Writing It Good

Much of the weekend is spent on looking at the various students' scripts from the Assignments and Final Exams. I also spend time on writing back the solutions for the final exams in detail as we are asked to update our teaching files for auditing purposes. Some of these solutions are pretty much in my head or scribbled somewhere in loose sheets of paper written while I was preparing the exam questions. However I would like to put them neatly so that it can be referenced to later by the department or even by my own self (in such a way that I don't have to think about them twice). Here is an example.

Some might find this silly or time-wasting but I have been practicing this for a long time that it becomes a habit. It does indeed slows me down but I find it satisfying to see these solutions done neatly. In fact, if I have the time, I would have actually typed it out but I don't have the luxury at this stage.

To a certain degree, I tend to be perfectionist in my writing. Brooding much of the ideas before even writing anything down. The end results are usually good on average. I remember when I submitted my PhD thesis, the examiners (Chris Isham and David Fairlie) made the remark that my thesis was probably one of the few thesis written by an international student with very few mistakes. There were mistakes, of course, and I can remember them pointing out one as a classic one (I'm afraid I can't remember what it is now). Even as non-significant as my blog posts, I do tend to brood for a certain period before writing them down. So the blog posts that you see are not that spontaneous but of course I am less careful with blogs than say writing an official document. I would often revisit my blog posts to make corrections when I have time.

Perhaps because of this habit, I tend to be hard on my students when they write their papers or thesis. I remember when I wrote my first paper and send it to my supervisor (Richard Ward) to check, it came back almost everything in red. Now the practice of trying to be perfect makes even good sense when writing reports and minutes. Early in my career, I remember trying to correct how minutes of meeting being written but I was passed off being too pedantic and was getting on the nerves of someone senior. But now, I've seen how upper management members scrutinise write-ups made by Faculty members to the extent it somehow instill fear for those preparing it. When I first write a working paper for trying to bring international guests (prize winners) to UPM, they just dismissed it off as being sloppy. Of course, they did come in the end (after some wrestles and pushes). I was simply not trained then on how to write the working paper in a way that they wanted. After a while, I saw the pattern of documents they wanted; it is almost like preparing legal documents, which is fine generally (but I do feel content is much more valuable than the writing style and format). I also see the need of balance of producing good quality documents against time invested in producing them particularly if it only gets filed away for eternity.

Lately, I do sense some decline in the standards of writing from some documents that I have looked into; thesis, papers, proposals and even minutes of meeting. Is it due to all these messaging styles found in social media or people simply do not have the time to check their own writings? Sensing a degree of importance in these write-ups, before leaving the institute, I did ask my staff to try and follow the style of minutes written by the upper management for the institute's own good. With respect to scientific writings, I do expect lucid and straightforward writing styles from my students; not being too artistic or informal as it was a script in the Hollywood movies. When it comes to text with mathematical equations, I have always told my students that equations are to be treated as parts of sentences. The best way to know, is to read out the equations when incorporating them in the text and see whether it makes sense or not.

It does take practice to develop a good writing style. I learned a lot from reading books like Sir Ernest Gowers, "The Complete Plain Words" and Day & Gastel's "How to Write and Publish A Scientific Paper" (bought when I was still studying and bought the second time when I lost them). When I returned home and got involved with Publications Committee in ITMA and later in INSPEM, I bought books like the Chicago Manual and the CBE Manual. Finally I told my own students, do be careful on what you write as once it is published, it will be read by many and it will bear your name forever.