writing
Entries tagged with “writing”.
- Currently Listening to:
- Travis — Writing to Reach You
Academic paper titles have a tendency to be a bit staid, cautious and flat. Admittedly, this is a pattern I haven’t yet broken out of myself. Perhaps it’s because many non-English speakers are forced to publish in English (as English is the lingua franca of science). Or perhaps it is just prudent: since other researchers will often only cast a cursory glance over paper titles to decide which papers to read, or which sessions to attend at a conference, it generally pays to write clear titles.
In any case, I’ve been on the lookout for some creatively-named papers. Because they are rare, papers with clever and/or funny titles stand out easily among the deluge of stuffier titles. Here are some of my favourites:
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“Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events” By Daniel J. Simons and Christopher Chabris
In Perception, 1999 volume 28(9) pages 1059–1074.
Presented the results of the classic experiment in perception and selective attention involving people passing a basketball around (which you may have seen used for a road safety awareness ad). The title is a play on Gorillas in the Mist.
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“A Very Modal Model of a Modern, Major, General Type System” By Andrew W. Appel, Paul-Andre Mellies, Christopher D. Richards, and Jerome Vouillon. In POPL 2007, pages 109–122.
(Say three times fast.) This title is based on a similarly tongue-twisting song from the musical The Pirates of Penzance.
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“Secret Ninja Formal Methods” By Joe Kiniry and Dan Zimmerman. In Formal Methods 2008, pages 214–228.
Joe and Dan report on their experience with trying to make formal methods invisible to students while they learn good programming practices. Extra marks for giving their presentation in full ninja getup.
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“The television will be revolutionized: effects of PVRs and filesharing on television watching.” By Barry Brown and Louise Barkhuus. In Proceedings of CHI ‘06, pp. 663–666.
A reversal of the title of Gil Scott-Heron’s poem, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
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“HT06, Tagging Paper, Taxonomy, Flickr, Academic Article, ToRead.” By Cameron Marlow, Mor Naaman, danah boyd and Marc Davis.
In HYPERTEXT ‘06, pages 31–40).
The writers themselves suggest this might be the “least memorable title in ACM history”, but I disagree — this immediately jumped out at me as a sly nod to how people use tags.
I might never reach you
Only want to teach you
Writing is harder than hacking. They’re both hard to do well, but writing has an additonal element of panic that isn’t there in hacking.
With hacking, you never have to worry how something is going to come out.
Working on my thesis proposal this week; my thoughts exactly.
- Currently Listening to:
- Queen & David Bowie — Under Pressure
Of course, in the time it took me to colour this in, I could’ve written ten papers…
- CaliforniaColleges.edu - Tips on Writing the UC Personal Statement
The personal statement is more than just a mandatory part of your UC application; it's your one chance to explain to college admissions readers why you are a good fit for their school. This is where you become more than just another name — it's where you become an individual, and where you can share your personality, your goals, your experiences, and where you can explain any opportunities or obstacles that have affected your academic record.
- Thesis Statements
Mapping:
The thesis statement can help "map" a paper as it suggests an order or direction for the paper's development. A thesis statement, for example, might read:
Judy Syfer's essay, "I Want a Wife," exaggerates the marital expectations facing women in our society today.
The following sentence could continue:
Those expectations include managing a household, maintaining a career, and having a good relationship with a spouse.
In this example, the thesis statement suggests an obvious path for development in "marital expectations." The writer develops the paragraph by exploring the term "marital expectations." Three following paragraphs, for example, would logically discuss 1) household responsibilities, 2) careers, and 3) marital relationships.
The Weak "I will show" thesis:
Writers new to college prose often include such statements. Generally, faculty do not like them and they rarely appear in academic prose. This goes beyond avoiding the first person, a rule that is changing even
- Snowclone - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A snowclone is a type of cliché and phrasal template originally defined as "a multi-use, customizable, instantly recognizable, time-worn, quoted or misquoted phrase or sentence that can be used in an entirely open array of different variants".[1]
An example of a snowclone is "gray is the new black", a version of the template "X is the new Y". X and Y may be replaced with different words or phrases – for example, "comedy is the new rock 'n' roll".[2] Both the generic formula and the new phrases produced from it are called "snowclones".
It emphasizes the use of a familiar (and often particular) formula and previous cultural knowledge of the reader to express information about an idea. The idea being discussed may be different in meaning from the original formula, but can be understood using the same trope as the original formulation.
- Six Degrees of Argument
- The Researcher's Bible
- How to Write a PhD Thesis
- Professor H.T. Kung, Harvard University
- Planning a PhD Thesis
- My Blog, My Outboard Brain - O'Reilly Media
I consume, digest, and excrete information for a living. Whether I'm writing science fiction, editorials, columns, or tech books, whether I'm speaking from a podium or yammering down the phone at some poor reporter, my success depends on my ability to cite and connect disparate factoids at just the right moment.
As a committed infovore, I need to eat roughly six times my weight in information every day or my brain starts to starve and atrophy. I gather information from many sources: print, radio, television, conversation, the Web, RSS feeds, email, chance, and serendipity. I used to bookmark this stuff, but I just ended up with a million bookmarks that I never revisited and could never find anything in.
Theoretically, you can annotate your bookmarks, entering free-form reminders to yourself so that you can remember why you bookmarked this page or that one. I don't know about you, but I never actually got around to doing this -- it's one of those get-to-it-later eat-your-vegetables be
- ongoing by Tim Bray · HTML5
The process is clearly hard to manage. On a couple of occasions I’ve tried to take a sip or two of the HTML5 waters, and instantly been overwhelmed by the volume and intensity of the conversation; “drinking from a firehose” applies. It’s something that you really have to do full-time to do at all, I think. ¶
It’s also self-evidently troubled. This week we have HTML5 Editor Ian Hickson publicly accusing Adobe of placing a “secret block” on the HTML5 spec. Adobe hotly denies it. Simon St. Laurent writes up the story and then hostilities break out in his comments.
Not a pretty picture.
Is it possible that they’ll fight through all this swampy stuff and get a good result? We’ll see.
- The Compass DeRose Guide to Emotion Words
- johnaugust.com » How screenwriters will use the iPad
A few thoughts on Apple’s new tablet, and how we’ll be using it in a few months.
It should be terrific for reading scripts. Right now, the big Kindle DX does a credible job with screenplays. It’s $489. The iPad is only $10 more, and can handle mail, web, video and a lot more. A few weeks ago, I wrote about reading scripts on laptops turned sideways. The iPad is the elegant version of this solution.
- Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now) | 43 Folders
"Sometimes writing is reading."
- Nil by mouth - Roger Ebert's Journal
- Ave atque Vale « The New Adventures of Stephen Fry
Well now, this is a sort of farewell. An au revoir more than an adieu but a valediction all the same. This morning I switch off most of my connections with the outside world, for I have work to do. I must deliver a book to my publishers by the end of April or my soul and testicles will be forfeit.
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