Technical Article Writing

• Definition
• We can define technical communication as the flow of
technical and scientific information and perception
between various members of scientific or professional
community.
• It may involve anything from the description of a
computer microchip to an analysis of Einstein's theory of
relativity.
• It includes all the methods, means, media and channels
used for the transfer of technical information.
• Effective technical comm. Is a purposive symbolic
interchange, which results in a better understanding of
scientific and technical subjects and ‘what’, ‘why’ and
‘how’ of the natural phenomenon.
• Requirements
• There are two requirements of effective technical comm.
Subject competence and linguistic competence.
• Subject competence is the knowledge of the relevant
subject and ability to analyze fact or information for clear
presentation.
• As technical communication is the transfer of scientific
and technical information and understanding from one
person to another person and it deals with specific and
technical subject matter.
• Technical subject matter includes any topic or subject
that falls within the general field of science and
technology.
• Linguistic competence, is the possession of appropriate
language skills and the ability to present scientific facts
and information clearly and objectively.
• It includes the ability to use appropriate devices to
present scientific data.
• Lack of these skills may also lead to ineffective or
incomplete communication.
 Technical Communication
• Directs the flow of scientific and technical information
and knowledge for the guidance of individuals in their
activities.
• Helps in dissemination of new ideas, views and
suggestions in the relevant technical fields
• Leads to unification between the activities of individuals
as a work team, towards achievement of common
professional or organizational goals.
• Ensures free exchange of information and ideas
• Promotes maintenance of technical and professional
relations.
 Technical Articles
• It is a written composition treating scientific
or a technical subject distinctly .
• It is a systematic account of the result of
some investigation, research, fieldwork
and other activities.
• It explores one area of interest and
presents an objective analysis and
interpretation of facts, findings, inferences,
suggestions, recommendations and
suggestions and conclusions
• Scientific Article
• Theoretical in the treatment of the subject. It is an attempt to bring
out the research from the laboratory to the whole world. The
language may be technical but has to be made understood in simple
words.
• Technical Article
• Less theoretical in the treatment of subject. Concentrates on the
practical aspects of the subject .It relates the ideas that resulted
from a research and can be used to improve the life style of
humans.
• Research Paper
• It is a highly specific kind of writing generally addressed to a small
body of people directly concerned with the object of that study. Not
published in newspapers only in journals.
• Features of technical articles:
• Scientific Attitude
• It is the attitude of objectivity, impartiality and directness.
Technical comm. is impartial, unemotional and objective.
• The attention of the writer is concentrated on the facts
only.
• Use of scientific and technical vocabulary
• Scientific articles
• Follows consistent format
• Contains same major sections, names may vary
• Technical vocabulary, specialized terminology, and
graphic aids are used.
• Objective and factual.
• General literary articles
• No proper format is followed
• General and simple words are used.
• The discussions do not have a scientific basis and
cannot be biased
• General Guide lines
• Define the audience and the purpose
• Create a work plan to write the article
• Collect & evaluate all necessary data.
• Examine the latest research related to the topic.
• Prepare research notes
• Prepare a list of references and bibliography
• Develop an outline
• Write a rough draft
• Revise the document
• Finalize & write the final draft.
• Source material
• Scientific articles transfer new research and findings to
other people.
• You should locate appropriate source material
• Sources may be magazines, journals, book, media,
internet etc.
• The criteria for proper identification
• The area of your investigation
• Audience needs and expectations
• Background of your subject
• Focus of your result
• Purpose of your article
• Scope of your article
• Literature Review
• Essential segment of any credible research
• To keep yourself updated about the latest research
• Conduct a literature review by browsing through relevant
magazines, journals or books.
• Topic sentence
• The main idea.
• It should be very effective as it enhance readability.
• The rest of the sentences are an explanation or the
development of the idea contained in the topic sentence.
• Graphic presentation of information
• Graphic aids help to simplify complex information
• Used when words are not suitable to convey information.
• Graphics lend visual impact and condense large no. of
information into a small space.
• One picture is worth a thousand words.
• Should choose the correct graphics to represent your
data, it depends on the nature of data.
• Deciding what kind of tables, figure, chart or diagram
would best express the data.
• Use graphic techniques to supplement information
• Organize graphic presentation in a logical way.
• A good technical article/paper has a clear
statement of the problem the paper is
addressing, the proposed solution's, and results
achieved. It describes clearly what has been
done before on the problem, and what is new
• A paper should focus on
• describing the results in sufficient details to
establish their validity;
• identifying the novel aspects of the results, i.e.,
what new knowledge is reported and what
makes it non-obvious;
• identifying the significance of the results: what
improvements and impact do they suggest.
• Introduction
• Avoid stock and cliché phrases such as "recent
advances in XYZ" or anything alluding to the growth of
the Internet.
• Be sure that the introduction lets the reader know what
this paper is about, not just how important your
general area of research is. Readers won't stick with
you for three pages to find out what you are talking
about.
• The introduction must motivate your work by
pinpointing the problem you are addressing and then
give an overview of your approach and/or
contributions (and perhaps even a general description
of your results). In this way, the intro sets up my
expectations for the rest of your paper -- it provides
the context, and a preview.
• Repeating the abstract in the introduction is a waste of
space.
• Title
• Avoid all but the most readily understood
abbreviations.
• Avoid common phrases like "novel",
"performance evaluation" and "architecture",
since almost every paper does a performance
evaluation of some architecture and it better be
novel.
• Use adjectives that describe the distinctive
features of your work, e.g., reliable, scalable,
high-performance, robust, low-complexity, or
low-cost.
• Abstract
• Avoid use of "in this paper" in the abstract. What other
paper would you be talking about here?
• Avoid general motivation in the abstract. You do not
have to justify the importance of the Internet
• Highlight not just the problem, but also the principal
results. Many people read abstracts and then decide
whether to bother with the rest of the paper.
• Since the abstract will be used by search engines, be
sure that terms that identify your work are found there.
In particular, the name of any protocol or system
developed and the general area ("quality of service",
"protocol verification", "service creation environment")
should be contained in the abstract.
• Body of paper
• problem
• approach, architecture
• results
• The body should contain sufficient motivation,
with at least one example scenario, preferably
two, with illustrating figures, followed by a crisp
generic problem statement model, i.e.,
functionality, particularly emphasizing "new"
functionality.
• The paper may or may not include formalisms.
General evaluations of your algorithm or
architecture, e.g., material proving the algorithm
go here, not in the evaluation section.
• Architecture of proposed system(s) to achieve
this, model should be more generic than your
own peculiar implementation. Always include at
least one figure.
• Realization: contains actual implementation
details when implementing architecture isn't
totally straightforward. Mention briefly
implementation language, platform, location,
dependencies on other packages and minimum
resource usage if pertinent.
• Evaluation: How does it really work in practice?
Provide real or simulated performance metrics,
end-user studies, mention external technology
adoptors, if any, etc.
– Related work, if not done at the beginning
– Summary and Future Work
• often repeats the main result
– Acknowledgements
– Bibliography
– Appendix (to be cut first if forced to):
• detailed protocol descriptions
• proofs with more than two lines
• other low-level but important details
• It is recommended that you write the approach
and results sections first, which go together.
• Then problem section, if it is separate from the
introduction.
• Then the conclusions, then the intro.
• Write the intro last since it glosses the
conclusions in one of the last paragraphs.
• Finally, write the abstract.
• Last, give your paper a title.
• Guidelines for Experimental Papers
• Papers that introduce a new learning "setting" or type
of application should justify the relevance and
importance of this setting, for example, based on its
utility in applications
• Papers describing a new algorithm should be clear,
precise, and written in a way that allows the reader to
compare the algorithm to other algorithms.
• A good way to describe a new algorithm is to make
this performance measure explicit.
• Another useful way of describing an algorithm is to
define the space of hypotheses that it searches when
optimizing the performance measure.
• Papers introducing a new algorithm should
conduct experiments comparing it to state-of-
the-art algorithms for the same or similar
problems.
• Unusual performance criteria should be
carefully defined and justified.
• All experiments must include measures of
uncertainty of the conclusions.
• These typically take the form of confidence
intervals, statistical tests, or estimates of
standard error.
• Proper experimental methodology should be
employed.
• Descriptions of the software and data sufficient
to replicate the experiments must be included in
the paper.
• Conclusions drawn from a series of
experimental runs should be clearly stated.
Graphical display of experimental data can be
very effective.
• Supporting tables of exact numerical results
from experiments should be provided in an
appendix.
• Limitations of the algorithm should be described
in detail.
• The Conference Review Process
• It is hard to generalize the review process for
conferences, but most reputable conferences operate
according to these basic rules:
• The paper is submitted to the technical program
chair(s). Many current conferences require electronic
submission, in either PostScript or PDF formats,
occasionally in Word.
• The technical program chair assigns the paper to one
or more technical program committee members,
hopefully experts in their field. The identity of this TPC
member is kept secret.
• The TPC member usually provides a review, but may
also be asked to find between one and three
reviewers who are not members of the TPC.
• They may be colleagues of the reviewer at the same
institution, his or her graduate students or somebody
listed in the references.
• Any good conference will strive to provide at least
three reviews, however, since conferences operate
under tight deadlines and not all reviewers deliver as
promised, it is not uncommon that you receive only
two reviews.
• The technical program chair then collects the reviews
and sorts the papers according to their average review
scores.
• The TPC (or, rather, the subset that can make the
meeting), then meets in person or by phone
conference.
• Then the paper is selected to be presented in the
conference.
Types of Uses
Graphics
Tables Show numerical data and related
information
Graphs/line Show trends in data
charts
Bar Show comparative data/relative
charts/diagrams magnitude
Flow diagrams Show the steps of a process

Flow charts Summarize complex processes

Tree diagrams Present classifications

Forms of Crude oil, natural gas, asphalt,gilsonite
petroleum

Occurrence Found in sedimentary rocks of the

earths crust as a gas,liquid,semi-solid or
solid
Properties Crude oil, a mixture of different
compounds, boils at different
temperature
Uses As a source o energy, in the
manufacture of synthetic fibers and
rubber, plastic, paints, fertilizers and
soaps
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Solution pumped into large tanks for filtering impurities

With slow cooling,aluminium hydroxide settle out in the form of fine crystals

Crystals washed to remove caustic soda

Flow charts
Reduction
in oxygen Sickness/
Vehicular Toxic Carbon carrying death
pollution fumes Mono oxide capacity
of blood
Hydro
carbons smog

cancer
 Tree diagram
ROCKS

Igneous sedimentary Metamorphic

Fine Elastic Dynamo

Grained Or thermal
extrusive fragmental

dynamic
Coarse chemical
grained
thermal
• Footnotes
• A footnote is a note of reference or comment written at the
end of the page.
• It serves the following purposes:
• Indicates the source of a fact, opinion or quotation
• Explains unfamiliar or difficult terms
• Elucidates, elaborates or validates an idea or point
• Provides additional data, makes acknowledgements
• method
• Name of the author [in normal order], book title, edition,
location of publisher, publishing co. year of publication,
page no.
• H.C.Perkin, Air Pollution: Its origin and control, New York:
McGraw Hill,1974,pg.42-69
• S.P.Kumar,”Effects of air pollution", The Hindu, Jan
29,2002
• Bibliography
• It refers to a descriptive list of sources which have been
consulted to write an article or a report.
• It includes all the sources-books, journals,
magazines,websites,articles etc.
• Organized alphabetically listing the authors name in the
reverse order.
• Method:
• Crystal, David. English as a global
language.Cambridge;Cambridge university press,1997.
• Hudson, Henry o. The Glass House, Washington;
Prentice Hall,1948.