Ever Growing Academic Writing Guide

A living handbook covering every layer of scientific writing — from narrative structure to the last punctuation mark.

About this Guide

The guide organizes tips by:

• Specific sections of academic papers
• Writing at different granularities (sentences, paragraphs, full narratives)
• Tools beyond writing (LaTeX, rebuttals, graphics)

Where to Start?

Two battle-tested approaches. Choose based on how solid your results already are.

Top-Down Approach

Begin by understanding the core narrative: What main idea should readers grasp (new method, surprising finding, criticism)? Develop an argumentation structure first, then write the abstract and introduction following this logic, and finally fill in the required sections.

Bottom-Up Approach

Start with obvious, clear information — whatever feels most concrete. Useful when results are distinct and strong, methods are lengthy, or the main content already exists. Less effective when you have numerous results and some may not support the primary narrative.

Story Level

The highest-level decisions that shape how readers experience your paper from beginning to end.

Core Principles

Take readers on an understanding journey, not your discovery path

Almost always, the path towards a finding was not direct — it involved roundabouts. Those do not matter anymore, nor does the chronological order of experiments you made. Include only what teaches readers and provides necessary background.

Reader attention is your most valuable asset

• Invest maximum effort at the beginning, where many readers stop
• Make important content salient and attention-grabbing
• Position memorable information early: abstract, introduction, section starts, paragraph starts
• Papers differ from regular stories — readers need takeaway messages early, not as a late surprise

What · How · Why · Crux

Accommodate different reader types by clearly providing all four layers:

• What — Help readers decide if reading is worthwhile
• How — Enable reproduction and criticism
• Why — Provide insight into methodology choices
• Crux — New discoveries and knowledge gained

Kill Your Darlings

Experts learn to cut down; beginners focus on filling pages. Side findings unrelated to the main narrative should be removed or moved to appendices. Everything should serve the coherent story. If a finding doesn't support your main argument, reconsider whether you're telling the right story to the right audience.

Substantiate All Claims

Every claim should be supported — by citing, explaining, or providing new evidence. Even small claims require substantiation.

Support All Reading Depths

• Casual readers — remember findings from title/abstract
• Skimmers — understand from skimming alone
• Deep readers — comprehend specific sections thoroughly
• Replicators — access every detail for reproducibility
• Reviewers — find no legitimate grounds for criticism

Minor Tips

Avoid Repetitions

Structure presents information once: motivation upfront, details elsewhere. Each topic section should be nearly standalone, with experiments largely understood without re-reading other sections.

Tense Conventions

Strategic Example Selection

When multiple examples fit equally well, choose ones that reappear later in the paper with variations. This primes readers and reduces cognitive load across the whole paper.

Section-Level Writing

How to open, guide, and connect each major section of your paper.

Open with the Gist of the Section

Early in every section, write what is achieved in that section. This reduces mental load dramatically and aids any reader who is skimming.

Connect to Previous Content

Opening remarks should link to prior discussion or preview upcoming material.

Prefer Examples over Abstractions

Specific examples allow readers to generalize themselves and are more convincing than abstract explanations.

Paragraph-Level Writing

Connect to the Previous Paragraph

Most paragraphs continue prior ideas through:

• Repeating key objects (avoiding full coreference)
• Connecting words (e.g., "Regardless", "Instead")
• Continuing the same idea without direct repetition

Start with a Point Statement

Begin paragraphs with clear claims or organizational frameworks. This enables skimming and ensures important messages are always salient.

Sentence-Level Writing

Precision at the line level — where most readers experience the quality of your thinking.

Actions as Verbs, Concrete Items as Nouns

Traditional grammatical roles aid comprehension more than nominalization (representing an action as a noun).

Subject Performs the Important Verb

The subject should actively perform a meaningful verb, helping readers identify who is responsible for the main claims and results.

Precision and Minimal Statements

Parallelism in Form

When clauses share meaning, parallel structure improves comprehension significantly.

Explicit over Implicit

Pronouns (it, they, his) and vague quantifiers (many, different, various) require resolution effort. Replace them with specific names.

• such/given/many/various studies → efficiency studies
• He → use the person's name
• There are different methods to understand what knowledge they use → Interpretability methods link internal knowledge to model outputs

Familiar First, Surprises Last

Familiar concepts come first; surprises and new information come later. This provides continuity, reduces mental load, and lets you control emphasis.

Controlling Sentence Stress

Sentence beginnings and endings receive the strongest reader attention. Use this deliberately.

Strong Endings Win

Colon as the Most Aggressive Stress Signal

Functions as a wall creating a high-tension pause before the payload.

Negation Focuses Attention

The "It was not X, but Y" structure places stress exactly on the intended target.

Em-Dashes Force Lingering

Em-dashes pause the reader right after a key term, forcing them to process its importance before continuing.

Avoid Weak Endings

Never end sentences with: table/figure citations, vague pronouns, or prepositions.

Reducing Reader Mental Load

Shorten Distances Between Connected Concepts

Nouns connect to verbs; adjectives to nouns; adverbs to verbs. Reducing the distance between related elements improves reading fluency.

Reduce Ambiguities

Most common: coreferences (it, this, those) may refer to multiple entities. Use sparingly; replace with the specific name.

Word Choice

Every word must earn its place. Be precise, minimal, and specific.

"They will understand." — No, they won't.

Assume readers have missed context, aren't from the field, or skimmed. Actively catch hints, unsaid implications, or unclear references and clarify every one.

Minimize Abbreviations and Jargon

Make every word as easy as possible. Define unfamiliar terms — briefly in the introduction if necessary. Abbreviations feel less formal; avoid contractions (don't → do not). Accepted abbreviations include language staples like e.g., i.e., c.f.

Avoid Qualifier Words

Avoid Fillers and Underspecified Verbs

Remove words providing no meaning. Replace helper verbs where real verbs work:

• use / leverage / utilize → use the specific action verb
• make / get / take / is done → replace with a direct verb
• "we use the training scheme" → "we train"
• stuff / things / something → replace with accurate nouns

Avoid Underspecified Nouns

Replace placeholders with accurate words. Increase specificity: "decrease" → "plummets".

Redundant Quantifiers

"We propose several methods to…" — does "several" convey information beyond indicating plurality? In most cases, no. Audit every quantifier.

Know Yourself

Authors tend to repeat their personal word arsenal. If you frequently use so, indeed, still, in fact — hunt them down and consider changing or deleting as appropriate.

Exercises in Word Choice

Sections in an Academic Paper

Paper writing is the art of layering one piece to fit all readers.

Title

A concise, clear, attention-grabbing phrase that accurately reflects the main topic or finding.

• Stand out: unique framing, a surprising finding, justified creativity
• Set accurate expectations: wrong expectations anger readers; overclaiming attracts the wrong audience

Abstract

• Make the reader want to continue reading
• Get to the point fast — no slow warm-up
• Bring the most interesting aspects with minimal unnecessary information
• Include the most important takeaways upfront

Introduction

An extension of the abstract that sets up the problem, explains its importance, and outlines the approach and findings.

Full Paper Summary

Everything important should appear (briefly) in the introduction: motivation, main idea/methodology, main findings. Verify by adding a reference to each paper section from the introduction — check that all sections are covered and the order matches.

Convey Main Messages — Don't Build Suspense

Motivation Section

• Choose the motivation that makes your solution shine — pick aspects most shown in your findings
• Keep motivation short in most cases — it's often obvious that you're addressing a real problem
• Exception: if your paper refocuses what people study (fundamental ingenuity), motivation is central

Background Section

Explains essential concepts or prior work needed to understand the paper. Not a related work section — don't list prior art, explain what readers actually need. Place it before they need it.

Method

A description of what was developed or proposed, including how it works and why. Distinct from experimental setup — this is what others learn to use or replicate. Explain innovation others can leverage.

Experimental Setup

Concentrate all technical details here. Results go in a separate section. Separate technicalities from outcomes.

Results

• Be exact — neither overclaim nor underclaim
• Overclaiming: people who notice will distrust the work; others will believe wrong findings. Hedge when necessary: generally, in most cases, in X%, seems likely
• Underclaiming: if you don't report actual findings, you defeat the purpose of sharing
• State in words: don't force readers to decipher graphs alone — write explicitly what graphs depict
• Little speculation: results section reports findings, not discussion

Analysis

Interprets or broadens the main results to uncover patterns, implications, or deeper insights.

Related Work

Reviews relevant literature to position your contribution and highlight differences. This is not a background section — your paper should be understandable without reading it. Position it near the end.

• Point relevant work, give credit, differentiate your work concretely
• Avoid over-discussing prior works — too much space implies they are important
• Emphasize novelty by explaining specific differences/advantages, not by just claiming novelty

Conclusion and Discussion

The place for deeper thoughts. At this point readers are open to speculation and broader picture explanations. Reflect on contribution, broader impact, and future directions.

Limitations

Space given to a limitation should align with its actual importance. Long explanations signal the issue is crucial regardless of intent — be calibrated.

Appendix

Additional findings too interesting to ignore, but not warranting space in the main paper. Mainly serves replicators, deep understanders, and scrutinizers.

Acknowledgments

Optional section thanking non-author contributors or grants supporting the work. In double-blind papers, often added only in the camera-ready version.

Graphics

You bothered visualizing your data — make it show.

The Zen of Graphics

First, Convey the Main Message

Any addition clarifying other points is acceptable only if it doesn't cost the main message. Design figures so the primary insight is unavoidable.

Minimal is Understandable

Details take reader time, effort, and attention — all limited. Guide that effort to your priorities. Remove anything not conveying more information: lines, squares, extra text, bullets.

Pop-Up > Fast > Time-Consuming

• Pop-up: Understand it in one second — ideal, if this matches your message
• Fast: Quick to grasp — acceptable
• Time-consuming: Reader moves on — this is failure

Saliency Should Equal Importance

"Look at all the fonts — they should all be boringly the same. The one you change to be interesting should be the one you want people to pay attention to."

Imagine the Ideal Eye Path

Minimize unnecessary details. Keep related objects close. Make the eye path simple — no back-and-forth. Consider visualizing the path itself with arrows or shapes.

Practical Tips

• Bar plots: Put the target bar on the right (reading is left-to-right)
• Reduce text: Text requires many eye jumps; replace with visual solutions where possible
• Related objects should be close: Minimize distance between items that readers compare
• Color matching: Contrasting colors for readability; similar tones for ease. Use same colors across graphs for same meaning. Be consistent

Graphics Checklist

Captions

Start captions with a short claim — the interesting part first. The opening sentence signals to readers what they're about to see. No title needed; the caption serves that function.

LaTeX

Citations

\citep vs. \citet

• \citet — when referring to the paper as part of a sentence:
  "\citet{Choshen} showed that" → "Choshen (2053) showed that"
• \citep — default (parenthetical):
  "...the best guide \citep{Einst1991}" → "...the best guide (Einst1991)"

Colored Hyperlinks

\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\hypersetup{
    colorlinks,
    linkcolor={red!50!black},
    citecolor={blue!50!black},
    urlcolor={blue!80!black}
}

Cross-References

• Sections/captions: \ref{}
• Custom anchors: \hypertarget, \hyperlink
• Non-breaking space: Fig.~\ref{} or Table~\ref{}

Punctuation

• Quotation marks: ``word'' — not "word"
• Compound word dash: spin-off
• Range dash: from--to
• Punctuation dash: text---text

Shortening Commands

% Reduce paragraph by one line
\looseness=-1

% Penalize line breaks (prefer tighter spacing)
\linepenalty=1000

% Explicit vertical space (often disallowed by conferences)
\vspace{-0.5cm}

% Keep words on the same line
\mbox{must stay together}

Rebuttal

Reviewers are volunteers. Treat them accordingly.

Core Principles

Treat Rebuttal as Collaboration

Show You Listened Before Responding

Demonstrate understanding of the reviewer's concern before explaining your response. Briefly restate or paraphrase their point, then address it clearly.

"This simple act signals respect and careful reading, and it often encourages a more constructive reaction."

Write for Two Audiences: AC and Reviewer

The Area Chair (AC) will often be trying to assess whether the reviewer was fair. Position yourself appropriately — you are below in the hierarchy. Try not to tell someone they're wrong; gracefully provide context, clarify, or gently help them reach a better conclusion.

Hard Facts Are Most Convincing

If you only have a different opinion, they'll keep theirs. Conduct experiments showing what the reviewer wondered about. Refer clearly to where in the paper you did what they asked. Data beats words.

When Possible, Do Rather Than Debate

• Make the change already, share the core change
• Share an experiment result if small/timely
• Answer with facts/data rather than arguments
• If not, state clearly what you will change in the final version

Make It Skimmable

• State the important bottom line early
• Repeat the referred criticism briefly so the reviewer knows what you're addressing
• Keep each response short and clear
• Politely disagree, slightly correct, or simply agree

Collaboration in Writing

Reduce Overall Workload

Edit, Don't Just Comment

When noting something worth changing, it is usually better to rewrite than to leave a comment. This reduces overhead for the original author and research shows direct edits improve quality more reliably.

When Commenting Is Necessary

• When you don't know the answer or how to fix it
• When the paper is nearly ready for submission
• When changes involve strategic decisions beyond your knowledge of the work

Useful Words for Academic Writing

Expand your word arsenal with precise, powerful vocabulary.

Resources and Links

• How to Give a Research Talk — MIT
  Classic lecture on presenting academic research effectively
• How to Write a Great Research Paper — Simon Peyton Jones
  Microsoft Research — one of the most cited writing guides in CS
• How to Write a Great Research Proposal
  Also covers how to give a research talk
• How We Write Rebuttals — Devi Parikh
  Practical, battle-tested rebuttal strategies from a top AI researcher
• Rebuttal Notes — Maarten Sap
  Concise, principled guide to writing compelling rebuttals

About the Curator