1.
Dilum Bandara
Dilum.Bandara@uom.lk
Some slides extracted from Academic Writing by Liv Jonassen & Elizabeth
Tomchak, Robot Gordon Univerity and
Daniel Ringold (Senior Fellow, Fulbright)

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It is widely believed that
the climate is deteriorating.
It is claimed that this
process has been
continuing for nearly 100
years. This belief appears
to be supported by
McKinley (1997), who
shows a 55% increase in
the frequency of severe
winter gales since 1905
hey! :-) wots up? u
going 2 da party
2night? hope 2 c u
there. have a gud
day!! :P
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4.
Precise
Impersonal
(Semi)formal
No contractions
Objective
Complete sentences
General
Personal
Informal
Contractions
Subjective (opinions)
Fragments
Emotions
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5.
Substance of academic writing must be
based on solid evidence & logical analysis,
& presented as a concise, accurate
argument
Academic writing can allow you to present
your argument & analysis accurately &
concisely
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6.
Language has to be clear, concise, &
neutral
Material is to be well researched
Appropriate theories should be used
It should be supported by relevant
literature
All literature should be correctly
acknowledged
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7.
Aim for precision
• Don’t use unnecessary words or waffle
• Get straight to the point
• Make every word count
If there is any uncertainty about a particular
point, use cautious language
• e.g., ‘may’, ‘might’, ‘could’, ‘potentially’
Unless you are a confident writer, best to avoid
over-long sentences
• Aim for a mixture of long & short sentences for variation
& rhythm
Avoid repeating same words
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8.
Avoid overly elaborate language
• Use simple words in place of obscure words that
have same meaning
• Use of overly elaborate language can make your
writing seem pretentious
• Use technical language & words specific to your
discipline where appropriate
Avoid vague terms
• “A nice addition”, “very high overhead”, “ever-large
data sets”
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9.
During last decade, large-scale scientific computing plays
a major role in High Performance Computing (HPC). The
absolute objective of today’s technology is to evaluate
ever-large data sets and run ever-larger simulations has
diverted the scale of high performance computers from
thousand to many thousands of processors. As its widest
classification, HPC is describe as which facilitate difficult
computer applications that handle large-scale data sets
and experience parallelism on a large scale.
Since computational power is incredibly expansion,
becoming faster, more creative and more commercial
during the time, the user requirements and application
capacity is also increases
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10.
Typical write up
• A lot of people think that the weather is getting worse.
They say that this has been going on for quite a long
time. I think that they are right. Research shows that we
now get storms, etc. all the time.
Revised Version
• It is widely believed that the climate is deteriorating. It is
claimed that this process has been continuing for nearly
100 years. This belief appears to be supported by
McKinley (1997), who shows a 55% increase in the
frequency of severe winter gales since 1905.
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11.
Sadly, serious crime like murder is going up.
• Serious crime, such as murder, is increasing.
You can’t always trust the numbers in that report.
• The figures in that report are not reliable.
The second thing is that most kids in that district
will become criminals.
• The second factor is that the majority of children in that
district may become criminals.
A few years ago they allowed women to vote.
• Women were allowed to vote in 1994.
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12.
Readers are overloaded with too much to
read
• Too many tools suggesting them what to read
Tell key ideas early
• Readers loose interest, if they can’t find key ideas
within first few sentences
Use your limited word budget to get most
attention
• Cut all unneeded words
• Let most sentences be short & simple
• Simplicity wins
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A direction to a journal article, book, passage, etc.,
where certain information may be found
An indication of author(s), work, page, etc., to be
looked at or consulted
• Can be a book, journal article, newspaper, website,
blog, diagram, or any other source
• How it looks depends on referencing style you are using
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To inform reader of sources of direct
quotations, data, diagrams, etc.
When paraphrasing another author’s
ideas
When describing a theory or model
associated with a particular author
To give weight & credibility to your
argument
• As supporting evidence
To avoid charges of plagiarism
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“The action or practice of taking someone
else's work, idea, etc., & passing it off as
one's own; literary theft”
- Oxford English Dictionary, 2008
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Your own ideas & observations
Common knowledge
• Things that are referenced in the past may
become common knowledge with time
e.g., theory of relativity, Newtown's laws
Historical overviews
Conclusions
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Key idea is to be consistent within an
article/paper & across articles/papers
Author-Date
• Author & year of publication inserted in brackets after
a quote or paraphrase
• Usually reference list at end of your article/paper
arranged alphabetically by author
Numerical
• Number each quote or paraphrase in the text
• Usually reference list at end of the article/paper with
references in numerical order
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….. [Perera and Peter; 2013]
According to Perera and Peter [2013]…
….. [Perera and Peter; 2012a]
….. [Perera and Peter; 2012b]
…. [12]
According to Perera et al. [12] …
Based on [2-5] we also …
[2, 3, 4, 5]
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Numerical
• IEEE
Save space on manuscript
Author/Date
• ACM
• Harvard
• Chicago
• MLA (Modern Language Association) style
Journals & conferences may slightly alter a
common style to save space
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21.
Conference
• Author names, “Paper Title”, Conference Name, Month & Year,
Pages
• I. Baumgart, B. Heep, and S. Krause, “OverSim: A Flexible Overlay
Network Simulation Framework,” In Proc. 10th Global Internet Symp.,
May 2007, pp. 79-84.
Journal
• Author names, “Paper Title”, Journal Name, Volume, No, Year,
Pages
• W. Rao, L. Chen, A.W.-C. Fu, and G. Wang, “Optimal Resource
Placement in Structured Peer-to-Peer Networks,” IEEE Trans.
Parallel and Distrib. Syst., vol. 21, no. 7, July 2010
• D. McLaughlin et al., “Short-Wavelength Technology and the
Potential for Distributed Networks of Small Radar Systems,” Bull.
Amer. Meteor. Soc., vol. 90, Dec. 2009, pp. 1797–1817.
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22.
Zotero – https://www.zotero.org/
• Web-browser based, free
Mendeley - http://www.mendeley.com
• Web & desktop based, partly free, automatically
pull references from paper
EndNote
• Application, commercial,
• Many university libraries provide access
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