Computing Writer's Workshop

This page gives access to information about the Computing Writer's Workshop as coordinated in Spring semester 2004, and (and previously in Summer 1999, Spring 2000, Summer 2000, and Spring 2003) by Gary T. Leavens, at the Department of Computer Science at Iowa State University.

Students must be registered for one credit of Com S 610 WW to attend.

Meetings

In Spring 2004, we will meet in a room and time to be announced.

Schedule

Announcement

See the announcement of this workshop.

Homework

• Homework from the current offering.
• Old homework from the past offerings.

On-line resources

• Purdue's Online Writing Lab
• Justin Zobel's page on Technical Writing and Research Ethics
• Mark Leone's Advice on Research and Writing
• Vasant Honavar's page on Graduate Studies, Research and Careers in Computer Science
• Guide for new referees of Theoretical Computer Science (from ACM SIGACT News, 20(4):92-99, November 1989).
• David Patterson's How to Have a Bad Career in Research/Academia
• How To Get Your Paper Accepted At OOOPSLA (by Alan Snyder, from the OOPSLA '91 Proceedings, Appendix, p. 359-363), which contains some good advice about writing conference papers.
• How to Get a Paper Accepted at OOPSLA (from a panel at OOPSLA '93, pages 429-436 of the proceedings). Point 4 of Kent Beck's remarks (at the end, page 435) has the bit about the four-sentence abstract.
• How to have your abstract rejected, anti-advice by van Leunen and Lipton.
• Hypertext Help with LaTeX
• How to do Research At the MIT AI Lab (David Chapman, editor).
• The guide to Grammar and Writing at Capital Community College of Hartford, Connecticut.

Interesting Books and Papers

The following are some books and papers we recommended.

• William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. The Elements of Style (Third Edition). MacMillian, New York, 1979. (There is also an on-line version of the 1918 version by William Strunk Jr.)
• Donald E. Knuth and Tracy Larrabee and Paul M. Roberts. Mathematical Writing. Volume 14 of MAA Notes, The Mathematical Association of America, 1989.
• Mary-Claire van Leunen. A handbook for scholars (revised edition). Oxford University Press, New York, 1992.
• George D. Gopen and Judith A. Swan. The Science of Scientific Writing. American Scientist 78:550-558, (November-December, 1990).
• Joseph M. Williams. Style: Toward Clarity and Grace (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing). University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995.
• Donald C. Woolston, Patricia A. Robinson, and Gisela Kutzbach. Effective writing strategies for engineers and scientists. (Lewis Publishers, Chelsea, Mich., 1988)
• A. J. Smith. The Task of the Referee IEEE Computer, 23(4):65-73, April 1990.
• P. R. Halmos. How to write mathematics. L'Enseignment Mathematique, 16:123-152, 1970.
• Richard P. Gabriel. Writers' Workshops & the Work of Making Things: Patterns, Poetry.... (Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Boston, Mass., 2002)