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\Large\bf Some Introductory Notes on Writing
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\section{Introduction}

In your career as a graduate student of statistics, and later as a
professional statistician, you will do lots of technical writing.
Examples of some forms you can look forward to (or have already tried)
include:
\begin{itemize}
\item Research Reports for Stat Practice (your `last' MS project at
Carnegie Mellon)
\item Final Papers for Advanced Data Analysis (your `first' PhD
project at Carnegie Mellon)
\item Dissertation Chapters (and for that matter, the whole PhD
Dissertation)
\item Journal Articles
\item Class Notes if you are teaching
\item Homework Assignments
\item Homework Solutions
\item Etc.
\end{itemize}
\ldots and along the way you will also need to write professional
(as opposed to personal) email, interim progress reports, slide
presentations, letters of recommendation, job application cover
letters, etc. etc.

Each form (or, as the English teachers would say, each `genre') has
its own conventions, and you will need to learn those conventions as
you encounter each form in your work.  The good news is you don't have
to learn them all at once.  The bad news is you do have to learn them
all eventually.

I have long felt that paying attention to writing conventions is
essential to being a good scientific or technical writer.  I have come
up with a number of aphorisms about writing.  If you ask a student who
has had me for a class that required writing, he or she will tell you
that I alway say things like
\begin{quote}
\bf \ul{Technical writing should be invisible}. In songs, poetry,
short fiction, or novel writing, it can be wonderful to write
memorable phrases and sentences.  However, after I'm done reading your
technical writing, I don't want to remember any particular word or
phrase or organizational device you used.  I only want to remember the
ideas you were trying to communicate.
\end{quote}
or perhaps
\begin{quote}
\bf \ul{Meet the expectations of the reader}.  If you meet those
expectations, the reader will be free to concentrate on the ideas you
are trying to communicate.  If you do not meet those expectations, the
reader will be distracted by the disappointment, and will not be
concentrating on your ideas.
\end{quote}
If you ask one of my PhD students (past or present) they will tell you
I always say 
\begin{quote}
\bf \ul{Technical writing---even an {\em Annals of Statistics}
paper---must tell a story}.  Therefore it needs a strong plot.  It
needs heros and villains.  It needs dramatic conflict that the reader
aches to see resolved, and it needs to (at least partly) resolve that
conflict by the end of the paper.
\end{quote}
These aphorisms don't always communicate as clearly as I would like,
and so I have looked for books and articles that say what I am trying
to say about writing in a more dispassionate, less idiosyncratic way.
One of the best is an undergraduate technical writing text,
\begin{description}
\item Alley, M. (1996). {\em The Craft of Scientific Writing, 3rd ed.}
New York: Springer-Verlag.  Web resources at
\ul{http://www.writing.eng.vt.edu} and
\ul{http://www.me.vt.edu/people/faculty/alley.html}.
\end{description}
Even though it is an undergraduate text, it has been used for graduate
courses in technical writing, short courses in technical writing for
professionals, etc.  There are guidelines for everything from cover
letters to PhD dissertations based on this book.  It is becoming the
Strunk \& White\footnote{Strunk, W. Jr. \& White, E.B. (2000). {\em
The Elements of Style. 4th Ed.} BN Publishing. [Editions going back to
1918 are available on-line.  This is the classic guide to style in
general English writing.]}  of technical writing.\\

I freely borrow from the Alley text (and the websites above) below in
discussing writing.\\

It is already hard for a native speaker of English to figure out what
makes English technical writing good.  It is even harder for a speaker
of English as a second language (ESL).  I have not been happy with
past resources I have found for ESL writers, though recently I
stumbled on the following book which has some material aimed at ESL
writers that may be helpful:
\begin{description}
\item Hacker, D. (1998). {\em A Writer's Reference. 6$^{th}$ Ed.} NY:
St. Martin's Press.  Web resources at
\ul{http://www.dianahacker.com/writersref/}.
\end{description}
(I haven't had a chance to look at the book or webpage myself yet. I'd
be interested in what you think of them.)

\clearpage

\section{Approaching Writing}

There are two major writing considerations in approaching any writing
task.  {\em Writing constraints} are the external conditions within
which your document must `live'.  {\em Writing characteristics} result
from the choices you make in writing; they affect how readers assess
and interpret your writing.

\subsection{Writing Constraints}

Writing constraints are the external conditions under which your
document must live.  Who will read it?  When?  Why?  What do you want
to accomplish with the reader(s)?  Etc.  There are three major writing
constraints:

\begin{itemize}

\item {\em Audience}
\begin{itemize}
\item Who are they
\item What they know
\item Why they will read
\item How they will read
\end{itemize}

\item {\em Purpose}
\begin{itemize}
\item To inform
\item To persuade
\end{itemize}

\item {\em Occasion}
\begin{itemize}
\item Format
\item Formality
\item Politics and ethics
\item Process and deadlines
\end{itemize}

\end{itemize}
Whether you are writing email or a PhD dissertation, you have a better
chance of writing efficiently and effectively if you stop and consider
these constraints---early and often---as part of your writing task.

Some writing constraints are immediately obvious from the context in
which you are writing. For example: an {\em Annals of Statistics}
paper has a certain format; a project paper for this class has two
primary audiences---me, and the outside investigator you are working
with.  But other constraints have to be worked out each time you
write---and even these examples are not as obvious as they seem---and
there are really no simple formulas to relieve you of thinking about
them.

\subsection{Writing Characteristics}

The characteristics of your writing---the ways people would describe
your writing---determine how readers assess and interpret your
writing.  If your writing can be described as sloppy, readers will
tend to think your ideas are sloppy.  If your writing can be described
as stiff or uninspired, readers will tend to think of your ideas that
way as well.  Sloppy or uninspired---either way readers will tend to
discount your ideas before you've had a chance to communicate them
fully.  If your writing is clear, precise and alive, then readers will
tend to think of your ideas that way as well.

Your writing acquires its unique characteristics---its
personality---from the choices you make as a writer.  These choices
fall into three broad categories:

\begin{itemize}

\item {\em Content}\\
Content is the subject matter of your writing.  It is the thing that
distinguishes scientific writing from newspaper, magazine, fiction and
poetry writing.  In a scientific paper the content is usually a highly
constrained and specialized area of your work: theorems and proofs,
data analyses, developing, testing or illustrating methodology,
scientific experimentation, etc.

\item {\em Style}\\
Style is the way you communicate to your audience.  It usually
consists of three aspects:
\begin{itemize}
\item \ul{Structure}\\
Organizational signposts for the reader.  Documents, Sections,
Subsections, Paragraphs and Sentences all have: Beginning, Middle,
End.
\item \ul{Language}\\
Also called `Voice'.  Some positive adjectives for Voice in technical
writing: Precise \& Clear, Forthright \& Familiar, Concise \& Fluid.
\item \ul{Illustration}\\
Figures, Tables, Photographs, Drawings, Diagrams.
\end{itemize}

\item {\em Form}\\
Form is how you put marks on the page, and how you use those marks to
build up units of meaning:
\begin{itemize}
\item \ul{Format}
\begin{itemize}
\item {\em Typography:} Size and style of type (letters, numbers, symbols).
\item {\em Layout:} Physical appearance of paragraphs, sections, pages, etc.
\end{itemize}
\item \ul{Mechanics}
\begin{itemize}
\item {\em Grammar:} The syntax of English.
\item {\em Usage:} The semantics of English.
\item {\em Punctuation:} Traffic signs in a sentence.
\item {\em Spelling:} The bricks and mortar of meaning.
\end{itemize}
\end{itemize}

\end{itemize}

\section{The Writing Process}

Here are some typical stages in a writing project.
\begin{itemize}

\item Getting in the Mood

\item Writing the First Draft

\item Revising, Revising, Revising

\item Finishing

\end{itemize}
Writing takes a certain thinking style, just like doing proofs,
writing R code, or holding office hours require their own styles.
Writers need to be thinking about their subject matter, they need to
be imagining how their audience will read their work, and they need to
be self critical, {\em both} at the fussy, anal level of finding
spelling and grammar errors, {\em and} at the higher level of
uncovering flaws in their reasoning, logic, or evidence as they write.
Yet they must also have the courage to write confidently, to engage
the reader in their subject matter.  The way to get good at getting in
the mood to write is to do a lot of writing, so you get a lot of
practice at adopting the thinking style required for writing.

It is very easy to underestimate how long it will take to write the
first draft.  Aside from the `blank piece of paper' syndrome, there is
usually more than one way to organize a piece of writing, and it may
take time---and a few discarded attempts---before you arrive at an
organization that you are comfortable with.  Even after you have
decided how to organize your writing, it will take a long time to
hammer out the first draft.  For example I thought this document would
take me about 1.5 hrs to knock off: I know my audience, I know how I
want to organize it, and this is mostly stuff that I can write ``out
of my head'' because I have been thinking about it lately\ldots{} {\em
So far it has taken over twice that long (in first draft!), and I am
not done yet.}

It is also easy to underestimate how much revision, and how many
revisions, are required after the first draft.  In the first place,
you wrote it the way you wanted to say it the first time, why should
you have to change it?  Getting someone else to read your writing and
give you unvarnished feedback about it will quickly convince you that
your first draft is not enough to communicate with many other people.
In the second place, after the third or fourth revision, you will
hardly be able to read your own work anymore.  Either you will be
bored stiff of it and unable to concentrate anymore, or you will be so
familiar with what you are trying to say that you can no longer see
missing or misspelled words, poor organizational choices, etc.  This
is a good time to put the manuscript away for a while, or have someone
with a fresh set of eyes read it and comment.

Because it is so easy to underestimate the time a first draft takes,
and the amount of revision that is required, writing for a large
project, like a data analysis project report, should usually start
early---long before the project is done.  Problems uncovered in the
writing process may suggest additional data analysis avenues to
explore, and new data analysis discoveries may suggest a different way
to write the report.  Ideally, writing and research interact with and
improve each other.

Finally, there is the problem of finishing what you write.  If you
take the revising task seriously, you will find there is always one
more revision to make: one more mis-spelled word, one more graph or
figure to convince the reader, one more late-breaking result from data
analyses, one more way to re-organize the discussion section at the
end of the paper, etc.  At some point you have to say, ``done,
finished\ldots{} this is the best I can do and now it should be
somebody else's problem''.  Not deciding the writing is ``finished''
is a primary reason for delay of dissertation defenses, lack of
publications for junior faculty, etc.\footnote{Sometimes this is
called a ``file drawer problem'': ``Smedley has a lot of good papers,
it's just that they're all in a file drawer in his office.  He never
declares them done and sends them out for publication!''}

\section{Resources}

I mentioned the Alley book above.  It is my favorite; you should log
on to {\tt amazon.com} right after class and buy it.  You might also
want to buy the companion volume {\em The Craft of Editing}.  

Alley's main resource page, {\tt http://www.writing.eng.vt.edu/}, has
examples, exercises, course notes, and Powerpoint slides for teachers.
The slides elaborate on most of the topics in this introduction:
\begin{multicols}{2}
\begin{verbatim}
01-introduction.ppt
02-formatting.ppt
03-mechanics.ppt
04-editing.ppt
05-structure.ppt
06-language.ppt
07-illustration.ppt
\end{verbatim}
\end{multicols}
Alley's other webpage, {\tt
http://www.me.vt.edu/people/faculty/alley.html} contains additional
examples and course notes.  The books contain much more.

Although they are not as comprehensive as a textbook (nor are they intended
to be!), I like the following two articles a lot:
\begin{description}\itemsep=0pt\parskip=0pt
\item[] Bem, D. (2002). Writing the empirical journal article.  In
Darley, J. M., Zanna, M. P., \& Roediger III, H. L. (Eds.)
(2002). {\em The Compleat Academic: A Career Guide.} Washington, DC:
American Psychological Association.
\item[] Gopen, George D. and Swan, Judith A. (1990) The science of
        scientific writing. {\em American Scientist}, {\bf 78},
        550--558.
\end{description}
Bem discusses the overall organization of an article, what should go
where, and why.  There are also brief discussions of style, grammar
and the like.  Gopen \& Swan clearly and precisely describe a
challenge of writing that is ``above'' spelling and grammar but
``below'' overall organization of a paper or paper section: organizing
sentences to help readers concentrate on meaning by meeting readers'
expectations about where different kinds of information should be in
the sentence.  (Yes, I know, this sounds very dry.  But it is not!
[People say the same thing about statistics, and we know better,
right?])

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