2DkcTXceO

M. Davidian 589s/he needs to have followed up to that point. Motivate and describe the stepsleading to your main results, and relegate any derivations or side issues thatcould distract from the main flow of ideas to supplementary material for ajournal article (or don’t include them at all in a grant application). Relatecomplex concepts to concrete examples or simple special cases to assist novicereaders grasp the main ideas. This is especially effective in grant applications,where reviewers are likely not to be experts.The following principles seem obvious, but you would be surprised howoften authors violate them! Do not refer to ideas or concepts until after youhave introduced them. State your assumptions up front and before or whenyou need them for the first time. Do not use acronyms, terms, symbols, ornotation until after they have been defined; for that matter, be sure to defineevery acronym, term, and symbol you use. And only define notation you reallyneed. The less clutter and information a reader has to remember, the better.Be as clear, concise, and helpful as you can. With limited space, everysentence and equation counts and must be understandable and unambiguous.Avoid “flowery” words if simpler ones are available, and if you catch yourselfwriting long sentences, strive to break them into several. Paraphrase and interpretmathematical results in plain English to give a sense of what resultsmean and imply. Use a formal, scientific style of writing (different from thatused in this chapter). In particular, do not use contractions such as “it’s” and“don’t,” and use only complete sentences; although these constructions maybe used in a “popular” piece of writing like this one, they are not appropriatein scientific writing. Grammar and punctuation should be formal and correct(ask a colleague for help if English is not your native language), and be sure tospell check. Consult the articles in your target journal for examples of stylisticand grammatical conventions.When reporting empirical studies, be sure that everything a reader wouldneed to reproduce a simulation scenario him- or herself is presented. Donot display mind-numbing tables of numbers with little explanation; instead,choose to present limited results that illustrate the most important pointsand provide detailed interpretation, emphasizing how the results support thepremise of your story. In fact, consider if it is feasible to present some resultsgraphically, which can often be more efficient and effective than a tabularformat.In summary, do not leave your reader guessing! One useful practice toadopt is to step into your audience’s shoes often. Read what you have written,and ask yourself: “Would I be able to understand what comes next given whatI have presented so far?” Be honest, and you’ll identify ways you could do abetter job at conveying your message.You may not have this luxury in a grant application, but in a journal article,you do. Once you’ve told the story, “tell ’em what you told ’em.” Usually,this would be done in a final Discussion or Conclusions section. Restate whatyou set out to accomplish and review what was done to address it. Highlightthe key findings, and discuss their significance and impact. It is just as im-