Striegel's Basic Guidelines for Writing Proper Academese

Over the years, I have edited numerous student papers in the area of networking. As our work tends to be less theoretical and more systems-oriented, there is a natural requirement of increasing verbosity, i.e. if you don't write it mathematically it needs to be written out in English. As a result, I have assembled a few basic guidelines for writing papers that can help students transition from normal casual writing to the more rigorous level of writing "academese."

In the following guidelines, I have included examples from actual student papers and noted simple revisions on how to fix the text to follow my basic guidelines. Keep in mind that the following text is in a casual discussion text, not what would properly be printed in a paper, i.e. there is conversational English and there is written English.

Guideline: Do not use pronouns

You know the pronouns I am talking about, it, they, etc. Pronouns are bad. Repeat after me. Pronouns are bad. References are often left dangling and papers feel simpler than the papers actually are. While clarity is a good thing, simplicity of prose in terms of vocabulary is not a substitute for elegance of structure. When you are referring to a noun, state exactly what you mean rather than potentially creating an ambiguous reference. Possessive pronouns are acceptable but should be used sparingly.

Note that this guideline is not a hard and fast rule. There are particular cases where appropriate but such cases are often few and far between.

Guideline: Do not use apostrophes

Apostrophes are another of my pet peeves in the text of students. Rather than trying to remember the location of apostrophes, simply reword the text.