Data driven Essay(simple paper) template
You can download raw Markdown file in blog repository on github.
Contents
Abstract
This is a placeholder for the abstract. It summarizes the whole paper to give a very short overview. Usually, this the abstract is written when the whole paper text is finished.
Example Chapter
This is my text with an example Figure 1.1 is an example of Command-line depiction of the Mandelbrot set, just like the picture Brooks and Matelski included in their article of 1978 on Kleinian groups.
Now you are able to write your own document. Always keep in mind: it’s the content that matters, not the form. But good typography is able to deliver the content much better than information set with bad typography. This template allows you to focus on writing good content while the form is done by the template definitions.
Figure 1.1: Example figure.
Language and Writing Style
This chapter is an adopted version of a single chapter of Andrews thesis template Andrews, 2011 in its version from 2011-12-11.
Using this chapter here is meant as a teaser. If you do like this chapter, please go and download the full template to read its content: Andrews, 2011.
The classic reference for English writing style and grammar is Strunk and White (1999). The original text is now available for free online Strunk (1918), so there is no excuse at all for writing poor English. Readers should consult it first, then continue reading this chapter. Another good free guide is McCaskill (1998).
Some Basic Rules of English
There are a few basic rules of English for academic writing, which are broken regularly by my students, particularly if they are non-native speakers of English. Here are some classic and often encountered examples:
- Never use I, we, or you._
Write in the passive voice (third person).
Bad: You can do this in two ways.
Good: **There are two ways this can be done. - Never use he or she, his or her.
Write in the passive voice (third person).
Bad: The user speaks his thoughts out loud.
Good: **The thoughts of the user are spoken out loud - Do not use slang abbreviations such as “it’s”, “doesn’t”, or “don’t”.
Write the words out in full: “it is”, “does not”, and “do not”.
Bad: It’s very simple to . . .
Good: It is very simple to . . . - Do not use abbreviations such as “e. g.” or “i. e.”.
Write the words out in full: “for example” and “that is”.
Bad: . . . in a tree, e. g.the items. . .
Good: . . . in a tree, for example the items. . . - Do not use slang such as “a lot of”.
Bad: There are a lot of features. . .
Good: There are many features. . . - Do not use slang such as “OK” or “big”.
Bad: . . . are represented by big areas.
Good: . . . are represented by large areas - Do not use slang such as “gets” or “got”.
Use “becomes” or “obtains”, or use the passive voice (third person).
Bad: The radius gets increased. . .
Good: The radius is increased. . .
Bad: The user gets disoriented. . .
Good: The user becomes disoriented. . . - Never start a sentence with “But”.
Use “However,” or “Nevertheless,”. Or consider joining the sentence
to the previous sentence with a comma.
Bad: But there are numerous possibilities. . .
Good: However, there are numerous possibilities. . . - Never start a sentence with “Because”.
Use “Since”, “Owing to”, or “Due to”. Or turn the two halves of the sentence around - Never start a sentence with “Also”. Also should be placed in the middle
of the sentence.
Bad: Also the target users are considered.
Good: The target users are also considered. - Do not use “that” as a connecting word.
Use “which”.
Bad: . . . a good solution that can be computed easily.
Good: . . . a good solution which can be computed easily - Do not write single-sentence paragraphs.
Avoid writing two-sentence paragraphs. A paragraph should contain at least three, if not more, sentences.
Clear Writing
The written and spoken language of your paper is English as appropriate for presentation to an international audience. Please take special care to ensure that your work is adapted to such an audience. In particular:
- Write in a straight-forward style, using simple sentence structure.
- Use common and basic vocabulary. For example, use “unusual” for “arcane”, and “specialised” for “erudite”.
- Briefly define or explain all technical vocabulary the first time it is mentioned, to ensure that the reader understands it.
- Explain all acronyms and abbreviations. For example, the first time
an acronym is used, write it out in full and place the acronym in
parentheses.
Bad: . . . When using the gui version, the use may. . .
Good: . . . When using the Graphical User Interface (gui) version, the use may. . . - Avoid local references. For example, not everyone knows the names of all the provincial capitals of India. If local context is important to the material, describe it fully.
- Do not “play on words”. For example, do not use “puns”, particularly in the title of a piece. Phrases such as “red herring” require cultural as well as technical knowledge of English.
- Use unambiguous formats to represent culturally localised things such as times, dates, personal names, currencies, and even numbers. 9/11 is the 9th of November in most of the world.
- Be careful with humour. In particular, irony and sarcasm can be hard to detect if you are not a native speaker.
- If you find yourself repeating the same word or phrase too often, look in a thesaurus such as Roget (2004) and Roget (1995) for an alternative word with the same meaning.
Clear writing experts recognise that part of writing understandable documents is understanding and responding to the needs of the intended audience. It is the writer’s job to maintain the audience’s willingness to go on reading the document. Readers who are continually stumped by long words or offended by a pompous tone are likely to stop reading and miss the intended message.
- Capitalize the first word of the title or heading.
- Capitalize the last word of the title or heading.
- All other words are capitalized unless they are conjunctions (and, or, but, nor, yet, so, for),
articles (a, an, the), or prepositions (in, to, of, at, by, up, for, off, on).
- According to the Chicago Manual of Style and the Modern Language Association (MLA) Handbook, no prepositions (regardless of length) are capitalized unless they are the first or last word of the title or heading.
- The Gregg Reference Manual: is a bit more specific: Capitalize all words of four or more letters.
- Be sure to check to see which style manual the company is following, assuming they do follow one. If they are using Chicago or MLA, you would not capitalize prepositions like "through" and "after." If they use Gregg, both of those prepositions would be capitalized. There are other style manuals that may have different rules, so be sure to find out what the preferred style is for your business.
Author: Janie Sullivan
Use a Spelling Checker
In these days of high technology, spelling mistakes and typos are inexcusable. It is very irritating for your supervisor to have to read through and correct spelling mistake after spelling mistake which could have been caught by an automated spelling checker. Believe me, irritating your supervisor is not a good idea.
So, use a spelling checker before you hand in any version, whether it is a draft or a final version. Since this is apparently often forgotten, and sometimes even wilfully ignored, let me make it absolutely clear:
Use a Dictionary
If you are not quite sure of the meaning of a word, then use a dictionary.
Use a Thesaurus
If a word has been used several times already, and using another equivalent word might improve the readability of the text, then consult any English thesauri.
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