Academic Writing

Academic Writing

Core creed: We write for our audience, not for ourselves. Every rule below serves one goal — minimize the reader's effort and the chance of misinterpretation. "Do not write so that you can be understood; write so that you cannot be misunderstood." (Epictetus)

How to use this skill

1. Identify the task type, then read the matching reference file(s) before drafting or editing:

   Task	Read
   Plan/draft a paper; fix title, abstract, intro, or any section	references/structure.md
   Edit prose: paragraphs, sentences, word choice, voice, tense	references/style.md
   Create/critique figures, tables, equations, captions	references/figures-tables.md
   Revise a full draft; pre-submission check; citations/references	references/revision-submission.md
   Write a referee report; respond to reviewers; rejection; authorship/ethics; ESL strategy	references/peer-review.md
   Conference abstract, slides, talk delivery, poster, Q&A, media	references/presentations.md
   Word-level lookup: redundant phrases, weak words, misused terms, commas/hyphens/dashes	references/word-usage.md

2. When editing someone's text, work top-down through the writing/editing funnel (below), and show before → after pairs with a one-line reason for each change, so the author learns the principle, not just the fix.

3. When reviewing or critiquing, use the feedback sandwich (positives → specific criticisms with evidence and suggested rewrite → encouragement) and separate "needed for clarity" from "personal style preference".

The writing/editing funnel (always work top-down)

Like a weather forecaster analyzing planetary scale before mesoscale, fix the largest scale first — polishing sentences in a paragraph that will be deleted or moved is wasted work:

1. Organization — sections, order of argument, one purpose per document
2. Paragraphs — one theme each, topic sentence, coherence between them
3. Sentences — concision, precision, active verbs, parallel structure
4. Words — exact word, no redundancy; spelling, punctuation

Then apply CPR at each level: Concision (trim) → Precision (clarify) → Revision (sharpen transitions and coherence).

Ten load-bearing principles

1. Readers are nonlinear. Most read only title → abstract → figures → conclusions. Put your strongest writing there. The text and the figures should each tell the whole story independently.
2. Introduction = context → problem (the hook: a conflict, gap, paradox) → response. Include one explicit sentence: "The purpose of this paper is to …". Avoid opening with a resounding banality everyone already knows.
3. Logical order of argument: data → results → interpretation → inference → speculation. Present evidence before the controversial claim; label speculation explicitly ("We speculate that …").
4. One paragraph, one theme. Coherence via repetition of key words, enumeration (First, Second — not Firstly), and transition words. Put old information at the start of a sentence (topic position), the news to stress at the end (stress position), and chain them: stress of one sentence → topic of the next. Test: reading only the first and last sentence of every paragraph should still make sense.
5. Prefer active voice and action verbs; passive is fine when the agent is unknown/irrelevant, in methods/abstracts, or to keep the paragraph's key word in topic/stress position. Un-nominalize: "perform a comparison" → "compare"; "was found to be" → "was".
6. Concision is interpreted as intelligence. Delete words that add no meaning ("it should be noted that", "in order to", "due to the fact that"). Applying sentence-level rules typically shortens drafts ~20%.
7. Precision over vagueness. Replace weak nouns (factor, role, nature, situation, dynamics) and empty modifiers (very, interesting, obviously, recently) with specifics. Fix unclear "this/it" by adding a noun. Complete every comparison ("higher than that of the cloudy air"). Keep modifiers next to what they modify.
8. Honesty builds credibility. State assumptions, limitations, and alternative explanations yourself — reviewers will find them anyway. Never oversimplify a model–observation comparison as "remarkably similar"; describe both agreement and disagreement, then argue why it suffices.
9. Figures earn their place. "The fool collects facts; the wise man selects them." Minimum figures to tell the story; publication-quality ≠ software default; every element annotated, self-contained, legible at journal size; discuss the obvious feature first, then anomalies.
10. Revision is the job. Good authors make dozens of passes. Read aloud; edit on paper; read backward; keep a personal list of your recurring weaknesses and search for them. Done when < 1 minor change per page.

Interaction defaults

• If the user's target journal, audience, or length limit is unknown and it materially affects advice (e.g., abstract limits, reference style, first person policy), ask once; otherwise assume a standard peer-reviewed journal (~250-word abstract, author–date citations).
• The book's examples come from atmospheric science; the principles are field-general. Adapt domain examples to the user's field.
• For ESL authors (including Chinese-speaking users), explain why each edit is made, keep explanations in the user's language when they write in Chinese, but keep the manuscript text itself in English. Encourage a personal "word bank" of good expressions and a weakness list.
• Kurt Vonnegut's summary, when in doubt: find a subject you care about; do not ramble; keep it simple; have the guts to cut; sound like yourself; say what you mean to say; pity the readers.