Table of Contents

Contents Preface Contents 1 Introduction Kinds of publication Writing, science, and skepticism Using this book Spelling and terminology 2 Good style Economy Tone Examples Motivation Balance Voice The upper hand Obfuscation Analogies Strawmen Reference and citation Quotation Acknowledgements Grammar Beauty 3 Style specifics Titles and headings Theopening paragraphs Variation Paragraphing Ambiguity Sentence structure Tense Repetition and parallelism Emphasis Definitions Choice of words Qualifiers Misused words Spelling conventions Jargon Cliche and idiom Foreignwords Overuse of words Padding Plurals Abbreviations Acronyms Sexism 4 Punctuation Fonts and formatting Stops Commas Colons and semicolons Apostrophes Exclamations Hyphenation Capitalization Quotations Parentheses Citations 5 Mathematics Clarity Theorems Readability Notation Ranges and sequences Alphabets Linebreaks Numbers Percentages Units of measurement 6 Graphs, figures, and tables Graphs Visualization of results Diagrams Tables Captions and labels Axes, labels, and headings 7 Algorithms Presentation of algorithms Formalisms Level of detail Figures Notation Environment of algorithms Performance of algorithms Asymptotic complexity 8 Editing Consistency Style Proofreading Choice of word-processor An editing checklist 9 Writing up The scope of apaper Telling a story Organization The First draft Fromdraft to submission Prepublication Theses A writing-up checklist 10 Doing research Beginnings Shaping a research project Students and advisors Findingresearch literature Reading Research planning Hypotheses Defending hypotheses Evidence Good and bad science Reflections on research A research checklist 11 Experimentation Designing experiments Measurements and coding Describing experiments Variables Statistics Intuition An experimentation checklist 12 Refereeing Responsibilities Contribution Evaluation of papers Referees' reports A refereeing checklist 13 Ethics Plagiarism Self-plagiarism Misrepresentation Authorship Confidentiality and conflict of interest Anethics checklist 14 Giving presentations Content Organization The introduction The conclusion Preparation Delivery Question time Slides Slide tools Text slides Figures A presentations checklist Examples of slides Afterword Bibliography Exercises Index

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Reviews

From the reviews of the second edition: "Zobel emphasizes that clarity ! . my review would read as follows: buy this book. ! The contents of the book are valuable, both as a reference ! . has tailored his book quite specifically to computer science researchers. He presents valuable examples drawn from computer science papers ! . This book is best suited to individual use. However, it could also serve as a supplementary text for a course on research methods. !" (Max Hailperin, Computing Reviews, February, 2005) "I decided to recommend Zobel's work to my advanced students and Ph.D. candidates. ! An extra goody are the twenty exercises. They constitute a good start into raising many of the issues treated in the book. Many chapters give check-lists or lists of good practice. ! His own way of writing demonstrates that there are helpful rules no writer should disobey. ! Good writing, even in computing science, remains a process of experience and dialectics. Zobel's book proves the point." (Frieder Nake, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1106 (8), 2007)