 Hi. Welcome back. So, this is some rule which I do not want you to forget. Please make sure that if you quote verbatim, the reader knows that you are quoting verbatim. I cannot emphasize the importance of this rule. Please remember any time you are caught not doing this, it is academic suicide. You should not do. Lots of people's reputation takes a nose dive simply because of some silly mistake of this type. Please do not do it ever and make sure that you tell your students that they are not supposed to do it ever. So, let us move on to the next. So, this is again a tutorial. I want you to read through this tutorial and then I have a couple of questions. At the end, we will discuss that. So, the question is, is this written well? So, if you have finished reading this page, you raise your hand so I will go to the next page. This is about four pages along. So, I should know when to move to the next page. So, the equations are missing. I am sorry about that. I did write them, but it is messed up. So, there is an equation h squared by 4 pi e squared something is equal to. So, now I am going to take a short poll. The poll is, we can do it in two ways. Either we take a poll about whether it is well written or not well written and then from each people will tell why they think it is well written or not well written or we can go row wise one person per column standing up and saying whether it is well written or not well written and why. So, if Shobhan gives you the mic or you can volunteer, either way it works. If nobody volunteers, he will give randomly to somebody. I want you to stand up and say whether you think this is a well written passage or not and be why. It is not sufficient just to say this is not well written. You have to tell me why you think it is not well written and it is not sufficient to say that it is great writing. You have to tell me why it is great in your opening. Like in the first paragraph itself, more of expectations are there from the reader's point of view. We think of items, we have a clear picture. So, it is expected from the readers that they have this imagination. So, I think that. That is the wrong expectation to have. According to me. So, you think it is not good writing because the expectation was wrong. I mean I am just paraphrasing. I am okay with the answer. Yeah, I think. Very good. Sir, as I open, sir, as far as the technical communication is concerned, some of the words must be concrete, which should give this specific idea. But in this paragraph, some of the concrete words are missing. Example? For example, here it is mentioned that when we think of items, we have clear picture of in our minds. Then it is mentioned a central nucleus and a swarm of electrons surrounding it. Means there are so many orbits and where the electron moves. So, it must be clarified. As far as the equation is concerned, some of things are really missing, I think so. Equation is missing, but that is because of my typing. No, not the equation, but whatever the things are needed for that, I think so. The concreteness is not there. Because of words like swarming being used. Yeah, it's a colloquial words many a times have been used. My opinion is exactly contrary to him. When he uses the words swarm of electrons in all, a person like me who does not belong to the science background, the picture is because I am not regularly thinking of atoms and the nucleus in all. So, when I read this, I am suddenly attuned to what is going to follow. So, I think this was a very good beginning because it encouraged me to read the second one also and the third also. And then so, slightly when it comes to more technical thing, for a distance, I am going to keep up with what the person is trying to say. According to me, it's well written because in the beginning it sets up the background. In the end of the, they are asking, the zist of this is trying to establish a relation between the stars and atoms. How the stars actually behave or how they are situated and the pattern of them and how they are, that is similar to our atoms. So, he set a background and he's creating, giving a certain set of equations. The equations which rule the micro level of atoms and then he's relating it to the macro level of energy. I feel it's a good article. Sir, some pictures may be added with this writing so that everyone gets a clear idea of what he is giving as an atom. So, but as writing is it okay or you think it is lacking because there are no pictures. It is okay, but some pictorial representation is necessary. This particular pauses is very easy to understand. In that point of view, it is okay. But, in the last paragraph, the word I, it may be avoided. The word I should be avoided. It is my thing in that particular. I see. Why you think why should I be avoided? Can I see the last? I don't think the word I is must in this particular place. Okay. We'll come back to this. Okay. I find it's a good writing. The reason is sentence is long. They used many colons and semicolons and use of that and making a sentence. I think it is easy to understand what they are telling. Okay. One last opinion if somebody wants to give. Yes ma'am, there. Sir, the piece of writing, where it concerns technical writing, I think it needs to be very clear and understood by a lay person. So as a communication skills person, when I read it, I can still understand a technical piece of writing. So there's a lot of clarity in what is being written. So that's how I look at it as an okay kind of a writing. Okay. Thank you for pitching in. Somebody else will pitch in next time. So next exercise, you get the chance. Okay. There's more exercises. We'll come back to it. So I said that first is content. Okay. Are we okay with the content? Yes. So there is something about atoms and then from there the stars. There is a connection. Connection is brought out and being a technical piece, it is also brought out in a very quantitative manner. I mean two equations and it is brought out. So content is okay. Clarity is there. It's very clear what it's trying to do. And in terms of style and voice, so here is where I want you to appreciate that it is a personal thing. Somebody might feel that swarming is not the right word. Somebody might feel that that is the right word. That depends on the background, the attitude, on the person. And somebody wants pictures. Somebody doesn't want to say I. And so this brings us to a most important point which we will discuss slightly later that any piece will be considered as good or bad depending on the context in which it is written. Okay. Now anybody guessed who the writer is? Budding research scholar. Somebody said for Frank. Okay. Yes. Maybe a budding research scholar. Budding research scholar. Okay. Somebody else had any opinion? Because when you look into the text you know the first sentence can be restructured very properly rather than we can we now ask it may be asked either we can understand because there is no punctuation mark at the end of the sentence. Right? Another one rather than using active voice like in this lecture I shall attempt to show that in this lecture it is attempt to show that. Because impersonal passive voice sounds more better. Why? I mean that's what I'm trying to... Because it is understood that it is attempted by the writer. So not necessarily saying every time I... So that's what I'm telling, that is not necessary. You can say this is what I believe. Because it is generally felt that in technical communication we should give more importance on the action rather than the doer of action. It is clearly understood that it is done by I or somebody else. It's not... So unless it is warranted that is not necessary to repeat the pronouns being subjective. It is not true. That is why I gave the example of Raman and Einstein. We have been taught that in technical communication as far as possible you have to use passive voice. It's not necessary. And this rule is old. More modern writing does not insist that there should be passive voice. And it also sounds very archaic and old fashioned if people use passive voice. The current trend used to use more active voice. And that brings us to the question. Who is the author of this passage? This is Subramanian Chandrasekhar. But that is okay. That's what I'm trying to tell you. It depends on the context when it comes to style and voice whether it is informal or formal depends on where in what context it is written. So you cannot judge that without knowing the context. Now the context in which this is written is that this is the noble price lecture of Chandrasekhar. Now Chandrasekhar is taking pains to explain because noble lecture will not only have faces but from other chemistry, biology, everybody. No that's okay. No that's okay. No no no. This is not a trick question. I'm just telling you that when you look at a specific piece of article the first question you have to ask. So content and clarity everybody can make up their mind. More or less people will convert. Now style and voice which is more difficult you cannot make up your mind unless you know in what context for which audience it was delivered. So content and clarity wins but when it comes to style and voice it is very difficult to know unless the context is said which also tells you that the same information you cannot put it in the same way everywhere. The pictures are missing because he is giving a lecture and somebody made the observation about the commas, colons everything they are there because he is reading out his noble price lecture okay. So I believe that this is a very good piece of writing given the audience, given what he is trying to communicate and the way he communicates. Of course there would be problems. Chandrasekhar cannot write this in a journal article. There are overall stylistic things which I agree with Chandrasekhar. I also believe that if there are personal problems you should use them okay. Just because you know it will be attempted to show does not mean who is going to show. Anyway he is only going to show. He might as well accept that I will attempt to show okay. So that is a stylistic thing. There I am not expecting you to agree with me. You are welcome if you think that no it should still be passive voice but if some of you feel active voice sounds good you should not hesitate to use it because that is not wrong. I have shown you until now three examples. All three noble lureds using I. Using I before they became noble lureds. I mean you can always say oh he is a noble lured he can say well Raman did not have noble price okay when he wrote that. Nor did Einstein and in this case of course he has become a noble lured so you can say that he is using. But this is okay to use okay. Very good. So we are able to make judgments on writing but the judgment should go in that order. Content, clarity, style and voice is the most subjective and it also depends on other factors unless you know all the factors it is very difficult to judge. I did not give you the context. The next one I am going to give you the context. This is written in a scientific journal. So this is his noble price lecture. Please go and read Chandrasekhar's noble price lecture. It is very beautiful. Chandrasekhar is well known for his writings, technical and non-technical. He is a good model to follow in terms of writing. So this is a good piece of writing. Now the other one the next passage that I am going to show you it is written in a scientific journal. It was published in a scientific journal. Let me put it that way okay. So that is the context. Now I want you to analyze again in terms of content, clarity, style and voice okay. We are going to read through. Please raise your hands if you have read the passage so that I can move to the next page. There are two three pages and this time the comments will come first from here and there and then it will move right. Unless I see 90% of hands I can't move. So regarding this, if it is taken from a article it has been copied, taken in a pasted or I want I want to just clarify it because it has some punctuation errors. Plus when you go to the second we see the second last line without magnification deep studies and research that's a same slide. The last line without magnification deep studies and research. When we say deep studies and we can't say research we can say researchers are impossible. And then we go for again I could understand the tenor the voice. This technique is applied in physics, astronomy, biology, medicine, architecture, particle physics, genetics, microbiology and in chemistry it means the authors are from the domain of chemistry. Okay. Maybe. Okay. Then for a second slide the second line in brief there should be a pass the comma. An impossible proposition was proved as possible and this is a problematic problem. Where mathematics always deals with problems it is not problematic. So that which means that we need much more clarity in that. So clarity is lacking in that area. Content is okay. Content is okay. Yes ma'am. We'll come third. There is somebody else? Actually in the previous thing which we saw like the words were like a literature oriented words to give stylistic to the thing was used but in this we don't find anything of such. Okay. It is like a journal article. So but how about content and clarity? Are you okay with the content and are you okay with the clarity? It's somewhat confusing like this is more confusing second second clarity is not that great. How about content? Yeah that I felt it was good for the first page it was okay. The second one like confusing. Okay. Yes ma'am. Well I feel it's a good piece of writing. Okay. For the same reason the content is good. Okay. Easily understood by a layperson like me I absolutely have no exposure to scientific journals. I'm a humanities background and I perfectly understood the content. Okay. It's absolutely clear as to what was the problem where did it start and you know what the what the future has the future studies. So as you mentioned a little early it's important to point out where things will be taken. Others should be able to use and that has become very clear and as far as the style is concerned it is a little less personal than the previous one but still I liked it and I appreciate. So on the whole it's a good piece of writing. Okay. Very good. Yes there. So regarding with this almost good sir. Okay. The author tried to transfer his imagination with the other people like that. And gravity it is also a little bit good but there is a change in style and voice. So voice is a passive voice and it is not a first person narration and with that we feel some kind of that is the only reason we can say that it is a little bit confused but everything is good. Usage of words again it is his own style that is the lightest style. Example this is a problematic problem. So in such a case that adjective used as problematic there is no wrong in it. But here the author tried to what's called impose is a bombastic method of using words that makes something odd in understanding the information that's all. So regarding with the content, gravity everything is good. Style and voice is different from the previous examples which we have seen. This passive voice and the users of words is a little bit different. See sir according to all the context that what you said that the criteria to identify whether it is good writing or not. This is really nice piece of writing. It's a very clear and precise one anybody can understand in comparison to previous text. I understood it in one reading. For that I need to go back to the same sentences again and again but here I need not to do that. The information is very clear. The sentences are precise and easy to understand regarding style. What I mean to say that style varies from person to person as you stated earlier. So when we talk about technical communication, we need to convey the message exactly instead of paying much attention on the style. So I feel that anybody can read it and anybody can understand it and that is the purpose of communication. Sir here it's starting with computer magnification is a universal computer phenomenon and immediately he's going to this technique is applied in these are the different areas and maybe in that it's given physics again the later particle physics branch of that they're mentioning. And when we go to the next slide there again he's coming to the point where the first time in the history and initially he was telling the universal. Then maybe then he's telling it is applied in so many areas and all and maybe it's a little confusing what I feel when I go to the content of this. I just want to ask one thing whether it is in passes for the from the monograph or it is a passes from the paper. This is from a paper. This is the last paragraph of the paper. If it is a paper then I don't think that such kind of writing is required because if he has done such a good research he should be in that should be in part of monograph in spite of research paper because he has mentioned that for a nearly four three double zero years old parallel postulate problem. So if it is a that kind of research it should be in part of monograph not a research paper. Okay so we'll come back and discuss this there. Sir I feel it is not that clear or it's self contradictory at times. First of all when it is said that it is universal there was no need to mention all the branches of science because the term universal itself is comprehensive and in the second slide again problematic problem possibly he's intending to say complex or something so he's you know he's over emphasizing and things like that. So overall I feel that it's not a very good piece of writing. Very good so this is a difference I don't know if you come from humanity's background man. Great results are published only in monographs is not the norm in science. In science great results are published in maximum impact journals goes to science or nature or ACS or IEEE. So the way things proceed is that open problems are first solved in the open literature and then more people criticize or build on it or accept and if it becomes acceptable to a specific community then it becomes a monograph. Then if it becomes acceptable across different parts of the same community then it becomes a textbook material. So most of the great textbook materials are published in journals first. Okay so it's not necessary that it has to be a monograph. But in humanities this is not so. Humanities people write monographs in a particular area or at least I understand that that is the norm and journal articles are very far and few in between and they are also like addresses or asking some questions and that sort of stuff. So they will write lots of that but when actually comes to substantial amount it will become a monograph. I cheated a little bit because even though this was published in a journal this is not really well written and two people picked it up but I think they picked it up because they probably have some background in computer science or something. So this is the note that was published by the journal. It has no scientific content. It was accepted because of an administrative error. Okay I apologize for putting this example but I want you to think I mean this is where I said we have to make mistakes then we have to learn why the mistakes and that is when learning happens. That is the reason why I introduced. Both my passages are chosen in such a way to so the point that I want to emphasize is that science technical writing or humanities anything that is done at an academic level actually requires lots of effort. Communication has to happen with as little effort as possible but everything that looks clear is not great science communication because some things are harder. To understand stars starting from atoms is a hard problem. In terms of content that is available that is really extraordinary amount of content. I don't think however great the person who is telling is and however great we are we will be able to read it in one reading. Yes ma'am. Without reading the article. Right. Right. You had no way of knowing that is why I apologize you had no way of knowing but I wanted to show you that even if I give you the context that yes it was published in a journal. I can show you so many articles which were not retracted which had equally you know minimal content. Again I'm showing this to you because I have gone through this problem. You go to the new journals used to be put up on Thursday afternoon. You go to the library. There are 25 different articles. You read them. You think that every problem in the world has been solved by all these people. You just don't know what else they could for you to do and when I was in my third year of research something worse happened. There was a paper which had the same title as my research problem. I was so upset so dejected that I did not want to look at the paper for fear of all my work going down the drain. Somebody has already published and my seniors told me that no that is not always possible. Even if it is the same problem why do you think that the person has solved the same way maybe something you can salvage out of your work. So let's go take a look at it. We went through it was slightly different and it was addressing a different problem in the same material. I was okay. Then I came to my advisor and said you know Abhi people are publishing in this. I think we should publish fast and he said Guru this is the first thing you have to learn. We are not in the business to be publishing fast. We are in the business to understand. If we understand well then we go tell people that this is what we understand. That is how we build our reputation. So this is very very important because first time if you go read people tend to think. Now first people tend to think that whatever is written is anyway great. How do you challenge somebody? Give it to me in writing. So somebody is willing to put it in black and white in print. People tend to think that it is always true. On top of it it is published in a journal. This is not like something that I printed and they know sent it to people. Which means there was a editor for the journal who has read this. Then there were reviewers who have read this. They have accepted. So you tend to think that there must be some truth in it. And this can happen at all levels. I am not saying that this happens only at this level. This can happen at all levels. Of course there are markers to indicate that this is not that well written which was picked up by few people. Anything that makes grandiose claims like everything is universal and I have solved problems which is 4300 years old and things like that. Please be careful. Don't accept anything by authority. Don't accept anything because somebody else says that this is how we have that. If you see claims like that I think it is natural for you to be skeptical as scientists and you should in fact you should take the exact opposite approach to the written word. You should think that everything that is written is false unless it is proved otherwise who will do the proof? You will do the proof. You will go through and you will make up your mind whether you accept it or not. So I mean in terms of English also there were some problems like some people pointed out and on top of it I think some sentences they are also taken from elsewhere. That is why there is a change in language that you perceive the way it is said. So these things are really hard. All the time saying is that it is really difficult to judge good writing especially technical writing because A we want it to be very clear and B we know that subject matter is so complex that it is not easy to make it that clear. So there is a personal decision you have to make. Some things can be very clear but they might be trivial. Does that make it good to technical writing? So these are harder questions to ask and answer. So the purpose of these two exercises is for you to be alert, pay attention and you need to develop a knack to identify the wheat from the shaft. That takes a long time and I am not claiming that I have achieved that either. Even now I have sometimes problems and the problem is worse because somebody sends a paper to me for review. Now I need to make up my mind whether this is really worth publishing or not worth publishing. It is not exactly in my area of research. Occasionally you get papers exactly in my area of research where I can just look at it and I can make up my mind. They are from nearby areas. Now do I accept it? Then somebody else asks who is this stupid referee who accepted this? Do I reject it? In which case the authors write to the editor saying that who is this stupid reviewer who rejected it and here are our arguments as to why he is wrong. Every time you write a review report you are sticking your neck out and you are saying this is what I believe. The only way you can do it with minimal damage to yourself is by being factual and detailed. That is the only way you are going to save yourself. You can say yes they might be right but here are my reasons. Let them answer that and if it is okay then the editor can take it off. Even when you make it accept somebody comes and asks why you can give this is the reason why I thought this is okay. So that judgment is still difficult for me and it is difficult for most of us but I think the attempt should be made and you have to make it a lot more before you will be able to probably at one go look at something and say whether it is okay or not okay. So I am going to now go into some details of some tricks and things like that that I want to discuss with you something that works something that doesn't work so that you can also think about in your own writing process how to incorporate some of them how to look at some of them and things like that. So the first one technical writing like I said is to communicate concepts and help others take off from where you live but there is also one more reason why you write technical stuff that is what economists call as the signaling. Now signaling is very important because for example sometimes companies come and pay lots of money to students who are graduating from our college are they giving all that money because of what we are teaching the students I like to think so but I know that that is not the case companies are looking for some signals what are the signals the first signal is this kid has cleared JEE so analytical skills must be good because unless you have some amount of analytical skill you can't clear. Second thing is the person has this much of great point average because the courses are harder or perceived to be harder so they are harder or not is a different discussion altogether. This person has managed means he or she knows how to split time and do things and then the resume has lots of other activities so the person must have done really good time management so for the company what is needed are good analytical skills and good time management skills so we hire. So in this case the degree from such and such institution is just of signal value they are going to look at oh did you do this particular course what is it that they thought that is the core company's job and nobody wants to go join core companies or core companies don't come and take students from us now this is signaling business so things like this is known as signal for example buying a huge BMW or Volkswagen whatever car is a signaling it tells other people that you can afford this kind of money wearing some particular type of shoes carrying a particular kind of handbag or carrying iPhone for example or Mac computers for example they are all considered as a signal now every community will have its own signals Gandhi wears only that type of dress because that is a type of signal that he is trying to send people the others don't do Rajagopalachary doesn't do Nehru doesn't do Subash Bose doesn't do Ambedkar doesn't do they but they are all also wearing their own kind of dress and they are signaling their own constituents in academic writing the signaling happens through reference in humanities it happens in the footnotes in most of scientific writing it happens in the reference this is what I said if you send a project proposal if for example a project proposal comes to me in five minutes I have to decide whether these people are really serious or not first thing I look at is the references do they have the key references referred to or not if they have not then I know that they haven't done that 15 days of job to figure out which are the important papers in the area now already I have made up my mind through the signals about what kind of proposal it's going to be I might be wrong I'm not saying that I'm right but it is a fact of life that if I have so many things to do and if I have to evaluate the project proposal in one afternoon I would like to be that reviewer who spends one week and occasionally you do spend one week okay I recently got a paper I couldn't make the head or tail out of it it's I spent three days trying to derive everything finally I figured that the authors have made some particular error in particular step the rest of the math is correct you can't refuse and otherwise they'll think that you don't know any math so sometimes you do put that kind of effort but you cannot bank on that kind of effort being put by the reviewer all the time I don't put that kind of effort all the time and it'll be so for you to I mean if you get 15 proposals to evaluate you will also do that right if you have a class of 30 students and you give an assignment how carefully are you going to read all 30 okay so people have problems with time management one way to indicate to them that you are serious about what you are doing is by doing this signaling and the signaling is done primarily to show what is the type of scholarship you have and it is also important for another reason most of the technical writing that you do except for paper writing is reviewed by others not just for its content but also for what it tells about your scholarship I write a thesis I get a degree I get a degree not for the thesis I get a degree because people think that he can be an independent researcher in this area which means they want to know not just what is there in the thesis whether I have solved a big problem or that has lots of impact or not if that is there that is bonus but most of the times people are trying to see did he take a problem did he do a thorough analysis did he look at the literature does he know everything that is there to know about this problem and then okay if you have made some nominal progress or not then based on that you get a degree annual progress seminar reports which are essential for what they have done in the past one year and what they are planning to do in the next one year their people evaluate based on what the scholarship of the person is the subject matter experts go through and try to decide whether he knows the basic things in the area or not your BTEC presentations your seminars your seminar courses everywhere when you are evaluating students you are making evaluation not just about the material there it is not just content clarity and style and voice on top of it how much you know in the area is also to be communicated that scholarship aspect it's a bonus that is not the primary aim of the technical communication but when you are doing things like this writing thesis reports writing project reports writing project proposals trying to convince others it might be a white paper on some particular area you are advising the government that this is what their students are doing all that will depend on what kind of respect they give you based on that you know if I tell you that already this is the S. Chandrasekhar's Nobel Prize lecture would you have looked at that passage differently I am sure some of us would have would I if I had told you already that this is a retracted paper you would have looked at this information different so there is some signal and that signaling is part this is why it is not objective all the time it can never be objective it's always subjective the only thing is how much I know or how much I don't know that is what influences what I am doing so and how do you show your scholarship in references first is every community thinks that these are the standard things that everybody should know or standard papers everybody should have read you should have read those papers and you should show that you have read those papers by putting them in your reference and second thing is writing references in proper format is a very very time consuming and painful job there is lots of drudgery associated with that but just because you have put that effort to do that is what tells people that you are serious about what you are doing there are papers which you get rejected because references are not in proper format it's the worst kind of review that you can get the authors are not serious it's all very sloppy work even the references are not in proper order that is that low even though writing a proper reference would take for about several hours for you if you use good software like tech or something which some of it will be discussed I suppose without that it is a nightmare but that is what tells people as to how serious you are about what you are doing this is very very important and you should pay lots of attention to it and none of your technical writing should go out from your desk or from your email account without making sure that it is done properly and perfectly the time that you spend is worth because this is the signal I don't know every subject area might have similar things metallurgists for example lots of drudgery we put our students to make some sample grind it, polish it and cut it and do this do that all that six hours for what finally it is not a skill and most of them will not even use the skill but this is part of the profession if you are going to do that you have to go through this reference is that part of drudgery part which separates people who are serious about technical writing from people who are not serious about technical writing so because it signals that aspect you should pay lots of attention to references so you should spruce them up and you should do it properly I will show you some mistakes that people make so there are two different ways of writing things all of you must be asking your students to write reports sometimes what do you do they write the full report and show it to you are they make the important points and show it to you are they make an outline and show it to you and then they write and as they are writing you are fleshing it out what is the methodology that you use so they have to submit an outline and then so this is a common practice again this practice is against what I told you about technical writing this practice works well if you think that technical writing is whatever is already there in your mind you put it down so you write your outline you show it to me and then it is through I also used to have difficulties at least I asked for an outline but things are not clear to me and then I put something and he is upset because you know most important thing is missing and why is this coming after this why is that not being discussed here so there is lots of difficulty so even if your colleague or advisor wants you to give an outline outline kind of things I find it very hard to write because like I said I don't believe that writing process is something where everything is clear to me then I am putting the outline on paper it doesn't happen to me the other way of writing the other way of writing is you take a piece of paper or you open a new file in your computer write everything that comes to your mind and I think you should also train your students to do that if you believe in this form of writing and if it works for you then it is better for students also to get trained to do that previously used to do I mean they used to make index cards some of you might have done M-fill or something where they teach these research methodologies as they are called so sometimes it is very helpful for me if I write all the information because A it avoids the so called writer's block I sit in front of the computer I don't know how to start I don't know how to organize I don't know where to end now writing everything takes that problem away whatever comes to my mind I can write I can write about the experiment suddenly I can write about the results and discussion suddenly I can write about what the literature says what so and so claimed whether we are agreeing or not agreeing or in some places we seem to be agreeing with so and so some other places we are agreeing with so and so write everything down after you write everything down you start looking for a story this is another thing which I didn't realize you know I used to read papers the papers start beautifully I used to start from the beginning and read till the end so it says this is the title then the abstract says this is a big problem and this is what people were trying to do and we have decided to solve it and we have solved it and the introduction says so and so started in 50 looking at this 60 they did this 70 they did this even in 80 this problem didn't go away and these are the typical methodologies and so we decided that we should look at it this way and solve this so of course we have solved it and then there is an experiment and then there is a result discussion which proves conclusively that this is what is done and conclusion neatly summarizes and I always used to think that these guys are too smart right I go to the lab I write a program I want to solve some problem I end up solving some other problem then I realized that everybody is doing the same thing except that they are presenting a different so if you want to do the presentation so this again I have learned from my advisor the first thing that you write is your experiments or your methodology section because that anyway somebody whoever is going to read is going to read last very few people are going to read and anyway you will be very confident because that is what I have been doing for the past any years anyway so you are quite comfortable writing that part so write then the results and discussion part is where actually technical writing helps you clarify your thinking this is the experiment this is what I am claiming maybe there is an objection that this is happening oh I have not done that control experiment to prove that this is not happening I will go do that experiment and put so from my point of view if you want to write a paper based on your work you should be starting it from day one in your notebook you should write why you are doing the experiment what your expectation are how it will solve your problem and you should keep updating it and that is what will become finally some results and discussion session then after results and discussion you should write your conclusion after you write your conclusion then you have to now go back and write the introduction so that the question that you are going to ask this is going to be the answer this is what Sundar also pointed out the other day that we always want to summarize by asking what is the question what is the answer so find the answer first then you can find the corresponding question and you can put it there and then you should write the abstract lost because this is the order in which people will read first they will look at the title they will decide to read the paper or not then they will go read the abstract if it was written after everything became clearer to you it will carry that clarity then if they are more interested they will go read the conclusion which is more detailed if they are convinced about the conclusion they will come and look at the introduction to see in what setting what you are doing rarely maybe occasionally few people will try to reproduce your work because they want to go beyond what you have done they are the only ones who are going to read your experiments or methodology section please remember that does not mean that you will write methodology section sloppily because that goes against my scientific communication concept I have written this paper of the thousand people who are going to see finally two people are going to read that section and if I don't respect those two what kind of communicator am I okay so that also should be written up to the standard there is no letter upon that but if you write in this order it becomes easier for you to satisfy everybody and your paper will also have this story so finally the aim is to tell a story most of the times what I am trying to indicate is that the story is not clear up front so please take an approach where you can make it look like a story but that will come much later so there is lots of background effort that goes in that effort for me generally goes in by writing like this I write everything that comes to my mind and then I try to see if there is one story that I can build and once I decide that this is the story then everything is aligned towards that of course the most difficult part is that you have written that beautiful one paragraph about some problem that is not fitting in the story our tendency is to stick it in somewhere okay I don't know if you have heard this Upanyas or whatever the traditional story telling it starts with one and then there is one story inside the story then there is a story inside the story and by the time you come back to the original story you have forgotten what the story is about so we tend to do technical writing also like that and that actually affects us in the technical writing community that is not how they look at they want one story if there is another story that is branching off from there maximum you do is that okay there is also this problem we will publish it elsewhere because that is the story that we are going to write for another journal this is not the place for that even in thesis you should be ruthless when it comes to editing if it is not fitting in your scheme of things push it to an appendix at that point just make a note that there is also this problem go to the appendix to look at the detail but all through each technical document should have one focus one question one answer and that is what makes the maximum impact in terms of the story that you are telling okay so I always found that whether you write top down or bottom up depends on your philosophy of writing whether you believe everything should be in place before you start writing or you start writing because things will become clearer to you and if you believe in the second one then you should use this approach because that is helpful but if you are taking the other approach then you have to write the sections sections sub sections within sub sections paragraphs and each one of those paragraph one sentences will become the either the topical sentence in that paragraph or the conclusion sentence in that paragraph okay so we will also discuss I will show you an example so paragraphs is also very important each paragraph actually talks about a different idea so they are connected things so each paragraph should either start with what point you are going to make or should end with what is the point that you have made and it should move on okay even in email communication this is very very important each idea should have a different paragraph those are the easy emails for you to read and for you also you know humans take information in bunches so paragraphs actually help you do that I will show you a classic example of this kind of paragraph building that is done to communicate concepts so this is the approach that is taken if you are writing top down but write everything and then move around passages in these days with you know editors it's very easy you can cut whole passages put it there modify move some passage bring it back later you know my advisor says no no this is irrelevant if I delete that and tomorrow he says no no I think there is a place for this so bring it back okay I don't want to delete permanently put it somewhere else and bring it back if he or she wants it back okay so this works very nicely so this is a trick that you can try and this is the writing order what you did should be first what you got should be next what you think and why should be the third and why what you have done is of importance is the next abstract should be lost top down and the bottom up approach sometimes we tend to mix up both the things together please while editing and while checking please do so you need to find out how much of top down works how much of bottom up works for you okay for example like I said even sometimes even though I tend to think that I write the bottom up approach sometimes it is very clear to me the student has shown a particular result then I know that this is what the crux of this paper is and this is going to go into this journal they will be interested in it because of this reason so this is the background we need to put this is the question we have to ask this is the answer we have to so it is clear in my mind at least sometimes so it's not black and white it's not like people who write top down never do bottom up or those do bottom up never do so even those who come up with for example the top down approach sub sections they might have this exercise done already and then they come up and then they give that is why I said even if you demand your students that they do the top down approach that they give you an outline before they give you the full report tell them that it is ok for them to play around with it mess with it and then come up with it and whatever works to whatever extent it works for example if I am writing some lecture notes most of the times I go top down I know what topics have to be covered in what order they have to be covered and in each topic what has to be discussed what questions what tutorial problems what in class tutorial everything I know so then I go just fill in the details so it can happen and this is the last point you have to remember you always want to tell a story but to tell a story you should know the full story ok the story cannot change as you are telling it because of which is why you write the abstract which is the full story as the last ok so this approach helps a lot and it makes your writing much better the only disadvantage I found is that we all fall in love with what we write ok I used to hate my advisor because I wrote that beautiful four pages which he pushed to the abstract appendix but that is how it is I mean he said it does not fit in in this narrative so it has no place here you have to be ruthless and professional writers will tell you that the editors would do it for them or the reason why these books are so great there is somebody who is paid to do this job whose job is to cut all the unnecessary things and make book as sleep and impactful as possible and there are reviewers sometimes you know Hindu book review if you read good editor could have done a much better job cutting 50 pages or something like that they would comment ok so it is very difficult to be a ruthless editor with your own writing that is where your peers and your colleagues and your superiors come into play but as much as possible you should not hesitate to cut down things which are not resulting with your narrative this is just a technique I am not saying that four pages that I put in appendix is not great or nor did my advisor indicate that that is not great all that he said is in this context that is irrelevant ok so those judgments you have to make and if you see some of the good papers you will see that they follow these tricks that is why it becomes good right now what is telling a story you have to tell what is expected and you have to tell whether the expectation is met or not sometimes it makes an interesting story if you make them expect something and the expectation is not met ok a trick which I played with you when I gave the tutorial I said this is a journal article ok so you make you expect something then I tell you something so that is very very impactful because then you will remember this nasty trick that I did to you for longer then if I said already that it is a retracted paper you will think I can see why this is bad and we are done it is not how it is done so always tell and sometimes I have also seen people I mean this I find with more you know starting point researchers and students they will come they will make a presentation they will tell you I did this experiment I did this and this yield strength increased from 49 to 58 then we did resistance and where resistance improved from this to that and then we did this and it gives much this much of efficiency but finally it is not clear to you whether what the person got is a good improvement so-so improvement or bad improvement ok so there are markers that you can use to indicate of course they have to be used carefully if you write markers like 4300 problem problem we have solved all that that becomes floppy but there are very restrained markers that you can use but which still indicates the importance of what you are communicating again I will show you a classic example of that that is the tutorial that is coming up where by using certain words and certain way of putting things across you can make it clear to people as to what is the importance of what you are doing and that is very very important and you should not want to do that both in your presentations and in writing ok so this is what I said if you go look back at Raman and Krishna's way of announcing how they have got the new type of radiation discovered or Einstein's way of setting his hypothesis out it follows all these kind of rules they did not put the rules and write I am trying to make rules out of what people have written which I think are good rules out what kind of rules will encompass all this what I cannot put rules for is for the style and voice but content and clarity I can put and these are the rules that I am trying to fit in so it is not necessary that this is always true but you know the general principle you know what to look for so you should be able to make up your own mind on things ok now in scientific writing one thing that you don't do is just tell and not show ok you can say this is great if you want to say that of all the existing material mine is better than everything else put a plot show where all the other materials are in that property show where your material is so that it should be clear I don't have to make any claim all that I will write is as is clear from figure so and so with respect to this property this is probably the best available material at this moment right so you should always if possible replace text by figures, tables and plots whatever ok each plot is worth thousands of words in terms of what they communicate and the speed with which they communicate and the impact with which they communicate ok I can write one paragraph about how my material is great but if on a plot I show all existing engineering materials and my material is like that on top I don't need to make too much of noise right I can be very humble I can say that look at the figure it shows that our material is very good everybody understands what I mean by very good and you have to be quantitative people generally tend to write that this is a very common industrial process now when they say very common industrial process does that mean that you know 95% of the industry uses it 90% 55% 40% 40% could be very common because if the methods are only 5% and 10% right so you have to be quantitative you have to give numbers you can't make statements right then you sound very fluffy if you don't do that now when you give numbers you should also be careful you can't you know sometimes students put plot they draw a line and they show a trend but if you look at the error bars those 3 numbers are not very different within the measurement error they are the same numbers so you have to put error bars you should know the limitation of your numbers you should not report anything beyond the accuracy to which it is calculated or measured so giving quantitative information also means that you understand your statistics better you know your data much more deeply and then that should be communicated by putting all this information in now this is the point that we have also been discussing you should know your audience what you write in your annual progress seminar which is meant for 3 professors to read is different from your conference proceedings paper which will be read by the community which will be different from your journal paper because which will be read by a much wider community and it will be very different if you are writing an article for some newspaper or some local journal or something where you are trying to communicate the same information this practice of trying to write information for different audience actually improves your writing skill a lot because it keeps making you think what is it that the audience know in turn it also questions what is it that you know for sure and if you have to go back to the origin of everything and start explaining from the basic it is very easy to write a paper for your colleagues than to write something which your say parents or grandparents would understand because there is so much of background that I assume is available when I am writing for my colleagues only when I try to think in terms of communicating it with others even somebody from some other department then I will understand at a much deeper level and in a much more communicable fashion so you should always know your audience your stories change with audience and deciding on the audience is also that is why very important even in judging the writing what is it meant for for whom is it written for was it communicated by writing or through speech all these questions become important and sometimes by looking at the writing you will have an inkling as to what it is for I mean somebody notice the punctuation marks in Chandrasekhar's writing because it is spoken so there is the gaps and so so you can I mean over a period of time develop that kind of skill to even see something and sometimes I mean when I am reading it is clear oh this must have been some address somewhere and then there is a footnote which says in such and such conference this was the address based on which this article is written so that skill you can practice you can get it by continuously paying attention to how things are being communicated so these are some simple things if you are making any abbreviations first time they should show up in expanded form equation should be neatly labeled every term should be explicitly explained figure should be clean access should be labeled proper title should be given if units are important units are to be given somebody is going to read the data from that file sometime and going to use for their research any claim should be supported with references and the way references should be written is to make it easy for somebody to go locate the paper or journal or book or the information you know please do not give reference to a book where in 230 second page you know one line is written right in this page page number 230 to the last paragraph lots of young researchers will be very happy to read your papers if you do that okay some people do that no they will give reference to a 500 page no they will not tell you where if I am from the area I will know from where but if I am starting research in the area that kind of papers I do not really enjoy reading because you know the person is not considerate to somebody new right this is one way of keeping only the known people in the circle it is keeping some people out it should not be okay you say page number 232 such and such similarly when giving references some people give the titles I like a lot because the moment I see the title I already make a decision about whether I want to take a look at this paper or not okay so these are some good practices again scholarly practices if you are a scientist in some lab this does not matter but I think as teachers it matters a lot to us because we are always concerned about how a new person in the area is going to work in the area for that these things are important so please do not use informal words versions like okay or don't or can't that kind of spelling and informal spelling you know density and temperature and replaced by ampersand and similarly I mean my advisor used to insist that 0 and 1 cannot be written in numerals in a flowing text he will always ask me to write the 0 in words or unity instead of 1 so there are some stylistic things but they vary from area to area and even within an area from some community to those are community standards which you will know if you see some several papers in that area you will know what is a standard but these are general I mean don't and can't is for almost everybody here is a reference okay and that reference has to be written in this format can you take two minutes to do this rather straight forward there is no trick in this question but it tells you how to read the reference so the most common error that people make in referencing is that they will give one reference like this the second reference like this and then sometimes they will say there are three authors they will write Aguilar et al for everything the general convention is two to three names you write the full name and only beyond that you put et al and I actually personally don't like et al et al okay I am the fourth author in some paper and I am being left out simply because I am the fourth author I don't like it write everybody's name okay it's not difficult these days and sometimes people do here they will write Jeffram Jeffray, Ingram, Taylor and there they will just write Aguilar A wrong and if you write GI Taylor with G dot I dot then A dot Aguilar that is how it should be sometimes if you write just G space I space Taylor then everywhere it should be the same format in some it cannot be the first name and then the last name some it cannot be first initial then the last initial you can't flip the year for example there it is after the authors here it is in brackets right yes sir the author's name the first first name first then the like GI Taylor and in other paper they may give Taylor GI and when I list it like can I change that order you can change as long as you are consistent they will not and there are software like latex or bibtech which if you use it is very easy to convert from one to the other is it correct to change like now you should in my opinion again there are people who believe that this is where it becomes subjective some people believe that Taylor wants to be called GI Taylor who are you to say Taylor GI well I am somebody who is reading so I decide how I will call what Taylor wants to be called is his problem not my problem ok so yes you can change in my opinion and most of the journal editors will not have a problem as long as you are consistent within one step they have a problem only you know first reference is GI Taylor second reference is Aguilaria then they have a problem right there are many formats like APA Chicago or MLA is it not to mention in a paper which style we are following no ma'am usually a journal asks for it but if it doesn't suppose we are giving it in some other format no it is not necessary you can use whatever format that you think of and what is common in that area ok then it is mostly acceptable but even if it is slightly off people don't bother because even within a journal you will see that some authors follow something like I always try to give all the titles of papers rarely the editor said that it is taking lots of space to remove it if they do then I have to do of course or you have to fight with the editor that takes us to the afternoon session where you have to write some tough emails to the editor as to why you don't want to remove the name without jeopardizing your publication but that is a different issue but most of the time yes this much is the maximum number of words because when you write a full story it is very difficult to put all the stuff into very a single paragraph and most of the abstracts which we see in IT play papers so they are very brief paragraphs. So general rule is that abstract should not be more than 150 to 200 words that is the kind of so 150 to 200 words is like 5 lines that is the kind of abstract which people will read fast, appreciate, decide what they want to do of course I agree that it is extremely difficult to write such short abstracts it's like that French writer who wrote I apologize for this long letter because shorter one will take longer time for me to write so it's always true but you should put the effort and you should try to do it there is going to be some sessions on elevator pitch and things like that that is where Suntar's first day presentation was also you should still be able to ask one single question and answer in one single sentence and one single line of background and one single line of impact it is still possible and some people you know do it very stylishly and very successfully and not same people also are not always able to do it I mean I understand that it subjective it takes sometimes you might get sometimes but you should always put the effort and it is almost always possible to get it okay 100 150 to 200 150 to 200 that is because research has shown that beyond that for example if you have 200 talks in the conference nobody is going to read more than 5 sentences for any paper however great it is okay so actually there is a format in I and you see that we have to follow those formats as you are telling that reference and how we can in my opinion you should follow whichever format which is the best in your opinion now sometimes for example thesis people are very particular if you don't put in that format it will not go but even there there is lots of leeway for example thesis might say that the reference format is author paper title journal volume year but they never tell you whether the author should be named this way or that way that also then you should follow only for their documents okay reference is very specific okay for example in a 500 page if I am using page 232 line 2 that is reference it is bibliography if I say that just book without saying for what is it that I am referring to most of technical communication is based on references if you are writing a monograph of course there is a bibliography that is I have also used these books to read and use the information here but I haven't specifically claimed which information is from where reference is for claim suppose if I claim that solidification is the most important industrial process before engineering alloys can be used I had better give a reference where it is explicitly stated that 90% of the material before engineering use will undergo solidification suppose if I don't have that but if I have 5 books on solidification which I'll talk about how it is important for engineering material and several reviews then I can list them as a bibliography okay so reference is specific information bibliography is generic information from that yeah so footnote is mostly humanities most of the scientific ones they wanted as a reference that's right so even when you give bibliography sometimes you give specific reference right but there are you see there are as many referencing styles as there are people and sometimes more than the number of people because these are very you know like the internet flame what everybody believes that this is the best way and there is no logic to it so what I am saying is stick to one format whenever you are writing something if there is specific instruction that this is the format stick to that format if not use one of the more common standard formats but also use a tool to write your paper which allows you to change from one format to another format so what I am saying is stick to one format whenever you are writing something if there is specific instruction that allows you to change from one format to another format easily latex is that tool which will allow you to do that so that is basically so which style is it the kind of question raised by the external right and then we have substantiated that it is the format which is completely developed and by the university and then also use the nomination of the NPA style and NPA style so that's what we have substantiated and it's all up to so you can use it I mean all is that it's standard as you are telling that no there is no standard that's what I am telling you see even within physics journals there is no single standard because references cannot be standardized in any way it all depends on what that particular journal says or what that particular authors feel but the general rules are in one document there should be only one list of references if it is reference then it should be specific to information otherwise it should be called bibliography and if there is a norm as to what should be in that particular journal or conference proceeding or university you should follow that otherwise you are welcome to follow whatever you want to follow generally there is enough leeway except for strange cases like this in terms of how to put your reference some of the journals they write the short name and some of the journals like they write full name so it would be appropriate actually so I generally prefer full name because if I give short name somebody has to go look up the list to know what the journal is but sometimes journals insist on short name because they think that it is taking extra space in which case there is a standard abbreviation for the journals that is what you should use you should have that list with you and that the reader also will go through the same list and know which journal it is yes sir premiere on the first time we see something abstract right I can write it how possible so that is why generally conference abstracts your presentation does not have to be what you wrote in your abstract the mainly is just just to bring your writing order Right. That's right. It will promote what? Piracy. Piracy? What is that? Plagiarism. Plagiarism? No, just because somebody is asking for details does not mean that you have to plagiarize. How are they connected? I don't understand. See, I don't have the full picture. So I am going to write that this is a problem that I am planning to explore. If they are not happy, they can reject my abstract. But just because for them to accept my abstract, I am not going to plagiarize something and put it there. I think very clearly, if you don't have the complete view of general order, I think what you are bringing to some area, one can understand the abstract. Right. You are just subject to the abstract. And if they insist, don't go for that control. I mean, we are interested in science. Hello. Right. Yes. I had a quick question. Yeah. This last reference, the G.I. Taylor. Right. Is that an accepted form of... Yeah. Because there is no comma between G.I. Taylor and the Institute of Metals. Yeah. So we don't really know where the guy's name ends and where the journal begins. But that is an accepted comma. Sometimes it is. Okay. Sometimes it is. But in general, there will be a comma. Because the one on top, there is a comma. Maybe because it's very old. It's 1938 or... Yeah. And most of the time, so J starts, so that must be the journal. But there can be confusion. So there are also... See, for example, in the first reference also, there are people who believe that Aguilar, Binoc and after that there should be a comma before you start the next right. Okay. It's called Oxford comma or something. Okay. So yes. So some old times you will see things like this. In those days, there were hardly five, six references. But nowadays it is, you know, it's better to put more punctuation marks than to...