Writing advice
In general, try to write text that you would like read yourself. Ideally, it is a pleasure to read, concisely formulated and well structured.Loose "This"
I have developped an allergy against the lonely use of the word "this". It is often unclear what "this" concretely refers to, which can be particularly confusing in mathematical proofs. Lonely uses of "this" are convenient for the writer, but not for the reader of mathematical texts, because it puts the burden on the reader to figure out what exactly is meant by the reference. In most cases, the problem can easily be fixed by adding an additional word after "this" that clarifies what is meant.Examples:
- We will see how error-correcting codes describe good classical strategies and use this OBSERVATION to analyse what happens when the number of copies goes to infinity.
It turns out that this is because...It turns out that this effect occurs because...- This SCHEME is well defined.
will
Some authors of mathematical texts overuse the future tense with "will". This form can be used at the beginning of chapters or sections (or sometimes proofs) where you preview what will happen in the remainder. After that, it is often cleaner to skip any "will"s and simply use the present form.Temporal words
Often, temporal words like "now" and "then" can simply be omitted in mathematical texts.Capitalization
Various rules exist. Personally, I like to capitalize anything that is followed by a number. For example, "we use the results from Section~2 and Theorem~4.5", but "as seen in the previous theorem." [Bonus tip, use "~" in latex to avoid a line break between Section and 2.]Numbering of theorems, lemmas, definitions, etc.
The purpose of numbering mathematical elements is to easily find them and being able to refer to them. Therefore, use the same counter for theorems, lemmas, definitions, corollaries etc. Ideally, you use section or chapter numbers as first part of the numbering scheme. Have look here how to set this up.In the llncs Springer proceedings format, you can use the envcountsame and envcountsect options as class options:
\documentclass[envcountsame,envcountsect]{llncs}
Spell checker
Use a spell checker! I like https://languagetool.org/ which works well with overleaf, and knows how to ignore latex commands.Short forms, abbreviations
Mathematical texts are somewhat formal, so do not use short forms like "don't" and "can't", but use "do not" and "cannot" instead.In general, go easy on the number of abbreviations you use. Cryptographers can be very fond of abbreviations. Only use them if they occur at least three times in your text. Make sure you write them out the first time you use them. For longer text, it might be worth adding an appendix explaining all abbreviations (and mathematical symbols).
Hyphenation
English is an right-associative language. Therefore, in case of 2 (or more) adjectives, the right-most words stick together. So, in "random oracle model", one talks about "oracle models" that are "random", whereas in "random-oracle model", one talks about "models" of "random oracles". Therefore, if you want the first and second words to stick together (rather than the second and third), you should put a hyphen in between. Check this page for more elaborate rules, exceptions etc.Examples:
- One of the main topics in error correction are error-correcting codes.
- In the worst case, the worst-case security is pretty bad.
- A key exchange protocol is the important one among many exchange protocols. A key-exchange protocol is a protocol that exchanges keys.
Useful links
- Ulle Endriss' how to write a paper.
- Writing in the Sciences by Dr. Kristin Sainani. I heard many good things about this online coursera course, but never followed it myself.