Category Archives: writing

Abbrev.

A zoo of Latinistic abbreviations have crept into academic English: ‘e.g.’, ‘i.e.’, ‘cf.’, ‘viz.’, ‘ibid.’, ‘op. cit.’, ‘n.b.’, ‘et al.’ They are frequently mispunctuated. Most commonly sighted are ‘eg.’, ‘ibid’, ‘et. al.’, even ‘et. al’. They are frequently misused: ‘cf.’ … Continue reading

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Why the serial comma helps, and why it’s not sufficient

I came across the following perfect example of the importance of the serial comma, in a ProPublica article describing a problematic data leak: The story prompted a leak investigation. The FBI sought to obtain my phone records and those of Jane Perlez, the Times bureau … Continue reading

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Running on parentheticals

A common source of run-on sentences is the inclusion of a parenthetical full sentence at the end of another sentence, for instance, This is an example (there may be others). This construction is always wrong. Separate the two sentences, as … Continue reading

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That/which

For a while, I’ve been meaning to comment on the “that”/”which” controversy, the claim that “which” should not be used with restrictive relative clauses, nor “that” for nonrestrictive. From a linguistic point of view, it seems clear that this view … Continue reading

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Three styles for writing a paper

Different people have different styles for overall organization of a technical paper. There is the “continental” style, in which one states the solution with as little introduction or motivation as possible, sometimes not even saying what the problem was. Papers … Continue reading

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James Pryor’s Guidelines

I’ve just discovered James Pryor’s “Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper”. Despite the ostensible limited goal of the guidelines, they are much more broadly applicable than just to philosophy papers. I especially like the characterization of readers as “lazy, stupid, and … Continue reading

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Running on howevers

People seem to fall prey to adverbials like “however” and “rather” seducing them into running on sentences. This type of approach has been used in previous models, however, the presented algorithm adopts a different foundation. But these words are not … Continue reading

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In email, neatness counts

Email messages should be treated as personal letters. You wouldn’t write a handwritten letter with misspellings, would you? Or a typewritten letter in which you didn’t bother to use the shift key? Then you shouldn’t do that in an email. … Continue reading

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Recursion

To recurse is to curse again, not an activity that an academic, or an algorithm for that matter, should engage in. When a process is repeated or is subject to recursion, it is said to recur.

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Epicene pronouns

The use of the pronoun “he” as a bound pronoun of neutral gender is problematic on two grounds. First, its use is blatantly sexist (although the sexism is of a historical nature, so that those who continue to use “he” … Continue reading

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