academic-writing

name	academic-writing
description	Write and edit academic papers for top-tier CS venues (ICSE, FSE, ASE, ICML, NeurIPS). Provides rigorous writing style guidance for peer review.

Academic Writing Skill

Use this skill when writing or editing academic content for software engineering and machine learning conferences.

Conservative Editing Philosophy

Principle: Minimal intervention. Only change what is actually problematic. The author's voice and intentional choices take precedence over style preferences.

Before making any change, ask:

1. Is this actually wrong, or just different from my preference?
2. Could this be an intentional stylistic choice?
3. Does this change improve clarity, or just impose a different style?

Preserve author intent:

• Keep word choices the author uses consistently (e.g., "merely", "significantly")
• Keep structural patterns the author has established
• Keep rhetorical devices like strategic repetition

Strategic repetition is valid. Repetition for emphasis differs from redundancy:

• Keep: Repeating a key thesis statement in both the response intro and the quoted paper text (reinforces the main point)
• Keep: Parallel structure that repeats phrases for rhetorical effect
• Remove: Saying the same thing twice with no added emphasis or clarity

Workflow Behavior

1. Scope the request: Identify what specific issues exist in the text. Do not invent problems.
2. Categorize issues: Separate actual errors (grammar, unclear meaning) from style preferences
3. Present minimal changes: Only propose changes for actual issues, not style preferences
4. Preserve author choices: If something could be intentional, assume it is
5. Ask before restructuring: For structural changes, ask: "Would you like me to restructure X, or keep the current structure?"
6. Apply edits only when approved

Voice and Sentence Structure

Use active voice (80%+ of sentences):

• "We propose..." / "We show..." / "We evaluate..."
• "Our method achieves..." / "[METHOD] identifies..."

Reserve passive voice for:

• Established facts: "Root cause analysis is widely used..."
• Method descriptions: "The anomaly score is computed as..."
• Emphasizing results over actors: "A 15% improvement was observed..."

Sentence length:

• Short sentences for key claims: "This approach fails when the graph is unknown."
• Longer sentences for technical explanations with embedded clauses
• Split run-on sentences only when they impede comprehension

Abstract Structure (6 Parts)

1. Problem importance (1-2 sentences): Why this matters
2. Current limitations (1-2 sentences): What existing methods lack
3. Key insight (1 sentence): Core observation or reformulation
4. Proposed solution (1-2 sentences): Method name and approach
5. Results (1-2 sentences): Specific metrics (percentages, speedups)
6. Availability (optional): Code/data links

Introduction Structure (10 Paragraphs)

1. Motivation: Why the problem matters, broad applications
2. Current state: What exists, with citations
3. Gap identification: Limitations of existing work
4. Deeper analysis: Why the gap exists (technical reasons)
5. Related approaches: What others have tried, why insufficient
6. Proposed direction: High-level idea before technical details
7. Technical solution: Method introduction with key components
8. Challenges addressed: Specific improvements over prior work
9. Results summary: Key metrics and comparisons
10. Contributions: Bulleted list (3-4 items), each starting with action verb

Claim Presentation

For contributions:

• "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first..."
• "We make the following contributions:"
• "Our key insight is that..."

For results (use specific numbers):

• "[METHOD] achieves 67% Top-1 accuracy, a 253% improvement over..."
• "Our method requires only 8ms per diagnosis, 9,700x faster than..."

For theoretical claims:

• "We show that..." / "We prove that..." / "We demonstrate that..."

Hedging Language (Calibrated Uncertainty)

Certainty Level	Words to Use
Strong	demonstrates, achieves, proves, establishes, shows
Moderate	indicates, reveals, suggests, implies
Cautious	may, might, appears to, potentially, likely, can

Use hedging for:

• Speculation beyond direct evidence
• Generalizations beyond experimental scope
• Theoretical implications not fully proven

Transition Phrases

Function	Phrases
Contrast	However, In contrast, Nevertheless, Unlike, While
Addition	Furthermore, Moreover, Additionally, In addition
Sequence	First, Second, Third, Finally, Subsequently
Cause/Effect	Therefore, Thus, Consequently, As a result, Hence
Evidence	Specifically, In particular, For instance, As shown in
Emphasis	Importantly, Notably, Crucially, Interestingly

Mathematical Writing

Before equations: Provide context

• "The anomaly score is defined as:"
• "We compute the ranking function using:"

After equations: Define variables immediately

• "where $S^I_c$ denotes the internal score and $S^E_c$ the external score."

References: Use Eq.~\ref{eq:name} or Equation~\ref{eq:name}

Displayed equations: Use for important formulas that will be referenced.

Citations

Integrate naturally:

• "Recent work on causal discovery~\cite{pearl2009} has shown..."
• "Following~\cite{budhathoki2022}, we define..."

Group by topic:

• "...has been explored in microservices~\cite{a,b,c} and cloud systems~\cite{d,e}."

Citation placement: Make clear what is being cited

• Good: "Prior work using mean and standard deviation~\cite{Li2022Circa} can degrade..."
• Bad: "We prefer median over mean~\cite{Li2022Circa}..." (unclear if citing or critiquing)

Figures and Tables

Pre-reference: Explain what to look for

• "To evaluate scalability, we measure runtime across dataset sizes."

Reference format:

• "Table~\ref{tab:results}" / "Figure~\ref{fig:overview}"
• "As shown in Figure~\ref{fig:overview}..."

Post-reference: Interpret the data

• "From Table~\ref{tab:results}, we observe that [METHOD] consistently outperforms..."

Captions: Self-contained, describe what is shown and key takeaway

Terminology Conventions

• Acronyms: Introduce once with full form: "Root Cause Analysis (RCA)"
• After introduction: Use acronym only: "RCA"
• Novel concepts: Use quotes on first use: 'internal properties', 'external properties'
• Consistency: Choose one term and use it throughout (not alternating synonyms)
• Variable introduction: "Let $x$ denote..." then use $x$ consistently

Phrases to Use

• "We propose..." / "We introduce..."
• "Our key observation is that..." / "Our key insight is that..."
• "To address this challenge, we..."
• "We evaluate on..." / "We conduct experiments on..."
• "Results demonstrate that..." / "Our findings show that..."
• "Compared to [baseline], our method..."
• "Let $x$ denote..." (for variable introduction)

Phrases to Avoid

• "Obviously" / "Clearly" / "It is easy to see" (condescending)
• "Very" / "Really" / "Extremely" (vague intensifiers)
• "We believe" (use "We hypothesize" or "We conjecture" for speculation)
• "Proves" for empirical results (use "demonstrates" or "shows")
• "Novel" / "Innovative" without substantiation
• First person singular "I" (use "we" even for single author)

Punctuation Guidelines

Prefer avoiding when possible, but do not mechanically replace:

• Em-dashes (---): Often better as commas or separate sentences, but acceptable for strong parenthetical emphasis
• Semicolons: Often better as separate sentences, but acceptable for closely related independent clauses
• Colons in prose: Reserve primarily for lists, definitions, and mathematical notation

Common Revision Patterns

Apply these only when they improve clarity, not mechanically:

Pattern	When to Apply
Split long sentences	Only if comprehension is impeded
Convert passive to active	Only if the actor matters for understanding
Shorten parentheticals	Only if they interrupt flow significantly
Introduce variables	Only if the same term appears 3+ times in close proximity