1.
John Blake
Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
Hacks for academic writing

2.
Overview
02
Introduction
• Context, difficulties
• Academic discourse
Hacks
• Ten hacks

3.
Context
03
Institution
• 30% PhD / 70% MS
• 750/150 students;
• 70/30 balance (cn. vn. th. in.)
• Bi(part)lingual environment
Center
• 4 full-time faculty

4.
Difficulties identified
04
Key issues
• Accuracy
• Brevity
• Clarity
• Objectivity
• Formality
Copying and pasting
• Justifiable text recycling
• Plagiarism & patch writing

5.
Academic discourse
05
Community of practice
(Lave & Wenger, 1991)
• Periphery to core
• Rules – overt and covert
• Rejection & rewrites
• Mentorless meandering
Computer literacy
• Text editor functionality
• Online assistance

6.
1. Templates and versions
06
• Save as different versions
– e.g. v01. v02, v15 submitted, v18 shortened lit rev
• Use template
– Often provided by target publication
– Create your own template in your preferred text
editor
• Structure by percentage and words
– Overwriting vs underwriting
– Sections, sub-sections,
– paragraphs, sentences (topic, citation, explanation)

7.
2. Spell and grammar checkers
07
• Use spell and grammar checkers
• Be aware of false positives
– Grammarly (free version)
• 5-page short paper; 40/280 errors = FP
– MS Word users
• Ensure all document set in eng on jp OS.
• Tweak settings (F7 options/proofing/settings)
– users
• Add module or check on terminal or copypaste to MS
and ignore noise

8.
Grammarly
08

9.
Corpus-based error detector
09
Current url http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~johnb/ErrorDetector.html
From October 2016 http://www.u-aizu.ac.jp/~blake

10.
10

11.
3. Harnessing functionality
11
MS Word
• Use style tab
– e.g. normal, heading 1, etc.
– auto-formatting features, e.g. Table of contents, list of
figures
– especially for long documents, e.g. dissertations
• Track changes (ctrl + shift + e)
– Change tracking options
• Insert comment (ctrl + alt + m)
Web-based editing, e.g. Google docs
• Real time but fewer features

12.
Track changes
12

13.
Comments
13

14.
4. Colour text
14
Undergraduate essays – Structure focus
• Blue – topic sentence
• Red – citation
• Black – elaboration
Undergraduate essays – Citation focus
• Black – own text
• Red – long and short quotations
• Blue – paraphrases and summaries
Graduate academic papers, e.g.
• Red – conclusions
• Blue – premises
• Black – other

15.
Colour-coded essay
15
The objective of time management is to use our
limited time in a more effective and efficiency way
in order to achieve our goal. As ‘Mindtools’ (no
date) states, one of the main characteristic of time
management is to “concentrate on results, not on
being busy.” Some people, who have not well
managed their time, spend their all day time and
work very hard to do just a little and irrelevant
things. It may be due to lack of a well planning
and schedules. However, …

16.
5. Google Translate
16
en-de similar languages – high accuracy
en-jp dissimilar languages – low accuracy
Use statistical machine translation wisely
• phrases/clauses/sentences
• Back-translate to check accuracy
Use exact match Google search to validate
accuracy and suitability of translated text

17.
6. Building better sentences
• Step-by-step
– I mixed A with B in C.
• Predictive text
(statistical probability of next word)
• Wildcard missing word search
“This is * a banana”
 not, what, simply, me eating, just, how
• Thesaurus synonyms (shift + F7)
– activate receptive vocabulary
17

18.
Sentence build
18
1. I mixed chemical A with chemical B.
2. I mixed chemical A with chemical B in a XXXX.
3. Chemical A was mixed with chemical B in a XXXX.
4. Chemical A was mixed with chemical B in a XXXX
using a XXXXX
5. 60ml of chemical A was mixed with 40ml of
chemical B in a XXXXX using a XXXXX
6. 60ml of XXXXX was mixed with 40ml of XXXXX for
60 seconds in a XXXXX using a XXXXX
7. 60ml of XXXXX was mixed with 40ml of XXXXX at
a temperature of 45 degrees celcius for 60
seconds in a XXXXX using a XXXXX.

19.
Wildcard search
19
Search in Google
“This is * a banana”
Results
“This is not a banana”
“This is what a banana”
“This is simply a banana”
“This is me eating a banana”
“This is just a banana”
“This is how a banana”

20.
7. Abstraction
• Maximum meaning in fewest words
• Focus on processes and results not doers
• Temporarily relocate replaced text to footnote
Paragraph Sentence Phrase
20

21.
8. Generic integrity
• Check balance of word types
– Lexical profiler, e.g. lextutor.ca (Cobb, 1999-2016)
• e.g. General 65%, Academic 10%, off-list 25%
cf. General 88%, Academic 2%, off-list 10%
• Check readability
• Check thematic development
– Bananas are a type of fruit. A banana is a popular..
– The banana is sweet. The sweetness stems from…
21

22.
Lexical profile via Lextutor.ca
22

23.
9. Citations
Quote
Paraphrase
Summary
23
• Consider using software,
e.g. Endnote
• Insert hyperlink to electronic
source (e.g. as footnote)
while working on paper
• Use colour to help
remember the stage of
citation

24.
10. Proofreading
• Plagiarism checker
– iThenticate, Turnitin, etc.
• Recruit lay reader
– Put ? if something is hard to understand
• Systematic error checking
– e.g. VAT for verbs. (voice, agreement, tense)
– e.g. Use find function for is & are to check S-V agreement
• Sleep-spaced reading
– Write  Sleep  Re-read
– If time is pressured, try biphasic or polyphasic sleep.
• Proof-listening
– Use text-to-speech engine to avoid screen-memory
confusion
24

25.
Any questions, comments or
suggestions?
johnb@jaist.ac.jp