Addams moring 2010-masters-thesis-in-english_tkk-lib_apr-23

Master's thesis - scientific /
scholarly writing in English
(and Swedish)
Ronja Addams-Moring
Course Eri-0.6100 Tools for Master’s Thesis
23rd
April 2010, TKK Main Library

223rd
April 2010 Ronja Addams-Moring 2
Outline
• Is writing in English different? Why [not]?
• Where are you in your project -> current
issues
• Good engineering English
• Typical issues for Finnish and
Scandinavian writers
• Traditions, tips and tricks
• Resources for further learning

3
In English – or not?
23rd
April 2010 Ronja Addams-Moring

4Ronja Addams-Moring 4
The decision
• What influences the choice of language?
• Who decides?
• Where or when is the point of no return?
• How can one prepare?
• Discussion
23rd
April 2010

Does it matter, really?
• Are there differences between writing in
• English or Finnish/Swedish?
• primary or secondary/tertiary language?
• What differences?
• For whom do they matter?
• What stays the same?
• Discussion
23rd
April 2010

6
Earlier comments
• In English as a second/third language
– Often easier to find literature
– Often slower to read literature
– Analytical reading may be easier than
physical acting to directions
– Harder to start writing or to continue after
a break – or not!
– Easier to find concepts, vocabulary
– Harder to find one's own style / tone -
“my ears fail me!”
Ronja Addams-Moring23rd
April 2010

7
Where are you now?
23rd

Different stages & writing
1.I know my major & minor, no topic yet -> ideas
2.Tentative topic / supervisor / job / boss -> READ!
3.Topic / job official ; started on literature -> notes
4.Literature mostly found, partly read / topic
clearer, detailed / some text / work -> snippets
5.Literature read, introduction mostly written /
practical work underway -> ”lab diary”
6.Practical work done -> the major writing
7.Revising, comments, finalizing, official part
23rd
April 2010

Different issues
1.What I can / want – what is available
2.Clarify, dare to ask, first literature, working
environment, backup system, ”speed books”
3.Literature search, reading, note-taking routines ;
supporters (later: commentators)
4.Write something every day!
5.Ensure quality of practical work, keep ”lab diary”
6.Starting writing, keeping on writing, illustrations
7.Revising, getting comments; official part correct
23rd
April 2010

Major risks
1.Topic: being too choosy or too meak
2.Client / boss knows too exactly what is needed
3.Found literature or notes lost; no project
glossary for concepts; no supporters
4.Putting off writing or not taking backups
5.Shoddy quality of practical work, no ”lab diary”
6.Weak writing routine, too much or few illustr.
7.Too little revising time, no plan for getting
comments; mistakes in official part
23rd
April 2010

11
Break for coffee / tea,
Swedish writers please stay
23rd

Specifikt för svenska
1a principen: Var på din vakt + självkritisk
• “Modersmål” garanterar inte kompetens
– Ofta: skola på finska, svenska bara hemma
• Satsa på ett bra verktyg (Svefix, integrerar sig i
MS Word) och/eller språkgranskning
– MS Word är nära på hopplös med svenska
– Finlandismer förekommer (alla syndar)
– Rikssvenskarna kan inte svenska heller
• Tro enbart på sådant du själv har checkat +
antäckna källorna till termer + språkbruk
23rd
April 2010

13
Reoccurring big issues
23rd

Olde Stile or New Skool?
• Olde Stile = Russo-Finno-German / Oxbridge
– Traditional scientific / scholarly writing ; passive voice
– ”Deductive”: introductions, base, assumptions,
premises etc. in detail first
– Main point / conclusion last in sentence / paragraph /
section / work (compare with: German verb last in
sentence / Finnish, Russian suffixes last in word)
• New Skool = Anglo-American / Journalism
– Inverted pyramid structure ; active voice (we)
– ”Inductive”: main issue first, then elaborations and
justifications
– Main point first in (almost) every sentence / paragraph
/ section
23rd
April 2010

Choosing a style
• Few readers have time to read Olde Stile
texts today!
• What style(s) do you like to read?
• Legitimate differences between
– natural sciences and hard engineering
– arts and qualitative humanities
– soft engineering and other semi-quantitative
• Can one write in a personal style?
– Yes, but...
23rd
April 2010

Style: no Marketroidish, please
• Use adjectives sparingly
– famous - great - quick - poor - rich
• No comparatives without comparisons
– more - less - lower - stronger - shorter
• No superlatives (maybe in comparisons)
– most - fastest - highest - cheapest - latest
• As few adverbs as possible
– very - truly - exceedingly - highly
23rd
April 2010

Style: no Tabloidish, please
• Aggressive
– rival - war - territory - enemy - mob - attack
• Sensational
– unprecedented - imaginable - adventure
• Inexact
– "ordinary mobile phone“ - "traditional bridge
construction“ - "at broadband speeds"
• Absolute
– always - never - all - none - first - last
23rd
April 2010

Cultural issues
• Guiding the reader with meta-text
– first ... second ... finally / as we saw in section X
– in contrast / consequently / in summary / moreover
• Is meta-text a service - or an insult?
– Finno-German (Sino-Japanese, too?): rich meta-text
-> writer thinks the reader is dumb, needs ”crutches”
– Anglo-American (French-Canadian, too?): little meta-
text -> writer is lazy, dumb or unprofessional
• Do use meta-text when writing in English!
23rd
April 2010

Vocabulary -> concept coherence
• What is standard vocabulary in my topic
area? How do I find out?
• If many standards (or none) – how do I
choose?
– your professor & boss should be able to help
• Work for concept coherence from day one!
– tool: project glossary – start early & use it
• One concept = one wording / one phrase
• Shorten phrases in a standard manner
23rd
April 2010

Spoken vs. written language
• all/many kinds of
• big
• if need be
• like / alike
• looks like
• lots of
• so
• pros and cons
• several types
• large / major
• if needed
• such as
• seems as if
• many / large amount
• thus / therefore
• advantages and
disadvantages
23rd
April 2010

Good engineering English
• As simple as possible, but not simpler
– Clear, direct, active, unambiguous
– Written language, yet unpretentious
– Correct vocabulary, systematic concepts
– Coherent, neutral enough style (neither Old
Oxbridge nor Nokia Pidgin)
– Comfortable information density
– Natural use of meta-textual elements
23rd
April 2010

22
Native language related
23rd

Finns, pay attention to
• Articles! (relevant also for the Chinese,
Estonians, Hungarians, Turks...)
– a / an (U and Y act as consonants)
– the / -
– count nouns vs. mass nouns (= countable vs.
uncountable nouns)
– ”the ... of” rule
• Word order – mostly direct & fairly free ->
meaning may change!
23rd
April 2010

Scandinavians, pay attention to
• Old Norse based languages partly alike
English (Dutch, German also)
• English subclauses: direct word order
• Archaic and sound-alike (Norse root)
– baere, bära / bear -> support, carry; tolerate
– spare, spara / spare -> save; protect
– vende, vända / vend -> turn, flip; sell
– barn / bairn; barn -> child; shed, stable
23rd
April 2010

All non-native speakers
• Unintentional wordiness / terseness
– can you get a native speaker to comment?
– preferably early! (not too many pages)
• Never translate an idiom word for word!
• Everybody should - also native speakers
– use (on-line) dictionaries and thesauri
habitually
– use spell-checkers!!
23rd
April 2010

26
Central traditions and handy
tricks
23rd

Honesty
• Admitting own shortcomings and mistakes
– “These results were unexpected because previous
experiments by...”
– “We found our preliminary results too optimistic:
current GSM networks should not...”
– “The system only partially fulfilled the robustness and
performance requirements, due to...”
• Hedging (making uncertainties visible)
– usually, likely, probably, in this case, possibly...
– “Based on the results with titanium dioxide, it should
be possible to use also...”
23rd
April 2010

Global and gender-neutral
• Actively describe where your work could be used
– climates, ecosystems, cultures, languages...
• Find examples: Asia, Africa, South-America...
• He, she or – what?
– use the plural they
– use they as singular (becoming fairly standard)
– assign roles in examples, alternate women and men
in roles (note: role balance!)
– write around in some other way (beware of accidental
passive voice)
23rd
April 2010

Often mixed up
• amount vs. number
– amounts are measured, numbers are counted
– The amount of water...
– The number of glasses...
• shortly vs. briefly
– shortly = soon ; briefly = for a short time
– ”We will shortly arrive in Helsinki.”
– ”We will briefly visit Helsinki before...”
23rd
April 2010

30
Some free writing resources
23rd

The OWL at Purdue
• One of the oldest on-line resources
• HUGE! Yet fairly easily navigable, if you start here:
• Non-Purdue College Level Instructors and Students
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/679/01/
• Useful for Master’s Thesis and related work:
• Writing Engineering Reports (presentation)
• Writing Scientific Abstracts (presentation)
• Reverse Paramedic Method (for revising)
23rd
April 2010

The Mayfield Handbook of
Technical & Scientific Writing
• Also large and fairly navigable
• http://www.mhhe.com/mayfieldpub/tsw/home.ht
m
• The Writing Timeline
http://www.mhhe.com/mayfieldpub/tsw/wt.htm
• Common Writing Problems for Non-Native
Speakers of English
http://www.mhhe.com/mayfieldpub/tsw/esl-
link.htm
23rd
April 2010

Merriam-Webster Online
• http://www.merriam-webster.com/
– dictionary
– thesaurus
– word-of-the-day
– and more
• Used to be congested during Americas’
daytime – not so much 2008-2010
• US English spelling dominates
23rd
April 2010

Multilingual terminology
• IATE = Inter-Active Terminology for
Europe
– the EU inter-institutional terminology database
– http://iate.europa.eu/
• TEPA-termipankki (term bank)
– Sanastokeskus TSK’s responsibility
– has Finnish, Swedish and English user
interfaces
– http://www.tsk.fi/tepa/
23rd
April 2010

For LaTeX users
• Oetiker: The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX
2 / Pitkänpuoleinen johdanto LaTeX 2e:n
käyttöön (PDF - do save a local copy)
• http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/LaTeXPrimer/
• http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BibTeX
• http://www.hep.manchester.ac.uk/u/jenny/jcwdoc
s/latex/bibtexbasics.html
• http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/osborne/latex/
BIBTEX.HTM23rd
April 2010

For OpenOffice users
• OOoForum.org
• OpenOffice.org Writer
• http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewforum.phtml?f=2
• “I need help regarding the structure and the table of
contents of a master's thesis...”
http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=73469
• “Is there an american dictionary file that I can overwrite
with an English one...”
http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=80123
• and some 12.000 more messages in this subforum
23rd
April 2010

37
Miscellaneous, free or
(semi-)commercial resources
23rd

General tools
• Dropbox for backups (basic version is free)
• Freemind for mindmaps (open source)
• What others can you recommend / have heard
positive comments about?
If you need to choose project management
software (unlikely), start e.g. here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_proje
ct_management_software
23rd
April 2010

(Some) books are worth buying
• Robert A. Day & Barbara Gastel “How to Write
and Publish a Scientific Paper” (5th
or 6th
ed.)
• William Foddy: “Constructing Questions for
Interviews and Questionnaires...” (? ed., 2008)
• Colin Robson: “Real World Research...” (2nd
ed.)
• One good British English dictionary (CD!)
• One good British English thesaurus (CD?)
• Own field specific word list(s) / dictionary(ies)
23rd
April 2010

40
Buying language checking?
• Get an independent assessment early
– Is your English / Swedish OK enough?
– Checking cost? Payment timetable?
• Form a group, if possible (2-4 people)
• Find a language professional familiar with (your
field of) engineering, test their competence!
• Work iteratively (group & professional)
• Pay for strategic checking only (Introduction,
Conclusions, chapter beginnings & ends)
Ronja Addams-Moring23rd
April 2010

41
Almost finally
23rd

Use and share these slides,
please!
• This work (= these slides) is licensed under the
Creative Commons license Attribution Non-
Commercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
• The license terms are available via:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-
sa/3.0/deed.en
• Attribute e.g. like this: “Ronja Addams-Moring:
‘Master's thesis - scientific / scholarly writing in
English (and Swedish)’. Presentation 23rd April 2010
at Helsinki University of Technology (TKK), Espoo,
Finland, EU”
23rd
April 2010

Ronja’s contact information
• http://www.iki.fi/~ronja/
• http://www.linkedin.com/in/addamsmoring
• http://www.proz.com/translator/853646
• http://www.slideshare.net/AddamsMoring
• http://www.facebook.com/ronja.addamsmoring
• ronja [AT] iki [DOT] fi
• Skype: ronja-am
• Mob: +358 (0)40 502 8050
23rd
April 2010

44
Finally: demonstrations of
some tools and work methods
+ questions
23rd

Addams moring 2010-masters-thesis-in-english_tkk-lib_apr-23

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