1. TECHNICAL ARTICLE WRITING
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
1

2. WHY TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION
• Directs the flow of scientific and technical information
from the labs to the different stakeholders.
• Helps in dissemination of new ideas, views and suggestions
in the relevant technical fields at multiple level.
• Leads to unification between the activities of an individual
or a work team towards a common technical work.
• Ensures free exchange of information and ideas
• Promotes and maintains technical awareness.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
2

3. WHAT is a technical communication
•We can define technical communication as the flow of technical
and scientific information and perception between various
members of scientific or professional community.
•It includes all the methods, means, media and channels.
•Effective technical comm. Is a purposive symbolic
communication, which helps in understanding of ‘what’, ‘why’
and ‘how’ of the scientific, technical and natural phenomenon.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
3

4. WHAT is a technical article
• It is a written composition treating scientific or a technical
subject distinctly.
• It is a systematic account of the result of some investigation,
research, fieldwork and other activities.
• It explores one area of interest and presents an objective
analysis and interpretation of facts, findings, inferences,
suggestions, recommendations and suggestions and
conclusions
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
4

5. PURPOSE OF TECHNICAL ARTICLE
• To Inform
• To Instruct
• To Propose
• To recommend
• To Persuade
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
5

6. Requirements
•There are two requirements of effective technical comm.
• Subject competence
• Linguistic competence.
•Subject competence is the knowledge of the relevant subject and
ability to analyze fact or information for clear presentation.
•As technical communication is the transfer of scientific and technical
information and understanding from one person to another person and it
deals with specific and technical subject matter.
•Technical subject matter includes any topic or subject that falls within
the general field of science and technology.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
6

7. • Linguistic competence is the possession of appropriate
language skills and the ability to present scientific facts and
information clearly and objectively.
• It includes the ability to use appropriate devices to present
scientific data.
NOTE: Lack of these skills may also lead to ineffective or
incomplete communication.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
7

8. TYPES OF ARTICLES
• Scientific Article
• Technical Article
• Research Paper
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
8

9. Scientific Article
•Theoretical in the treatment of the subject. It is an attempt to bring
out the research from the laboratory to the world.
•The language may be technical but has to be made understood in
simple words.
Technical Article
•Less theoretical in the treatment of subject. Concentrates on the
practical aspects of the subject .
•It relates the ideas that resulted from a research that can be used to
improve the life and society.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
9

10. Research Paper
•It is a highly specific kind of writing generally addressed to a small
body of people directly concerned with the object of that study.
•Not published in newspapers only in journals.
•A good research paper has a clear statement of the problem the
paper is addressing, the proposed solution(s), and results achieved.
•It describes clearly what has been done before on the problem, and
what is new.
•The goal of a paper is to describe novel technical results
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
10

11. Scientific articles
•Follows consistent format
•Contains same major sections names may vary
•Technical vocabulary, specialized terminology, and graphic aids
are used.
•Objective and factual.
General literary articles
•No proper format is followed
•General and simple words are used.
•The discussions do not have a scientific basis and cannot be
biased
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
11

12. Features of technical articles:
Scientific Attitude
•It is the attitude of objectivity, impartiality and directness.
•Technical comm. is impartial, unemotional and objective.
•The attention of the writer is concentrated on the facts only.
Use of scientific and technical vocabulary
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
12

13. General Guide lines
•Define the audience and the purpose
•Create a work plan to write the article
•Collect and evaluate necessary data.
•Examine the latest research on the topic.
•Prepare research notes
•Prepare a list of references and bibliography
•Develop an outline
•Write a rough draft
•Revise the document
•Finalize & write the final draft.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
13

14. Source material
•Scientific articles transfer new research and findings
to other people.
•You should locate appropriate source material
•Sources may be magazines, journals, book, media,
internet etc.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
14

15. The criteria for proper identification
•The area of your investigation
•Audience needs and expectations
•Background of your subject
•Focus of your result
•Purpose of your article
•Scope of your article
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
15

16. Literature Review
• Essential segment of any credible research
• To keep yourself updated about the latest research
• Conduct a literature review by browsing through
relevant magazines, journals or books.
• It should be relevant and believable.
Topic sentence
• The main idea.
• It should be very effective as it enhance readability.
• The rest of the sentences are an explanation or the
development of the idea contained in the topic
sentence.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
16

17. More about technical article
•Explain with tangible examples.
•Realize that your reader is not an expert.
•Quote & note your sources. Make sure you create a
document that reveals sources that are authorities on the
matter and that are recognized in a field.
•Proofread your work, always.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
17

18. FOCUS on
•Clear statement of the problem, the proposed solution's,
and results.
•Describes what has been done before and what is new.
•Describe the results in sufficient details.
•Identifying the novel aspects and significance of the results.
•What improvements and impact do they suggest.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
18

19. Title
Title should contain the idea of the paper/article.
•Avoid all but the most readily understood abbreviations.
•Avoid common phrases like "novel", "performance
evaluation" and "architecture”.
•Use adjectives that describe the distinctive features of your
work, e.g., reliable, scalable, high-performance, etc.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
19

20. Introduction
•Introduction sets up my expectations for the rest of
your paper
•The introduction must motivate your work by
pinpointing the problem you are addressing and then
give an overview of your approach.
•Introduction can be divided into three parts
Past and current status of the problem.
What you propose to do.
What can be expected as a result
•Repeating the abstract in the introduction is a waste of
space.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
20

21. ABSTRACT
It is a stand alone entity
Parts of abstract
• Purpose of research
• Methodology
• Findings
• Recommendation and conclusion
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
21

22. ABSTRACT
•Since the abstract will be used by search engines, be sure
that terms that identify your work (keywords) are found
there.
•Avoid use of "in this paper" in the abstract. What other
paper would you be talking about here?
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
22

23. Structuring a Technical Article
•
•
•
•
•
Problem
Approach/Architecture
Methodology/Implementation/Realization
Finding/Result/Evaluation
Recommendation and conclusion/Future scope
•The body should contain sufficient motivation, with example scenarios,
illustrating figures, followed by a crisp generic problem statement model,
i.e., functionality, particularly, etc.
•The paper may or may not include formalisms. General evaluations of
your algorithm or architecture, e.g., material proving the algorithm go
here, not in the evaluation section.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
23

24. • Architecture of proposed system(s) to achieve this, model
should be more generic than your own peculiar
implementation. Always include at least one figure.
• Realization: contains actual implementation details when
implementing architecture isn't totally straightforward.
Mention briefly implementation language, platform,
location, dependencies on other packages and minimum
resource usage if pertinent.
• Evaluation: How does it really work in practice? Provide
real or simulated performance metrics, end-user studies,
mention external technology adopters, if any, etc.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
24

25. Summary and Future Work
• Focuses on the main result.
• Gives the scope and areas for implementation.
• Directs towards new direction or strengthens the
present hypothesis.
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Appendix
• detailed protocol descriptions
• proofs with more than two lines
• other low-level but important details
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
25

26. While writing an article
•Write the problem section first.
•Then write the approach, result and recommendation
sections.
•The conclusions comes next.
•Write the introduction last since it glosses the conclusions in
one of the last paragraphs.
•Finally, write the abstract.
•Last, give your paper a title.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
26

27. Guidelines for Experimental Papers
•Papers that introduce a new learning "setting" or type of
application.
•Papers describing a new algorithm should be
• Clear
• Precise
• Comparable
• Performance measureable.
•Another useful way of describing an algorithm is to define
the space of hypotheses that it searches when optimizing the
performance measure.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
27

28. • Papers introducing a new algorithm should conduct
experiments comparing to state-of-the-art algorithms for the
same or similar problems.
• Unusual performance criteria should be carefully defined and
justified.
• All experiments must include measures of uncertainty of the
conclusions.
• These typically take the form of confidence intervals, statistical
tests, or estimates of standard error.
• Proper experimental methodology should be employed.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
28

29. • Descriptions of the software and data sufficient to replicate the
experiments must be included in the paper.
• Conclusions drawn from a series of experimental runs should be
clearly stated. Graphical display of experimental data can be very
effective.
• Supporting tables of exact numerical results from experiments
should be provided in an appendix.
• Limitations of the algorithm should be described in detail.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
29

30. Conference Review Process for technical
articles/papers
•It is hard to generalize the review process for conferences,
but operate according to these basic rules:
1. The paper is submitted to the technical program
chair(s) mostly in PostScript or PDF formats.
2. The technical program chair assigns the paper to one
or more technical program committee(TPC)
members, also called expert committee.
The TPC member usually provides a review, but may also be asked
to find between one and three reviewers who are not
members of the TPC.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
30

31. Any good conference will strive to provide at least three
reviews, however, since conferences operate under tight
deadlines and not all reviewers deliver as promised.
3.The technical program chair then collects the reviews and
sorts the papers according to their average review scores.
• The TPC (or, rather, the subset that can make the
meeting), then meets in person or by phone
conference.
• Then the paper is selected to be presented in the
conference.
NOTE: The identity of this TPC member is kept secret.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
31

32. Graphic presentation of information
•Graphic aids help to simplify complex information
•Graphics lend visual impact and condense large no. of
information into a small space.
•One picture is worth a thousand words.
•Should choose the correct graphics depending on the nature
of data, like graph, charts, etc.
•Represented in logical way and should supplement
information.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
32

33. Types of Graphics
Uses
Tables
Show numerical data and related
information
Graphs/line charts
Show trends in data
Bar
charts/diagrams
Show comparative data/relative
magnitude
Flow diagrams
Show the steps of a process
Flow charts
Summarize complex processes
Tree diagrams
Present classifications
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
33

34. SOME EXAMPLES
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
34

35. 123
27
26
25
e
t
a
d
Se rie s1
24
23
46.3
46.4
46.5
46.6
46.7
46.8
dollar value
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
35

36. 123
1
2
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
36

37. 123
27
date]
26
Series1
Series2
25
Series3
Series4
24
23
1
2
dollar value
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
37

38. Bauxite crushed to powder
Mixed with hot solution of caustic soda
Aluminum hydroxide dissolved in caustic soda
Solution pumped into large tanks for filtering impurities
With slow cooling,aluminium hydroxide settle out in the form of fine crystals
Crystals washed to remove caustic soda
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
38

39. Flow charts
Vehicular
pollution
Toxic
fumes
Carbon
Mono oxide
Hydro
carbons
Reduction
in oxygen
carrying
capacity
of blood
Sickness/
death
smog
cancer
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
39

40. TREE DIAGRAM
ROCKS
Igneous
Fine
Grained
extrusive
sedimentary
Elastic
Or
fragmental
Metamorphic
Dynamo
thermal
dynamic
Coarse
grained
chemical
thermal
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
40

41. Things to remember
• Use strong verbs instead of lots of nouns and simple terms rather
than fancy-sounding ones. Examples:
make assumption
assume
is a function of
depends on
is an illustration
illustrates, shows
is a requirement
requires, need to
Utilizes
uses
• Use hyphens for concatenated words: "end-to-end architecture",
"real-time operating system“.
• Numbers ten or less are spelled out: "It consists of three fields", not
"3 fields".
• Use. Eq. 7, not Equation (7).
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
41

42. • Avoid in-line enumeration like: "Packets can get (a) lost, (b)
stolen, (c) wet.“
• Brackets are always surrounded by a space:
• "The experiment(Fig. 7)shows" is wrong;
• "The experiment (Fig. 7) shows" is correct
• Never start a sentence with "and".
• Don't use colons (:) in mid-sentence.
• Don't start sentences with "That's because".
• "i.e." and "e.g." are always followed by a comma.
• "respectively" is preceded by a comma, as in "The light bulbs
lasted 10 and 100 days, respectively."
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
42

43. Footnotes
•A footnote is a note of reference or comment written at the end of the
page.
It serves the following purposes:
•Indicates the source of a fact, opinion or quotation
•Explains unfamiliar or difficult terms
•Elucidates, elaborates or validates an idea or point
•Provides additional data, makes acknowledgements
Method
•Name of the author [in normal order], book title, edition, location of
publisher, publishing co. year of publication, page no.
•H.C.Perkin, Air Pollution: Its origin and control, New York: McGraw
Hill,1974,pg.42-69
•S.P.Kumar,”Effects of air pollution", The Hindu, Jan 29,2002
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
43

44. Bibliography
•It refers to a descriptive list of sources which have been consulted
to write an article or a report.
•It includes all the sources-books, journals, magazines, websites,
articles etc.
•Organized alphabetically listing the authors name in the reverse
order.
Method
•Crystal, David. English as a global language. Cambridge;
Cambridge university press,1997.
•Hudson, Henry o. The Glass House. Washington; Prentice
Hall,1948.
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
44

45. THANKS AND GOOD LUCK
CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION
01/28/14
45