technical article writing

TECHNICAL ARTICLE WRITING

04/12/23CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION

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WHY TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION

• Directs the flow of scientific and technical information from the labs to the different stakeholders.

• Helps in dissemination of new ideas, views and suggestions in the relevant technical fields at multiple level.

• Leads to unification between the activities of an individual or a work team towards a common technical work.

• Ensures free exchange of information and ideas

• Promotes and maintains technical awareness.


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WHAT is a technical communication•We can define technical communication as the flow of technical and scientific information and perception between various members of scientific or professional community.

•It includes all the methods, means, media and channels.

•Effective technical comm. Is a purposive symbolic communication, which helps in understanding of ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of the scientific, technical and natural phenomenon.


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WHAT is a technical article

• It is a written composition treating scientific or a technical subject distinctly.

• It is a systematic account of the result of some investigation, research, fieldwork and other activities.

• It explores one area of interest and presents an objective analysis and interpretation of facts, findings, inferences, suggestions, recommendations and suggestions and conclusions


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PURPOSE OF TECHNICAL ARTICLE

• To Inform

• To Instruct

• To Propose

• To recommend

• To Persuade


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Requirements•There are two requirements of effective technical comm.

• Subject competence

• Linguistic competence.

•Subject competence is the knowledge of the relevant subject and ability to analyze fact or information for clear presentation.

•As technical communication is the transfer of scientific and technical information and understanding from one person to another person and it deals with specific and technical subject matter.

•Technical subject matter includes any topic or subject that falls within the general field of science and technology.


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• Linguistic competence is the possession of appropriate language skills and the ability to present scientific facts and information clearly and objectively.

• It includes the ability to use appropriate devices to present scientific data.

NOTE: Lack of these skills may also lead to ineffective or incomplete communication.


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TYPES OF ARTICLES• Scientific Article

• Technical Article

• Research Paper


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Scientific Article

•Theoretical in the treatment of the subject. It is an attempt to bring out the research from the laboratory to the world. •The language may be technical but has to be made understood in simple words.

Technical Article

•Less theoretical in the treatment of subject. Concentrates on the practical aspects of the subject .•It relates the ideas that resulted from a research that can be used to improve the life and society.


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Research Paper

•It is a highly specific kind of writing generally addressed to a small body of people directly concerned with the object of that study.

•Not published in newspapers only in journals.

•A good research paper has a clear statement of the problem the paper is addressing, the proposed solution(s), and results achieved.

•It describes clearly what has been done before on the problem, and what is new.

•The goal of a paper is to describe novel technical results


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Scientific articles•Follows consistent format•Contains same major sections names may vary•Technical vocabulary, specialized terminology, and graphic aids are used.•Objective and factual.

General literary articles•No proper format is followed•General and simple words are used.•The discussions do not have a scientific basis and cannot be biased


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Features of technical articles:

Scientific Attitude

•It is the attitude of objectivity, impartiality and directness.

•Technical comm. is impartial, unemotional and objective.

•The attention of the writer is concentrated on the facts only.

Use of scientific and technical vocabulary


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General Guide lines

•Define the audience and the purpose

•Create a work plan to write the article

•Collect and evaluate necessary data.

•Examine the latest research on the topic.

•Prepare research notes

•Prepare a list of references and bibliography

•Develop an outline

•Write a rough draft

•Revise the document

•Finalize & write the final draft.


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Source material

•Scientific articles transfer new research and findings to other people.

•You should locate appropriate source material

•Sources may be magazines, journals, book, media, internet etc.


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The criteria for proper identification

•The area of your investigation

•Audience needs and expectations

•Background of your subject

•Focus of your result

•Purpose of your article

•Scope of your article


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Literature Review• Essential segment of any credible research• To keep yourself updated about the latest research• Conduct a literature review by browsing through

relevant magazines, journals or books.• It should be relevant and believable.

Topic sentence• The main idea.• It should be very effective as it enhance readability.• The rest of the sentences are an explanation or the

development of the idea contained in the topic sentence.


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More about technical article

•Explain with tangible examples.

•Realize that your reader is not an expert.

•Quote & note your sources. Make sure you create a

document that reveals sources that are authorities on the

matter and that are recognized in a field.

•Proofread your work, always.


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FOCUS on

•Clear statement of the problem, the proposed solution's,

and results.

•Describes what has been done before and what is new.

•Describe the results in sufficient details.

•Identifying the novel aspects and significance of the results.

•What improvements and impact do they suggest.


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TitleTitle should contain the idea of the paper/article.

•Avoid all but the most readily understood abbreviations.

•Avoid common phrases like "novel", "performance

evaluation" and "architecture”.

•Use adjectives that describe the distinctive features of your

work, e.g., reliable, scalable, high-performance, etc.


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Introduction•Introduction sets up my expectations for the rest of your paper•The introduction must motivate your work by pinpointing the problem you are addressing and then give an overview of your approach.•Introduction can be divided into three parts

Past and current status of the problem.What you propose to do.What can be expected as a result

•Repeating the abstract in the introduction is a waste of space.


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ABSTRACTIt is a stand alone entity

Parts of abstract

• Purpose of research

• Methodology

• Findings

• Recommendation and conclusion


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ABSTRACT

•Since the abstract will be used by search engines, be sure

that terms that identify your work (keywords) are found

there.

•Avoid use of "in this paper" in the abstract. What other

paper would you be talking about here?


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Structuring a Technical Article• Problem • Approach/Architecture• Methodology/Implementation/Realization• Finding/Result/Evaluation• Recommendation and conclusion/Future scope

•The body should contain sufficient motivation, with example scenarios, illustrating figures, followed by a crisp generic problem statement model, i.e., functionality, particularly, etc. •The paper may or may not include formalisms. General evaluations of your algorithm or architecture, e.g., material proving the algorithm go here, not in the evaluation section.


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• Architecture of proposed system(s) to achieve this, model should be more generic than your own peculiar implementation. Always include at least one figure.

• Realization: contains actual implementation details when implementing architecture isn't totally straightforward. Mention briefly implementation language, platform, location, dependencies on other packages and minimum resource usage if pertinent.

• Evaluation: How does it really work in practice? Provide real or simulated performance metrics, end-user studies, mention external technology adopters, if any, etc.


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Summary and Future Work • Focuses on the main result.• Gives the scope and areas for implementation.• Directs towards new direction or strengthens the

present hypothesis.

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Appendix • detailed protocol descriptions • proofs with more than two lines • other low-level but important details


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While writing an article

•Write the problem section first.

•Then write the approach, result and recommendation sections.

•The conclusions comes next.

•Write the introduction last since it glosses the conclusions in one of the last paragraphs.

•Finally, write the abstract.

•Last, give your paper a title.


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Guidelines for Experimental Papers•Papers that introduce a new learning "setting" or type of application.

•Papers describing a new algorithm should be

• Clear

• Precise

• Comparable

• Performance measureable.

•Another useful way of describing an algorithm is to define the space of hypotheses that it searches when optimizing the performance measure.


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• Papers introducing a new algorithm should conduct experiments comparing to state-of-the-art algorithms for the same or similar problems.

• Unusual performance criteria should be carefully defined and justified.

• All experiments must include measures of uncertainty of the conclusions.

• These typically take the form of confidence intervals, statistical tests, or estimates of standard error.

• Proper experimental methodology should be employed.


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• Descriptions of the software and data sufficient to replicate the experiments must be included in the paper.

• Conclusions drawn from a series of experimental runs should be clearly stated. Graphical display of experimental data can be very effective.

• Supporting tables of exact numerical results from experiments should be provided in an appendix.

• Limitations of the algorithm should be described in detail.


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Conference Review Process for technical articles/papers•It is hard to generalize the review process for conferences, but operate according to these basic rules:

1. The paper is submitted to the technical program chair(s) mostly in PostScript or PDF formats.

2. The technical program chair assigns the paper to one or more technical program committee(TPC) members, also called expert committee.

The TPC member usually provides a review, but may also be asked to find between one and three reviewers who are not members of the TPC.


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Any good conference will strive to provide at least three reviews, however, since conferences operate under tight deadlines and not all reviewers deliver as promised.

3.The technical program chair then collects the reviews and sorts the papers according to their average review scores.

• The TPC (or, rather, the subset that can make the meeting), then meets in person or by phone conference.

• Then the paper is selected to be presented in the conference.

NOTE: The identity of this TPC member is kept secret.


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Graphic presentation of information

•Graphic aids help to simplify complex information•Graphics lend visual impact and condense large no. of information into a small space.•One picture is worth a thousand words.•Should choose the correct graphics depending on the nature of data, like graph, charts, etc.•Represented in logical way and should supplement information.


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Types of Graphics UsesTables Show numerical data and related

information

Graphs/line charts Show trends in data

Bar charts/diagrams

Show comparative data/relative magnitude

Flow diagrams Show the steps of a process

Flow charts Summarize complex processes

Tree diagrams Present classifications


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SOME EXAMPLES


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dollar value

123

Series1


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123

1

2


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123

23

24

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dollar value

date

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Series2

Series3

Series4


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Mixed with hot solution of caustic soda

Aluminum hydroxide dissolved in caustic soda

Bauxite crushed to powder

Solution pumped into large tanks for filtering impurities

With slow cooling,aluminium hydroxide settle out in the form of fine crystals

Crystals washed to remove caustic soda


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Flow charts

Vehicular pollution

Toxic fumes

CarbonMono oxide

Hydrocarbons

Reduction in oxygencarryingcapacityof blood

smog

Sickness/death

cancer


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TREE DIAGRAM

ROCKS

Igneous sedimentary Metamorphic

FineGrainedextrusive

Elastic Or

fragmental

Dynamothermal

dynamic

thermal

chemicalCoarsegrained


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Things to remember• Use strong verbs instead of lots of nouns and simple terms rather

than fancy-sounding ones. Examples: make assumption assume is a function of depends on is an illustration illustrates, shows is a requirement requires, need to Utilizes uses • Use hyphens for concatenated words: "end-to-end architecture",

"real-time operating system“.• Numbers ten or less are spelled out: "It consists of three fields", not

"3 fields". • Use. Eq. 7, not Equation (7).


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• Avoid in-line enumeration like: "Packets can get (a) lost, (b) stolen, (c) wet.“

• Brackets are always surrounded by a space:• "The experiment(Fig. 7)shows" is wrong;

• "The experiment (Fig. 7) shows" is correct

• Never start a sentence with "and".• Don't use colons (:) in mid-sentence.• Don't start sentences with "That's because". • "i.e." and "e.g." are always followed by a comma.• "respectively" is preceded by a comma, as in "The light bulbs

lasted 10 and 100 days, respectively."


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Footnotes•A footnote is a note of reference or comment written at the end of the page.

It serves the following purposes:

•Indicates the source of a fact, opinion or quotation

•Explains unfamiliar or difficult terms

•Elucidates, elaborates or validates an idea or point

•Provides additional data, makes acknowledgements

Method

•Name of the author [in normal order], book title, edition, location of publisher, publishing co. year of publication, page no.

•H.C.Perkin, Air Pollution: Its origin and control, New York: McGraw Hill,1974,pg.42-69

•S.P.Kumar,”Effects of air pollution", The Hindu, Jan 29,2002


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Bibliography

•It refers to a descriptive list of sources which have been consulted to write an article or a report.•It includes all the sources-books, journals, magazines, websites, articles etc.•Organized alphabetically listing the authors name in the reverse order.

Method

•Crystal, David. English as a global language. Cambridge; Cambridge university press,1997.•Hudson, Henry o. The Glass House. Washington; Prentice Hall,1948.


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THANKS AND GOOD LUCK


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technical article writing

Education

technical information

technical communication

flow of technical

technical awareness

technical vocabularycentre

technical subject matter

purpose of technical

features of technical