Formatting & Style Guidance
Thomas J. Kennedy
Throughout your time as a student you have written in various styles and formats. In CS 411W all writing will be Technical Writing in modified APA Format. There will be courses specific rules that supersede (more aptly, extend) both the rules of Technical Writing and APA Style.
1 No First Person
Take note of the first paragraph–ignoring the first sentence. Did you notice the lack of first and second person? All your writing in this course–with a few notable exceptions–will be in third person. This means no use of:
- I
- my
- our
- ours
in your Labs (i.e., Technical Papers).
2 No Contractions
Have you ever wondered about my writing style–beyond some of my favored archaic grammatical constructs and somewhat obnoxious diction? Much of my style comes from CS 411W. Many of my habits come from when I was an undergrad in CS 411W. Most of my habits come from teaching CS 411W. A few quirks come from my code explanation emails (with which most are familiar).
My main quirk is my abhorrence of contractions. This include all the contractions we use in our daily lives:
- I’ll
- We’re
- They’re
- It’s
- How’re
- You’re
Of course, they’re and you’re are also homophones. I can not fathom how so many people lackadaisically use:
they’re, their, and there
or
you’re and your
interchangeably.
3 Wrong Word
The most common mistake writers make is writing the wrong work. For a while I would write gambit instead of gamut. While the former–when capitalized–is my favourite non-Wolverine X-Men character, it (i.e., gambit) has an entirely different meaning.
One of the most common mistakes is except vs accept. Of course, I am a smart aleck. I like to talk about how one can effect a change in study habits–i.e., reduce Procrastinatory Lackadaisical Brinkmanship. My use here is perfectly correct.
Consider two sentences:
His shenanigans affected the group’s decision to order pizza.
and
His shenanigans effected the group’s decision to order pizza.
Both sentences are perfectly valid. However, the change of affected to effected fundamentally changes the meaning. In the first sentence someone’s tomfoolery (tomfoolery and shenanigans are synonyms) influenced the decision to order pizza. It was one part of a larger decision–maybe a small part.
The word effect (in the second sentence) changes the meaning. In this case, the tomfoolery was the fundamental factor in the group’s decision.
4 Too Many Words (Verbosity)
As Computer Scientists we tend to think more output is better. This follows directly from out use of debugging output–which should always be written to standard error. We must break this habit.
The most common example of wordiness is the phrase in order to. I very seldom see a case where a simple to is not appropriate.
5 Latin Phrases
If you have had me before, I can all but guarantee you have heard one of my rants on i.e.,; e.g.,; alumni; or alumnus. I will leave Latin Discussions as a topic of interest for another time…
6 Should vs Must
If you have had me before, I can all but guarantee you have heard one of my lectures on should vs must. I will leave more detailed discussions as a topic of interest for another time…
7 Formatting Rules
All your writing must have 1-inch margins. Submit PDFs of your work. PDFs guarantee that formatting (e.g., margins) are not affected by how the document is viewed (unlike docx).
Make sure that your headings are all the same font face and font size as all other text. If you are using Word, LaTeX, Google Docs, or LibreOffice, do not rely on the default settings.
8 Not Comprehensive
We are not done with this discussion. We will revisit this document throughout the semester:
- We will revisit existing sections.
- We will add new sections.