Academic Writing Skill

Use this skill when writing or editing academic content for software engineering and machine learning conferences.

Conservative Editing Philosophy

Principle: Minimal intervention. Only change what is actually problematic. The author’s voice and intentional choices take precedence over style preferences.

Before making any change, ask:

1. Is this actually wrong, or just different from my preference?
2. Could this be an intentional stylistic choice?
3. Does this change improve clarity, or just impose a different style?

Preserve author intent:

• Keep word choices the author uses consistently (e.g., “merely”, “significantly”)
• Keep structural patterns the author has established
• Keep rhetorical devices like strategic repetition

Strategic repetition is valid. Repetition for emphasis differs from redundancy:

• Keep: Repeating a key thesis statement in both the response intro and the quoted paper text (reinforces the main point)
• Keep: Parallel structure that repeats phrases for rhetorical effect
• Remove: Saying the same thing twice with no added emphasis or clarity

Workflow Behavior

1. Scope the request: Identify what specific issues exist in the text. Do not invent problems.
2. Categorize issues: Separate actual errors (grammar, unclear meaning) from style preferences
3. Present minimal changes: Only propose changes for actual issues, not style preferences
4. Preserve author choices: If something could be intentional, assume it is
5. Ask before restructuring: For structural changes, ask: “Would you like me to restructure X, or keep the current structure?”
6. Apply edits only when approved

Voice and Sentence Structure

Use active voice (80%+ of sentences):

• “We propose…” / “We show…” / “We evaluate…”
• “Our method achieves…” / “[METHOD] identifies…”

Reserve passive voice for:

• Established facts: “Root cause analysis is widely used…”
• Method descriptions: “The anomaly score is computed as…”
• Emphasizing results over actors: “A 15% improvement was observed…”

Sentence length:

• Short sentences for key claims: “This approach fails when the graph is unknown.”
• Longer sentences for technical explanations with embedded clauses
• Split run-on sentences only when they impede comprehension

Abstract Structure (6 Parts)

1. Problem importance (1-2 sentences): Why this matters
2. Current limitations (1-2 sentences): What existing methods lack
3. Key insight (1 sentence): Core observation or reformulation
4. Proposed solution (1-2 sentences): Method name and approach
5. Results (1-2 sentences): Specific metrics (percentages, speedups)
6. Availability (optional): Code/data links

Introduction Structure (10 Paragraphs)

1. Motivation: Why the problem matters, broad applications
2. Current state: What exists, with citations
3. Gap identification: Limitations of existing work
4. Deeper analysis: Why the gap exists (technical reasons)
5. Related approaches: What others have tried, why insufficient
6. Proposed direction: High-level idea before technical details
7. Technical solution: Method introduction with key components
8. Challenges addressed: Specific improvements over prior work
9. Results summary: Key metrics and comparisons
10. Contributions: Bulleted list (3-4 items), each starting with action verb

Claim Presentation

For contributions:

• “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first…”
• “We make the following contributions:”
• “Our key insight is that…”

For results (use specific numbers):

• “[METHOD] achieves 67% Top-1 accuracy, a 253% improvement over…”
• “Our method requires only 8ms per diagnosis, 9,700x faster than…”

For theoretical claims:

• “We show that…” / “We prove that…” / “We demonstrate that…”

Hedging Language (Calibrated Uncertainty)

Use hedging for:

• Speculation beyond direct evidence
• Generalizations beyond experimental scope
• Theoretical implications not fully proven

Transition Phrases

Mathematical Writing

Before equations: Provide context

• “The anomaly score is defined as:”
• “We compute the ranking function using:”

After equations: Define variables immediately

• “where $S^I_c$ denotes the internal score and $S^E_c$ the external score.”

References: Use Eq.~\ref{eq:name} or Equation~\ref{eq:name}

Displayed equations: Use for important formulas that will be referenced.

Citations

Integrate naturally:

• “Recent work on causal discovery~\cite{pearl2009} has shown…”
• “Following~\cite{budhathoki2022}, we define…”

Group by topic:

• “…has been explored in microservices~\cite{a,b,c} and cloud systems~\cite{d,e}.”

Citation placement: Make clear what is being cited

• Good: “Prior work using mean and standard deviation~\cite{Li2022Circa} can degrade…”
• Bad: “We prefer median over mean~\cite{Li2022Circa}…” (unclear if citing or critiquing)

Figures and Tables

Pre-reference: Explain what to look for

• “To evaluate scalability, we measure runtime across dataset sizes.”

Reference format:

• “Table~\ref{tab:results}” / “Figure~\ref{fig:overview}”
• “As shown in Figure~\ref{fig:overview}…”

Post-reference: Interpret the data

• “From Table~\ref{tab:results}, we observe that [METHOD] consistently outperforms…”

Captions: Self-contained, describe what is shown and key takeaway

Terminology Conventions

• Acronyms: Introduce once with full form: “Root Cause Analysis (RCA)”
• After introduction: Use acronym only: “RCA”
• Novel concepts: Use quotes on first use: ‘internal properties’, ‘external properties’
• Consistency: Choose one term and use it throughout (not alternating synonyms)
• Variable introduction: “Let $x$ denote…” then use $x$ consistently

Phrases to Use

• “We propose…” / “We introduce…”
• “Our key observation is that…” / “Our key insight is that…”
• “To address this challenge, we…”
• “We evaluate on…” / “We conduct experiments on…”
• “Results demonstrate that…” / “Our findings show that…”
• “Compared to [baseline], our method…”
• “Let $x$ denote…” (for variable introduction)

Phrases to Avoid

• “Obviously” / “Clearly” / “It is easy to see” (condescending)
• “Very” / “Really” / “Extremely” (vague intensifiers)
• “We believe” (use “We hypothesize” or “We conjecture” for speculation)
• “Proves” for empirical results (use “demonstrates” or “shows”)
• “Novel” / “Innovative” without substantiation
• First person singular “I” (use “we” even for single author)

Punctuation Guidelines

Prefer avoiding when possible, but do not mechanically replace:

• Em-dashes (---): Often better as commas or separate sentences, but acceptable for strong parenthetical emphasis
• Semicolons: Often better as separate sentences, but acceptable for closely related independent clauses
• Colons in prose: Reserve primarily for lists, definitions, and mathematical notation

Common Revision Patterns

Apply these only when they improve clarity, not mechanically: