e. many people will
cite your paper in the introduction of their papers because it was easy to
understand (they didn't have to spend too much time reading and understanding
it) and because the topic is obviously relevant to the rest of their paper.
Furthermore, it helps if your paper can be used to support a position that
people usually glossed over ('proof by hand waving'). In this way your paper
can easily be added as a citation to a paper the night before the submission
deadline. (what I mean is, it helps if your paper is not a fundamental part on
which other papers can be build, but rather a piece of supporting evidence
that makes the citing paper seem well-researched).

\- The second way is to write a paper that looks more profound and seems to
solve a difficult problem than it actually does, and then market it heavily so
that others get convinced of these qualities by other means like social proof,
the eloquence of its defenders, the ubiquitousness of the topic showing up at
conferences etc. Now you won't (usually) get away with complete nonsense
topics or contents so you'll still need to have somewhat good content, but
writing in this category tends to use lots of obscure jargon, passive voice,
long sentences etc. The writing style needs to be almost the opposite of the
previous type of paper. For this to work out you need good networking and
people skills and time and means to go out there and promote your paper. Both
of these don't come naturally to many PhD students or fresh PhD's.

(Personally I tend to write, and even post online, in long sentences, use lots
of expensive sounding words, phrase things in generalities where concrete
terms would've clarified the content and not taken anything away from the
point, etc - mostly out of habit. Make of that what you will about the content
I usually try to get across ;) )

------
mdoyle
Ever tried free-writing? I've just completed a Masters and would use free-
writing as a warm up exercise fairly regularly. Not sure it works for
everybody but it seemed to work for me.

------
drallison
<http://www.amazon.com/Bugs-Writing-lyn-dupre/dp/0201600196>

Lyn Dupre's book has many useful, common sense tips.

------
wilgert
From a more practical point of view: use the Zotero Firefox plugin for
managing references. <http://www.zotero.org/>

------
IsaacL
Read Strunk and White.

