Writing a Winning Scholarship Proposal – Part 1

Note – although this article is primarily aimed at university students writing proposals for scholarship applications – many of these principles and techniques are applicable to other types of proposals, as well. 

If you’re a graduate student, or thinking of becoming one, then you’ve probably faced this challenge at least once.  Common problems include not knowing where to start or what to write about, how much detail to include and how to fit everything in to the limited space allotted (which is typically only 1 to 2 pages).  Like any other technical writing challenge, it pays to have a plan and it’s important to write in coherent units (known as ‘paragraphs’).  Here’s some advice to help you tackle this important challenge effectively.

First – you MUST start with an outline.  If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll already know why.  You never write any technical piece from front to back – instead, you first frame it up, then you flesh it out.  For more on the reasoning behind this approach, see the very first post in this blog.

Unlike a thesis outline – which really has to be a custom design – you can pick your ‘scholarship proposal outline’ right off the rack.  It generally goes like this:

• Pitch Paragraph
• Literature Review Paragraph
• Methodology Paragraph(s)
• Research Outcomes and Significance Paragraph(s)

The names are pretty self-explanatory – but I’ll give you a few thoughts on each so you have an idea of what to include. In today’s post – we’ll focus on the Pitch Paragraph.

Writing the Pitch Paragraph

This is the opening paragraph where you ‘pitch’ your basic idea to the reviewers.  I sometimes call it the ‘motivational paragraph” or the “give-a-hoot paragraph”. (You can use your imagination here to substitute something more realistic for ‘hoot’.)  Whatever you choose to call it – this is where you must convince the reviewers that your research project is important AND exciting by answering the inevitable question  - “Why should they care?”

Just as the best-selling novels are the ones that grab readers right from the first page, a successful scholarship proposal must engage the reviewers right from the first sentence.  It’s important to keep two things in mind here.  First, the reviewer is not going to be a specialist in your area; in fact, the chances of them even being in the same discipline as you are virtually nil.  Your civil engineering proposal might be reviewed by an electrical engineering professor or possibly even by a biology professor, and it’s a good bet that they find their specialty riveting and the prospect of reading about yours – well – excruciatingly boring.  The second thing to keep in mind is that the reviewers are each going to be reading at least a hundred applications during the adjudication process.  Given these two facts, it can be a real challenge to get them excited about your research topic.

There are a few tricks for making your proposal more interesting – they generally involve borrowing techniques from creative writing – not the fiction part of it, of course, but in terms of the tone and style.  This will be very different than what you’re used to doing when writing a technical report or article, so here are some specific tips.

1. Write in the first person and use ‘I’ not ‘we’.  You want the reviewers to see you as a human being, an individual – someone who is going to be affected and impacted by getting (or not getting) this scholarship.  Also – it’s just more interesting to read things written in the first person – especially after seeing 99 other scholarship proposals written in the ‘third person impersonal’.  If you can let a bit of your personality and enthusiasm shine through, all the better!

2. Write in the active voice not the passive voice, and use active verbs instead of adverbs + passive verbs. A classic example of this in creative writing is to say, “she shouted” instead of “she said loudly”.  Anytime you couple a verb with a word that ends in “ly”, you’re using an adverb.  Examples are: ‘slowly’, ‘softly’, ‘excruciatingly’… you get the idea.  However, you’ll need to be much more subtle in using action verbs in writing your scholarship proposal than in penning your great American novel; it can get pretty silly sounding if you overdo it.

3. Use adjectives wherever possible when describing things.  It helps to paint the picture of what you’re planning in the reviewers’ mind, which is especially useful in the pitch paragraph.  For example, saying that you’re studying the “delicate structure of spider webs” has much more allure than simply saying you are studying “the structure of spider webs”.  For me, that one word ‘delicate’ conjures up an image of an intricate spider web, dripping with dew and glistening in the morning sun.   I sit up in my seat, I press on with interest.  In contrast, to hear that you are ‘studying the structure of spider webs’ makes me yawn and pause to check my lunch bag in the hopes that someone packed a dozen home-baked cookies in there to get me through this scholarship application review ordeal.

4. Use dialog instead of narration.  In creative writing it’s always much more interesting to learn about something through a conversation between characters, rather than merely through a narrative description.  You can employ the same tactic here with just a slight variation – the dialog is going to be between you and the reviewers.  You do this by asking a question.  For example, you might say something like…  “Would you be surprised to learn that one-third of the world’s 6,000 known amphibian species are in danger of extinction?   This includes the rarely observed Baracoa dwarf frog, one of the smallest frogs in the world.”     You’ll have to admit, that was much more interesting to read than, “This research project focuses on the Baracoa dwarf frog (Eleutherodactylus orientalis).”

Take some time now to practice writing a Pitch Paragraph for your research project – you’ll find it’s a great thing to have prepared for a multitude of reasons and you’ll be ready the next time a scholarship possibility comes up.  These are also techniques that you can carry forward when writing proposals after graduation – such as grant applications.

In my next post – I’ll provide some advice on the remaining three elements of your proposal.  In the meantime – what’s for lunch?  Hmmm…

 

Preparing an effective cover letter…

I often get asked to provide advice and feedback for engineering students (BSc, MSc and PhD) applying for jobs and though the application contents can vary widely, especially between industry and academia, one thing that all employers have in common is the requirement for a cover letter. It’s probably the most important part of the application package, yet it seems to be the part most people do poorly. In this post, I’ll try to help you out by presenting some of the tips I generally suggest to my own students based on: a) what I’ve learned from others, b) what has worked for me when I’ve applied for jobs, and c) what I like to see when I am looking to hire someone.

The single most important objective of the cover letter is to convince the company, agency or university that you are applying to that they cannot afford to pass up the opportunity to hire you. You do this by illustrating what a tremendous asset you will be to them. In that context – they don’t care what sort of career you want or what experience they can offer you – they want to hear what you can offer them. The time to see what they can do for you is later on – once they realize they cannot get by without you and you begin negotiating the details of your employment. Here below are my top ten tips for writing a compelling cover letter…

1. Research the company, agency, or university. Find out as much as you can about the people you will be working with and the type of work they do. Keep this knowledge in mind as you write the letter and try to find ways to illustrate that you’ve done this. There is usually lots of info on the internet and companies expect you to research them before applying. In fact, they’re usually insulted when you don’t.
2. Provide your name, mailing address, phone number and email address in a letterhead or return address header.
3. Use a Subject Line and cite a specific position title and number if available.
4. Address your letter to a specific person, if possible. Employ a proper salutation (i.e. “Dear Ms. Jones”) and do not use first names, even if you know the person. If you don’t have a specific person to address, open with “Dear Sir or Madam”. Never assume the gender of the reader – I can’t tell you how many grad student applications I ignore each year because they’ve addressed the cover letter to “Dear Sir” – probably hundreds. (This goes back to Hint # 1.)
5. Use the cover letter to explain and highlight things in your resume that are relevant to them. That is, customize your cover letter to their particular company and/or job advertisement. (The really sharp applicant actually customizes their resume to the particular job, as well!)
6. Remember, employers use cover letters to assess your writing skills and your attention to detail. So write in proper paragraphs (i.e. with topic sentences and supporting facts). Don’t write in point form – it makes it look like a resume not a letter. Avoid abbreviations and acronyms (especially undefined ones) and don’t use casual phrases, slang or an overly familiar tone. Finally, proofread the letter carefully; make sure there are no spelling or grammar errors.
7. Try to keep it to about 1 page. You can push things a bit by using Times 11 and 0.75 inch borders, or you can go up to about a page and a quarter – but two full pages is too much. People usually have a lot to read and two pages of tightly packed prose is a real put-off. Also, don’t use fonts smaller than Times 11 – most of the people in charge (i.e. the ones who decide on the hiring) are old enough to need reading glasses and small fonts are extremely frustrating to them.
8. If you have experience or preferences to do a particular type of work, don’t list them as the type of projects you want, or expect, to work on. Instead, give them as examples of the types of projects you could take on right away with minimal guidance and supervision. (Again, it’s all about what you can do for them, not vice versa.) Also, don’t suggest things they don’t do… (That’s one sure way to demonstrate that you’ve ignored Hint #1.)
9. Highlight your communications skills. Have you written any reports or papers? Have you presented papers or posters at conferences? Give specific examples of your oral and written communications skills.
10. Close the letter by stating specifically when you could start work and when exactly you are available for an interview. Ask explicitly for the interview. Don’t forget a proper closing salutation (“Yours truly,” or “Sincerely,” are the most common and appropriate) and type your name in below where you will sign.

Once you’ve written the draft – leave it for a day, then go back and give it a critical inspection. Are you effectively presenting the “you attitude” instead of the “me attitude”? Are you effectively demonstrating your technical writing skills (i.e. proper paragraphing) and meticulous attention to detail (e.g. spelling and grammar)? Have you effectively illustrated you suitability for this particular job? It’s always a good idea to get a friend or mentor (e.g. your professor) to read the letter and provide feedback.

Finally SIGN YOU LETTER! Yes, get an actual pen and sign the letter!

Good luck! Let me know if you get the job!

 

Step 4 of your Literature Review – Writing it Up!

Note –  if you haven’t done so already, I suggest you go back and read the posts covering Steps 1, 2 and 3 of the literature review: finding stuff, organizing and screening, and normalizing.  Then you’ll be ready to hear about Step 4 – writing.

Writing

If you’ve done all the background work described in the three previous posts, you should now have a binder that contains the first page of each of the references you found, organized by sub-topic.  You should also have a few binders or folders of the actual references. If you’re doing everything electronically, an approach I highly recommend, these will all be organized in virtual folders.

The next step is to write the literature review component for each sub-topic.  The idea here is not to simply regurgitate the information you found in these references by paraphrasing their words or just quoting them. After all, why would we not just read their papers in that case?  Instead, you want to provide some value added content.  Your goal is to clearly present the current-state-of-knowledge on a particular topic.  First, start each sub-section of your literature review with a paragraph introducing that particular sub-topic and explaining why it’s relevant in the context of your thesis.  Then, show how the knowledge on that particular topic has evolved by presenting the contributions of each of your relevant references in chronological order.  It’s usually customary to separate these under sub-headings, titled with the citation as shown in the generic example below.

SUB-TOPIC 1

Paragraph introducing the topic and explaining its relevance

Jones and Smith (1902)

One or more paragraphs describing specifics of their study including data, methods, findings and limitations

Beettlejuice (1932)

One or more paragraphs describing specifics of their study including data, methods , findings and limitations

Do this for all of the references on this sub-topic.

Keep in mind that you want to be as specific as possible about these contributions.  Your reader should end up knowing exactly what they did, what they assumed, what didn’t and didn’t work, and how that moved the knowledge on that sub-topic forward.  By the end of the section on this sub-topic, it should be obvious what is left to do – that will establish your niche. You may want to have a closing paragraph to present this explicitly.

Repeat the pattern for all of the sub-topics in your literature review.  If you like, you might prefer to have one closing paragraph or sub-section for the entire literature review summarizing where this leaves things to establish your niche.  Remember to write in proper paragraphs as you go – all the normal rules of technical writing apply.

What’s coming up next?

In the next few posts we’re going to get away from thesis writing for a while – instead I’ll talk about preparing effective conference presentations and I’ll give some advice on preparing submissions when applying for academic and technical positions.

What would you like to see?

If there is a topic you would like to see covered in this blog, or if you would like to contribute a posting to this blog yourself, please use the comment feature to let me know.   Thanks for reading!

 

Step 3 of your Literature Review – Normalizing

Note – if you haven’t read  them already, I suggest you go back and read the last two posts covering Steps 1 and 2 of the literature review: finding stuff and organizing and screening.  Then you’ll be ready to hear about Step 3 – normalizing.

Normalizing

Once you’ve got all of your papers organized and screened, there is still one more step to complete before you can begin writing your literature review.  I call it the “normalizing” phase.  If you work in a field where there are no equations or variables to worry about, you can skip this step.  I’d venture to guess that would be pretty unlikely for most engineers and scientists though.

So what do I mean my normalizing?  Well, the idea is that every paper you read will likely use a different variable notation in presenting equations.  It’s your job to come up with a set of notation to use in your thesis for which every variable has only one symbol or variable name, and where every variable name is used for one variable only.  Then you have to translate all of the equations that you’ll be citing in your literature review (and anywhere else in your thesis) to this new, unique notation.

It sounds pretty obvious, I know, but I am consistently amazed at how few graduate students actually do it.  For example, I recently reviewed a thesis where the width of a river channel was referred to by three variable names: W, y, and T, and the letter V was used as the symbol for three distinctly different variables. I love it when this happens actually – my first question at the defense was, “What is V?” (I know, I’m cruel – but I really couldn’t resist. )  Seriously though, by the time I was halfway through that thesis, I was so confused that I felt like giving up completely.  It was an extremely irritating read and I felt very motivated to come up with extremely difficult questions for the defense.

So, unless you’re into being roasted over a hot grill at your defense, I suggest that you take the time to normalize all of your notation and don’t forget to create a list of variables as you go.  Once that’s done, you’re ready to start writing your literature review.  I’ll talk about that in my next post.

 

Step 2 of your Literature Review – Organizing and Screening

Note – if you haven’t read it already, I suggest you go back and read last week’s post describing Step 1 in the process: “Finding Stuff”.  Step 2 (this post) involves organizing and screening your information.  The method I’m going to describe to you was taught to me by my own PhD supervisor many years ago – I still recommend it to all of my students, though with a few modernizations included to take advantage of technologies that weren’t around when I was a student.

Organizing and Screening

Here’s where you ‘separate the wheat from the chaff’, as they say.  You’re going to end up with a huge stack of papers – either literally or figuratively (if you’re into the paperless office, like I am).  So you’re going to need a way to organize and find things.  This is especially important if you don’t want to end up repeating any parts of this job.  Assuming (for now) that you’re using paper copies, the first step is to make a photocopy of the first page of every paper, article and report you find. Be sure you also note the full citation on the front of the copied first page so that you can add it to your list of references easily when the time comes to prepare that.  Many journal and conference papers already have this information on the front page – which is why it’s handy to use the first page in this way – but it’s not always complete – so make sure you get the full details documented right when you find the paper. Otherwise you’ll end up repeating the hunt later on – a big pain.

Next, if you haven’t already done so, break your research topic into categories and each of those categories into sub-categories.  Chances are you will refine this later on, especially once you get into the literature review – but do the best job you can as early as possible.  Ideally you will then just have to add categories, not actually change any, later on.  Give all of these categories code names (e.g. 1, 2, 3,4, A, B, C, D, etc.)  You are then going to go through all of the papers and sort them by category.

To be able to categorize a paper adequately, you’re going to have to read it.  So to save time overall, I suggest you make some content notes about the paper at the same time.  As you go through each paper, try to identify its appropriate category (e.g. 2A, 4B etc.) as quickly as possible and write that category name on the top right corner of the copy of its front page.  If an article falls into two (or more) categories, (e.g. it contains material both on category 1A and category 3B) then make one copy of the front page for each category that applies and label each separately.  If you cannot think of a category for a particular reference, then it’s likely because that article is not relevant to you – at least not now.  Set those references aside.  Make your notes about the paper on the back side of these front page copies, being careful to write notes only on the content related to the category label on that particular page.  These notes do not need to be too extensive – use keywords, point form lists and phrases to note down what aspects of the paper are relevant to the category label you have assigned.  As you go through the paper itself – it helps to highlight key points and number them.  Use this same numbering in your notes on the back of that front page so you can go back and find the corresponding info quickly when you come back to it later. You may want to include the category in this numbering system when annotating the actual paper in cases where more than one category applies.

Once you have this done for all of your papers, organize these front pages into a binder.  Use tabs to separate the different categories and make a category list at the front so you can find what you need quickly.  You’ll also need to set up a filing system for the actual papers.  For that, I suggest you organize them alphabetically by the last name of the first author, then by date – just as you will when you make up the list of references.

For the typical PhD literature review, you are going to end up with a stack of papers a couple of feet high and a pretty thick binder of front pages.  So, in the interest of saving a few dozen trees – I encourage you to do all of this electronically.  Also, that way you will have all of your resource material with you no matter where you are working – that’s much more convenient than lugging around 20+ pounds of paper!  There’s a lot of software out there to help you do this and it can be challenging to know what is best to use.  Some people just use a combination of a spreadsheet program and a word processor, others might prefer to use annotated PDF files.  I like the idea of having everything in one place and one way to achieve that is to use Scrivener.  It’s a software program used by a lot of writers – especially those working on big projects like novels or textbooks.  Scrivener lets you create these summaries and you can even embed PDF files of the papers right alongside.  You can also look at things in a variety of ways – for example, as index cards or in documents.  In fact – you can even write you thesis in there too if you like – and later export it to a variety of common word processor programs.  Scrivener is relatively inexpensive (~$40) and easy to get started with  (you can even try it for free for 30 days) – though I’m sure it could take years to learn everything it has to offer – it’s just that powerful.   Many universities also have low cost (site licensed) software for organizing literature (e.g. EndNote).

 

However you choose to do it – organizing and screening your literature is a huge job.  Also, chances are that you will have to read at least some of these papers many times before you get everything you need from them (mainly because it can take a while to absorb everything fully).  Having things categorized and indexed can save you a lot of paper shuffling (and time!) in the long run.  Believe it or not, even after all of this work, you’re not going to be ready to start writing the literature review quite yet.  You first need to “normalize” the information.  That will be the subject of my next post.

 

Step 1 of your Literature Review – Finding Stuff

There’s nothing more embarrassing that writing an entire report on a topic, then finding out that someone has already done it all.  Multiply that sentiment by a factor of about a thousand if you’re writing a Master’s thesis – start a new project from scratch if this happens during your PhD.  Whatever you’re writing or researching – the first step is always to conduct a thorough literature review.  For a Master’s thesis you might get away with knowing just some of the relevant literature – depending upon your university’s academic requirements – but for a PhD you have to find absolutely everything and that’s a huge job.  How do you tackle it?  Well, like everything else we’ve been talking about in this blog – I suggest you go about it methodically and that means having a plan. There are four key steps in the typical Literature Review: 1) finding stuff, 2) organizing and screening, 3) normalizing and 4) writing.  Today we’ll deal with the first step…

Step 1 – Finding Stuff

This sounds easy, but if you need to find ‘absolutely everything’, it can be a pretty daunting task.  There are a million ways to find information and, with the internet,  it’s now much easier than it was when I was a grad student 20+ years ago.  The important thing is to seek out information in a variety of ways – don’t just stick to one approach or you will miss stuff.  In particular – don’t rely solely on Google and other internet search engines – they’re good but they’re not going to get you all the way there – not even close.  Here are some other (often more efficient) ways to find the relevant literature:

1. Find the formative journal paper(s) on the topic – your thesis supervisor will probably tell you about these the first time you meet to discuss your thesis project. Check the list of references in each of those papers to see which ones might also be relevant to you.  Also – and this is the really important bit – check to see who has cited these groundbreaking papers.  That should lead you to the mother lode if you’ve truly got the formative papers on your topic in hand.  (Most university libraries provide electronic access to citation databases for just this reason.)
2. Search all the relevant literature databases – again, most university libraries provide electronic access to these.  However, they can be a bit overwhelming – especially with so many to chose from. Here’s just one reason the modern librarian is essential to academia! University librarians have amazing expertise – start your literature review off right by going to see one VERY early in your information seeking process.  They can tell you which databases you should check and how to use them effectively.  They can even teach you how to set up automatic searches, so that you find out about new stuff as soon as it comes out.
3. Attend technical meetings and conferences and talk to other researchers about your project every chance you get.  You will be amazed at the stuff you will learn from others – especially the older scientists.  I’ve found some really obscure gems in this way.
4. Cast you net wide – grab everything and anything you think might be relevant.  Repeat #1 above for every paper you find.

Sound time consuming? It sure is – just like every other part of the thesis writing process.  That’s partly why it takes so long to get a PhD!  Perseverance is as important as brains in the academic world.

In my next post – I’ll talk about organizing and screening the mountain of information you’ve accumulated.

 

How to Write your Introduction, Abstract and Summary

My apologies for the delay in posting – my own scientific writing has had me bogged down for a few weeks. :-)

These are the most important components of your thesis or report.  Put your biggest effort into getting them perfect.  Most professors read the Abstract, Introduction and Conclusions chapters of a thesis first, then they dive into the main body text afterwards.  This means that you have to be particularly careful in wording these sections, since there is some content overlap.  If you just copy and paste text between them, people will notice and it won’t leave them with a very favourable impression.  Many people read technical reports in the same order – in fact, some people actually never read anything but the Abstract, Introduction and Conclusions!

There are some fairly specific rules related to these thesis (or technical report) components that you must know about. There are also some common sense guidelines that are useful to know – the main one being the advice above not to cut and paste text.  Another is that you write these three thesis/report components last.  Yes, that’s right – you write the Introduction and Abstract last – after you have written the entire report or thesis contents.  (You can be stubborn and write them first if you like; just be prepared to do them twice, because you’ll find they have to be completely rewritten in the end anyway.) 

The fact that these are written last generally means they are often the most poorly written – since most people naturally start to burn out as they approach the end of such a large writing project.  However, keep in mind that these are the sections that will get the most attention and scrutiny – so you absolutely have to make them your best content in the document.  Here’s a general overview of how to write these important sections, presented in the typical order in which they are written.

What goes in your ‘Introduction’?

A good technical report/thesis Introduction does four things:

1.       It introduces the problem and motivation for the study.

• Tell the reader what the topic of the report is.
• Explain why this topic is important or relevant.

2.       It provides a brief summary of previous engineering and/or scientific work on the topic.

• Here you present an overview what is known about the problem.  You would typically cite earlier studies conducted on the same topic and/or at this same site, and in doing so, you should reveal the yawning void in the knowledge that your brilliant research will fill.
• If you are writing a thesis, you’re going to need a full-blown literature review with very specific details of all of the scientific or engineering work done on the topic to date.  This literature review is usually contained in its own chapter, particularly for PhD theses.  In the introduction, just present a brief overview, sufficient to establish the need for your research.

3.       It outlines the purpose and specific objectives of the project.

• These are linked to solving the problem or filling the knowledge gap identified above.
• Often, the specific objectives are listed in point form. Sometimes a numbered list is used.

4.       It provides a ‘road map’ for the rest of the report.

• This is so that the reader knows what’s coming and sees the logic of your organization.
• Describe (in approximately one sentence each) the contents of each of the report/thesis chapters.

What doesn’t go in your Introduction?

• Never put any results or decisions in the Introduction.  Just because you are writing it last doesn’t mean you should give away the story. After all – it’s called the “Introduction” for a reason.

What goes in your ‘Conclusions’ chapter?

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a summary of the whole thesis or report.  In this context, it is similar to the Abstract, except that the Abstract puts roughly equal weight on all thesis/report chapters, whereas the Conclusions chapter focuses primarily on the findings, conclusions and/or recommendations of the project.

There are a couple of rules – one rigid, one common sense, for this chapter:

• All material presented in this chapter must have appeared already in the report; no new material can be introduced in this chapter. (rigid rule of technical writing)
• Usually, you would not present any new figures or tables in this chapter. (rule of thumb)

Generally, for most technical reports and Masters theses, the Conclusions chapter would be~3 to 5 pages long (double spaced).  It would generally be longer in a large PhD thesis. Typically you would have a paragraph or two for each chapter or major subsection.  Aim to include the following (typical) content.

• Re-introduce the project and the need for the work – though more briefly than in the intro;
• Re-iterate the purpose and specific objectives of your project.
• Re-cap the approach taken – similar to the road map in the intro; however, in this case, you are re-capping the data, methodology and results as you go.
• Summarize the major findings and recommendations of your work.
• Make recommendations for future research.

What goes in your ‘Abstract’?

(generally called the Executive Summary in technical reports)

In short, everything goes in the Abstract.  Its purpose is to provide a summary of the whole report or thesis.  In this context, it is similar to the Conclusions chapter, except that the Abstract gives the individual chapters more even weighting and is typically much shorter overall.

There are also a few rules for the Abstract.

• All material presented in the Abstract must appear in the report body as well; no new material is allowed. (rigid rule of technical writing)
• Do not present any figures or tables in the Abstract. (rigid rule of technical writing)
• Do not cite references the Executive Summary. (if you need to, then you are getting too detailed)

Generally, the Abstract would fit on one page (single spaced) with approximately one paragraph for each chapter.  Here is the typical content.

• Present the project topic and the need for the work.
• State the specific objectives of the project.
• Re-cap the approach taken, major decisions and results.
• Summarize the major conclusions and recommendations of your work.

It’s important to keep in mind that some universities put very stringent length restriction on theses Abstracts, which makes them even harder to write.  If you are faced with this challenge, don’t deal with it by leaving out your results and conclusions.  Everything above must still be covered; but you will have to be extremely brief and articulate.  Generally, you will not be able to get into any details on the methodologies and decisions.

In my next post, I will give some advice on that most dreaded of all chapters – the Literature Review.

 

Using figures and tables effectively…

You may be wondering why I’m devoting a post to such an apparently trivial aspect of technical writing, but the truth is, it’s really important and most people do not do it particularly well.  There are three key aspects to consider when it comes to using figures and tables effectively: relevance, citing and formatting.  We’ll discuss all three.

Relevance

Before you include any figure or table in your thesis or report – ask yourself a few questions.  Why am I including this figure (or table)?  How is my reader going to use it?  How will it help me to get my message across to the reader?  In terms of figures, the old saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words” is useful to keep in mind when deciding on relevance.  If including the figure will save you a lengthy and convoluted explanation and make it easier for your reader to understand your message, then it’s definitely worth including.  Similarly, if you find yourself writing a paragraph listing various numbers (for example, a bunch of parameter values), it might be a little less tedious for your reader if you provide this information in a table instead.

What about data?  Should you include figures and/or tables showing every piece of data you collected?  Again, I would suggest that you consider the relevance questions above.  If you have 10, 20 or more figures that look similar, perhaps it would be best to show just one or two example figures for each type of data in the main body of your thesis or report and put the rest in an appendix.  As for tables, I suggest you limit those to a few columns and about 5 to 10 rows maximum. That’s about all the human brain can absorb effectively.  Most people simply pass right by large tables without looking at them at all.  Whenever I see a huge table of numbers, I immediately think, “why didn’t they plot this in a graph?”

Citing

Assuming you accept the premise that figures and tables are there to help your reader, then you must also accept the fact that you’ll need to explain them to your reader.  Don’t simply add a reference to them as an afterthought and don’t expect your reader to know how to interpret them without some guidance from you.  For example, consider the following text and figure.

“The proposed model is more suitable than Hibler’s model (Figure 1). ”

Figure 1. Comparison of models.

We’re definitely going to need a bit of help to interpret such a complex figure.   In particular, we’d be justified in asking why the proposed model is better.  The figure turns out to be extremely useful for making this point, but only because the actual paper (She et al., 2009) provided the reader with information on how to interpret it.  Along the same lines, don’t just cite a bunch of figures as a lump and leave the reader to struggle through them. If you can’t come up with a couple of sentences to describe each and every figure – then you really have to reassess whether  they’re actually needed. In this way, relevance and citing are closely related – often it is the explanation, as much as the figure itself, that determines a figure’s (or a table’s) relevance.

Finally, don’t describe the substance of a figure and then mention the figure afterwards. There is nothing more annoying than struggling through a tedious, intricate and lengthy description of something only to read in the last sentence,  “Figure 2.3 show this…”, especially when the figure is essential to understanding the explanation.   Now your reader has to go back and re-read this whole paragraph again, an extremely frustrating and irritating experience. In fact, if they’re a member of your committee, they will probably start a list of nasty questions to ask you at the defense right around this time.  Think about it – you need a topic sentence for this paragraph anyway and isn’t it always a pain trying to come up with these?  Here’s a great one:  “Figure 1 shows …”, then the rest of the paragraph explains the figure.

Formatting

Proper table and figure formatting is extremely important -  yet most people put very little thought or effort into it. First of all – be sure to number them in the order they are cited.  (This may seem obvious, but if I had a nickel for every time it’s come up…) When formatting tables, make sure the column headings are meaningful.  Also, be sure to use a consistent precision or a consistent number of significant figures, whichever is more applicable, for each parameter or variable.  (Many spreadsheet programs leave off trailing zeros unless you format the numbers specifically.)  For figures, there’s a lot more to think about.  I am not sure who came up with the default graph formats in the most common spreadsheet programs, but they just don’t work for the engineering/science crowd.  Judge for yourself for the example below – which of these two figures do you think would be more useful to your reader?

What’s wrong with the top one?  In the first place, it’s in colour and it needs to be; looks what happens when it’s printed off in black and white.

It’s starting to get hard to figure out what’s what.  Imagine what happens when the figure gets more complicated?  Of course, it would become totally incomprehensible unless printed in colour.  If you have 100 figures in your thesis and you’re paying the cost of duplicating these for the entire defense committee, would you really want to have this many colour copies to make?  Probably not – it’s way too expensive.  In fact, most students prepare figures just like this (in colour) but print them in black and white for the defense committee, making the legends completely useless!  It’s extraordinarily frustrating.  I’ve asked many students about this at defenses and I always get the same answer, “Oh well, I was just going to make them in colour for the final copy.” I’ve got news for you – probably the only people likely to read your thesis, aside from your family, are the members of your defense committee!  The rest of the world will wait for the journal papers.  Just remember – anytime you torture the defense committee unnecessarily, you run the risk of inspiring them to come up with really difficult questions for the defense – it’s just human nature to want revenge when you’re being tortured.

So should you abandon colour altogether?  Not necessarily.  You can use colour in your figures, but use different symbols and line patterns, too, so that the figure can be interpreted whether it gets reproduced in black and white or in colour.  The same applies for journal papers where colour figures can cost ~$500 to $1000 each. If you create figures that are equally interpretable in black and white or in colour, you can opt to have them reproduced in black and white in the print version of the journal AND have them appear in colour for the on-line version.   This strategy also works well in business practice.  Your company may like to go with glitzy colour figures, but always keep in mind that most technical reports end up getting photocopied and redistributed in black and white.  Whatever your technical writing project, you can’t go wrong by making your figures interpretable in both black and white and colour.

It is also critically important to format your figures as you go – don’t leave yourself a big mess to deal with at the end, unless you want to spend a month doing nothing but formatting figures (definitely a very boring and tedious prospect).  In addition, if you draft your figures up to be journal ready right from the start, you only need one set of figures for reports/theses and publications.  Many spreadsheet and other graphing programs allow you to define custom graph formats; invest a little time to learn how to do this and you’ll save tons of time overall.  Here below are the formatting specifications I ask my students to use in their theses – they just come from the requirements I find typical of many of the journals we publish in.

• Use a sans serif font throughout (e.g. Arial or Helvetica).
• Use these minimum font sizes (keeping in mind that many journal figures get reduced in size dramatically):
  • Axis titles 12 pt bold
  • Axis labels 10 pt
  • Legend 10 pt
• Box the graph (axes) but do not put a border around the graph.
• Do not use the automatic title at the top.
• Box the legend, but do not use a shadow. Also, usually, the legend goes inside the graph.
• Use symbols for discrete data (unless so dense that it would be illegible).
• Use lines, not symbols for model or equation results.
• Do not use thin line weights – they do not photocopy well, nor do they come out well in PDF files.
• Turn off line smoothing; it can distort the graph to the point that it is meaningless (as seen in my example above).
• Increase the line weight of both axes, and the tick marks – the default weight is too light to print well when copied or reproduced in a journal.  Don’t make them too heavy though. (I find that a 1 pt thickness for these is a good compromise.)
• Use “cross” for major tick points, “inside” for minor tick points.
• If the graph includes negative numbers, move the origin to the minimum, don’tleave it at zero. Draw a thin line across at zero – using a fake data series (omit it from the legend though).
• If the x-axis is in days, set the major increment to 7 , 14, or 28 days (i.e. multiples of  weeks) and the minor increment to 1 or 7 days, whichever is more suitable.  If parts of a day are more suitable for      the minor increment use 1, 6, or 12 hours.
• Use superscripts, subscripts and actual symbols in labels and legends.  (e.g. m³/s not cms, 10°C not 10C, etc.).
• Be sure to label the axes!  Also, units should follow the axis label.  e.g. Water Elevation, m or Water Elevation (m).  Whichever method you use, be consistent throughout.
• Do not use variables in axis labels, unless the definition follows as well.  Variables may be used in the legend, if defined in the figure caption.
• Use error bars on data whenever appropriate.
• In a spreadsheet, place the graph on a worksheet page not a graph page.  This gives you much more control on graph properties, especially size.  Also, make sure the graph, and the data for the graph, are in the same workbook.
• Put the figure number in the worksheet tab (e.g. ‘Fig 10’) and label the corresponding data worksheet as ‘Fig 10 (data)’.  Create an index of all your files.

Keep in mind that the journals you publish in may have more specific or different requirements, as may your thesis supervisor (or company, if you are writing technical reports).  The important thing to remember is to be consistent and always think of your reader!

Thanks for reading this blog – comments are welcome!  In the upcoming posts I’ll be providing strategies for doing your literature review and I’ll provide some advice on outlining and thesis content, as well.

 

Content Preening – or how NOT to torture your thesis committee…

In this post I am going to talk about content preening, as this is where we all typically have the most to learn.  Ensuring quality of content is undoubtedly the most difficult aspect of technical writing; it’s a problem I see in every single technical document I review. I even see it in most of my own early manuscript drafts. (I imagine my colleagues see it in my late drafts, too! )  Like every other aspect of good technical writing, there is nothing magic about getting this right.  Any of us can do it well – we just need to make the effort.

One of the most important characteristics of good content is relevance.  Before you include any sentence, paragraph or section in your document, consider why it is there.  Does each sentence offer new and specific information supporting the topic sentence it appears with?  Does each topic sentence refer to a concept that is relevant to your overall message?  You can see why proper ‘paragraphing’ is critical to ensuring the value of content (see my post on proper paragraph writing if you need a review on those skills). However, that’s not where it ends.  You need to ensure relevance at the section level, as well.  One way to achieve this is to avoid the narrative style of writing; it’s generally chronological in nature and relatively unfocused.  Consider the following (thankfully fictitious) example of the narrative style.

“For each experiment I first turned off the lights it the lab so that the laser would work better. It worked better in that I got better images with the digital camera if the room was dark. Then I filled the coffee pot and put it on.  I would then start up the pump for my flume and boot up my computer.  Then I would fire up the laser and check the alignment since I’ve forgotten to do that a few times and had to repeat the test.  Once the flow was going good in the flume I would add some seed particles. I would then look in my notebook to see what tests I had run before so that I could do a new one this time.  I did do three repeats of each experiment though.”

Yum – make mine an Espresso!

No doubt we can all relate to, and sympathize with, the more tedious aspects of experimental research but do we really need to know most of these details? Nope.  Also, the tone is quite conversational and casual in this example – something you should definitely avoid in technical writing.  I am not suggesting that you be overly formal and flowery, but a conversational tone is often unnecessarily wordy and generally not particularly factual, especially when combined with the narrative style.  Instead, aim to write topically – break down the content into logical technical units, regardless of when they were done.  What we want in this example are the key steps in the experiments. First what was the plan?  What suite of experiments did you run and why?  Be specific in describing the parameters of each experiment; for example in this case some important physical parameters might be: flume slope, flow depth, flow rate, seeding density, camera position, lens aperture, shutter speed and image sampling rate. Certainly describing the methodical steps in each experiment (the “experimental protocol”) will be somewhat narrative, but try to avoid including details that would more suitably be grouped with “putting the coffee on” as irrelevant information.

How can you spot irrelevant text in your thesis or report?  Generally it is full of adjectives, imaginative descriptions, repetition and/or commentary.  Search out and delete all of these vague and meaningless phrases, sentences and paragraphs.  Remember also that qualitative descriptions are generally useless. For example:

            “lt was found that the various models produced similar results.”

Your reader is justified in wondering: ‘which models’ and ‘how similar? A more appropriate approach would be to name each model specifically and then quantify the percent differences in some key output value(s).  You could even provide a comparative table or graph.  (Don’t forget to quantify measurement and modeling errors, as well!)

The  ‘narrative’ thesis – a professor’s perspective….

Commentaries, especially descriptive assessments about the quality of your data and research, have no place in your technical document.  If it’s excellent, your reader will let YOU know.  Also, don’t use ten words if three will do.  Writing in a compact and efficient manner will not only keep your reader with you to the end, it will also help to prevent ambiguity. It’s sometimes helpful to think of each word, sentence, and page as an item which costs you money.  In fact, it’s true. Whether it’s duplicating your thesis, torturing your defense committee or meeting publication length restrictions when submitting a paper to a journal, in technical writing — every word counts!  So, for your final draft, screen out the repetitive and wordy descriptions; this will help to make the final product as articulate as possible.

In my next post I will provide some advice on how to use figures and tables effectively…

P.S.  don’t worry – it’s only a toy…

For photo credits place your mouse over the picture.  To go to the original site, click on the picture.

 

Consistency – an important step in the preening process…

In my earlier posts I talked about preening the final draft and the importance writing proper paragraphs.  As you go through your final draft, one thing to check for is consistency.  Here are some tips on how to handle the most common consistency problems…

Tense – past, present or future?

The tense used should be carefully chosen and used consistently throughout the document. Jumping between tenses is very confusing to your reader.  It is also very confusing when you describe things that you have finished, or that have already happened, using the present or future tenses.  If it’s done, then it’s past tense – it’s that simple.  You may see others using present or future tense, particularly in their thesis, but don’t follow this bad example.  Remember, always, the goal of good writing is clarity – if you keep that in mind when choosing your tense – the choice is simple.  Done – past; in progress – present; planned – future.

Consistency in referencing…

Referencing someone else’s work is done in one of two ways. If you mention their name specifically, then the date of the publication should follow in brackets. For example; “Hicks and Steffler (l990) found that…”   Otherwise, the name(s) and date should both appear within the brackets, as in: “The CDG scheme has been shown to be… (Hicks and Steffler l990).” When referencing multiple authors (3 or more) of a single publication, there are two possibilities.  Some writers opt to named all authors the first time it is referenced. Subsequent references then make use of et al. as in: “Jones et al. (1992) have found that….” (note the period after “al”).  Other   opt to us et al. from the first reference to a particular work.  This is acceptable as well, since you list of references will b=provide the full details of all authors. The important thing is to pick one of these two approaches and then stick with it throughout  your entire report or thesis.

Variable names…

Most scientific papers require a literature review and in engineering especially, that generally involves dealing with a lot of equations.  It is important to remember a couple of key rules of consistency when writing your literature review.  First, no two variables can have the same name or symbol and second, each variable can have only one name.  For example, flow depth cannot be Y in some places and D in others – you must choose one or the other.  Similarly, you cannot use D for the depth, the diameter and the density.  Each needs its own symbol.  This may sound obvious but you would be amazed at how many theses I have read in which both of these rules were violated repeatedly, rendering the whole discussion completely incomprehensible.  Invariably, the problems originate in the literature review since many people write their literature review using the variable names and symbols they find in each reference.  Sure it’s a ton of work to bring all of the equations in your literature review to a common notation – but that doesn’t excuse you from doing it.  The goal, as always, is clarity.

Figures and Tables…

It is also important to use a consistent approach when referencing figures and tables (e. g., Figure l or figure l).  Pick one and use it throughout. For obvious reasons, if you have chosen the “Figure l” approach, you cannot use “table 1”, but rather must reference it as “Table 1” to be truly consistent. Other places where consistency is important include paragraph indentation, spaces between paragraphs, fonts, and page numbering.

These may all seem like picky details – but an attention to detail demonstrates a meticulous nature to your supervisor and/or client and a lack of attention to detail does exactly the opposite.

In my next post I’ll talk about content and style…