Writing Tips

Mainly suggested by Dave, "The Craft of Sceintific Writing", and "The Elements of Style".

Writing

• Never say "this" without clearly explaing what "this" means.
• Pay attention to the usage of the word "less" and "lesser". Maybe you actually want to use "few" and "fewer", or "small" and "smaller". Even check the use of "less" versus "lesser", i.e., whether to use "er" at the end.
• When number refers to hard data (such as "values of 4 and 5") always use the numerical representation, instead of writing the word representation. For example, "In the following two paragraphs..." is correct since it is not hard data to which "two" is referring. Since a sentence starting with a numeral looks awkward, reword the sentence so that this situation is avoided.
• Never end sentences in prepositions (e.g., "into", "to"). Reword the sentences. "which it refers to." can be reworded as "to which it refers."
• If there is a node names A, then whenever it is referred to, always say "node A" instead of just A. Just writing A is confusing even though it is capitalized or italicized.
• The word "could" is stronger than the word "can". Example: In future, blah could (not can) be done.
• Operating on a channel/frequency.
• Always introduce a Figure, always. E.g. "Figure such-and-such shows how the throughput varies with different traffic load", instead of saying "blah..., as shown in Figure". After introducing the figure, just state the information that you can draw from the figure, don't say "Figure shows that..." immediately after the introduction of the figure; just state whatever is after "Figure shows that".

LaTeX Related Tips

• If there is a period (full-stop) between two capital letters (e.g. ... AP. I am ...), then instead of ".", used "\@.".
• Never put a float (figure, table) between a Section header (subsection, etc) and the first line of the section text. This makes Latex loose association between the section title and the text of that section.
• So that long section titles that may wrap into two lines do not appear center justified. Left justification looks better for titles and normally section titles are a single line and that is left justified by default by LaTeX. "\subsection[title]{\raggedright title}"
• If a paragraph has some words which extend out of the right justfication line, then encase the entire para within "\begin{sloppypar}" and "\end{sloppypar}"
• "\looseness=1" inside the text of a paragraph suggests LaTeX increase the number of lines in the paragraph by one, and "\looseness=-1" suggests LaTeX to decrease the number of lines in the paragraph by one.
• If you draw figures in Adobe Illustrator and want to generate an .eps for inclusion into a latex source, then save the drawn file as .eps with the following options:
  • Version = 8.
  • Format = none.
  • Include document thumbnails (optional).
  • Include document fonts (optional but unless the fonts you used in drawing the figures are known by dvips).
  • CMYK Postscript (keep it checked).
  • Don't change anything else.