How to Write a Technical Paper [pdf]
Many years ago I picked up a nice idea on how to write abstracts that efficiently convey the idea of a paper. Unfortunately, I don't remember where I read it, so I can't give proper credit.<p>The idea is that you should write your (first version of the) abstract using only four sentences:<p>Sentence 1: State the problem<p>Sentence 2: State the consequences of the problem<p>Sentence 3: State your solution<p>Sentence 4: State the consequences of the solution<p>This makes a very to-the-point abstract. Sometimes these work right away and sometimes they have to be refined through multiple iterations. If they need further iterations, the four-sentence abstract is a great starting point.<p>Examples:<p>Most hamburgers are larger than what can be held with one hand. This makes them hard to eat. We present a new type of hamburger, called the Hand Burger, that is small enough to hold in one hand. Experimental results show that the Hand Burger increases eating speed by up to 150%.<p>The node_modules directory of Node JS applications often contain multiple copies of the exact same file. This increases the size of the node_modules directory and decreases application startup speed. We have developed a caching scheme for Node JS modules that maintains a single copy of each unique file. This mechanism reduces the size of the node_modules directory by 75% for the most commonly used Node JS applications and increases startup speed by 25% on average.<p>Horse-drawn carriages have a hard time moving on land because of vegetation. This makes travel slow, or outright impossible. We present a novel concept that we call roads. Our measurements show that roads decrease travel time from years to days to reach the 20 most popular destinations throughout the Roman Empire.