[Writing for CS] 7. Style Specifics

• Titles and Headings: should be concise and informative. Accuracy is more important than catchiness
• The opening paragraph: Take care to distinguish the description of existing knowledge from the description of the paper's contribution.
• Don't say too much at once.
• Tense
  • Present tense is used for (1) eternal truth (2) Statements about the text itself.
  • Past tense issued for describing work and outcomes.
  • Either past or present tense can be used for discussion of reference.
• Repetition and Parallelism: Watch out for sequences of sentences beginning with "however", "moreover", "therefore", "hence", "thus", "and", but, then, so, nevertheless, nonetheless.
• Choice of words: use an exact long word rather than an approximate short one.
  • begin > initiate
  • first, second > firstly, secondly
  • part > component
  • use > utilize
  • Not use: difficult, important, intelligent, method, paradigm, performance, semantic, hard, efficient, very, simply, totally, completely, truly, highly, usually, certainly, necessarily, and somewhat
  • Be aware of not subtle cases ex. iterate means to loop and to do again
  • Slang should not be used in technical writing. use cannot instead of can't
  • Don't make excessive claims about your own work ex. Our work is remarkable
• Qualifiers: Overuse of qualifiers results in text that is lame and timid.
• Misused Words
  • Use which only when it cannot be replaced by that
  • the is often used unnecessarily; delete it where doing so does not change the meaning.
• Padding is the unnecessary use of pedantic phrases such as "in general", "of course"
• Use the minimum number of words, of minimum length, in your writing
• Grammar 
  • Plurals: Whenever it is reasonable to do so, convert plurals to singular.
  • Abbreviation: It is almost always desirable to expand the abbreviations
    • number > no.
    • that is > i.e.
    • for example > e.g.
    • with respect to >w.r.t.
    • Figure > Fig, Algorithm > Alg.
    • Avoid use of etc 
    • Use either or, also rather than slash (/). An exception is I/O