A simple (incomplete) check-list for writing papers

Sachin Sapatnekar, University of Minnesota

Cosmetic..

Did you perform a spell-check?



"Dew knot trussed spell chequers to fined awl miss steaks."
Have you proofread the manuscript to look for simple errors? ("an" for "and", inadvertent "the the"'s, etc.)



Are all references correctly formatted? Check for spaces after commas and periods, existence of all info (page #, volume #, date etc. where applicable) on all references.



Have you fixed problems associated with listing references or drawn figures/tables that are never cited in the text?



Avoid the use of "don't," "can't," "won't," "it's" and most words with apostrophes. Rephrase the sentence, if necessary, to avoid apostrophes (e.g., change "the paper's thrust was..." to "the thrust of the paper was..")



Have you been consistent in capitalizing first letters of words in the title, section headings, references, etc.? Be consistent with listing titles as either

• The Meaning of Life
  (all important first letters are capitalized), or
• The meaning of life
  (only the first letter of the sentence is capitalized).




Do you have any orphaned headings? An orphaned heading appears when a section heading appears on one page, but the first line of the section is an the next page.



Did you find the deliberate mistake in the item above? [Did you find any other mistakes? If so, please email me. ]



If you are revising a copy that has been marked by your advisor.. have you really paid attention to all of the suggested changes? It is fine to ignore a suggested change for a good reason, but do not ignore suggestions out of sloppiness.



Did you use correct (and consistent) punctuation in all itemized lists? Did you check the accuracy of the numbers used before a list? An example of a sloppy list with two errors follows.
There are three types of mathematicians

• those who can count, and
• those who cannot

[The last item should end with a period since it is the end of a sentence.]
There is a factual error in the sentence too - we all know that mathematicians belong to the second category above - but let us ignore that for now :-).

Delving deeper..

• Did you understand the importance of each reference listed? Do not bank on the description of a reference in another paper; this often causes misunderstood concepts in that reference to propagate.
  
  
• Do your material and ideas flow logically?
  
  
• Are all terms defined before or just after they have been used?
  
  
• Have you explained the intuition behind your heuristics?
  
  
• Have you explained all tables and figures in the results section? It is not enough to create tables and figures and expect the reader to make sense of them. Highlight the main points and draw attention to what each table or figure shows.
  
  

Other sites..

• Strunk and White's ``The Elements of Style.''
• Resources for writing better.