During this week, Miss Amreet taught us on
the important styles for informative websites. When we do an academic writing,
technical or even scientific writing, it is important to use MLA/APA/The
Chicago Manual of Style/Scientific Style and Format: The CBE Manual. Secondly,
for the style in academic writing, there are three sections that we must
consider, first is the front matter. Second is the body and for the third
section is the back matter. For the front matter, we need to have the title
page, abstracts, executive summary, table of contents and list of illustrations.
Meanwhile, for the body part of academic writing, we need to add the
introduction, survey of literature, research questions, methods, results,
conclusion and recommendation. As for the third and final section, we can
consider putting the glossary, list of symbols, references, bibliography or
appendix.
There
are many styles in writing an academic writing. It all depends on the ‘field’
itself. Firstly is lab report sort-of-writing. Next are interim reports and
site studies. Most sites that publish and archive academic articles and industrial
reports offer different versions of each item-one for reading on screen, the
other for printing (html,pdf). Next, all publication and copyright information
should be included in the document (before printing). Finally, the pagination should
also be correct.
After
that, we learned on the technical, academic and scientific style. Usually,
scholarly and scientific journal writers employ specific subject-and
audience-driven technique. But we need to avoid jargon. Jargon is actually
sentences may be densely packed with technical terminology. They are written
for expert who are comfortable with the vocabulary and syntax of their field.
As for the complex syntax; the text features a substansial number of complex,
compound and complex-compound sentence structure. Next, if we use symbols and
equation, it is critically important to proofread all symbols and technical
terms for even slightest error. Whereas words, phrases or entire passages in
other languages; some academic discourse adopts the convention of assuming that
well-educated scholars in literature and the humanities should have a reading familiarities
with Latin, German, French, and possibly ancient Greek. Meanwhile, it is
recommended for us to have extensive explanatory footnotes/endnotes. This is
because, many scholarly works provide footnotes and/or endnotes to help clarify
and explain historical, scientific, arcane, or archaic materials.
Next,
we also learned on how to construct online help files and manuals. They are
often created as a separate small programs that can be accessed from the
toolbars on powerful games and software commonly in use. These sub-application
tend to incorporate detailed contents, indexes, hyperlink, multimedia files,
and search functions. Not only that, online manuals and help files are created
for various purposes. Firstly, it is for product ownership, use, and care.
Secondly, it is for product repair and maintenance. Thirdly, it is for policies
and procedures and lastly, it is for system administration and management. Last
but not least, this online help files and manuals have to be user-friendly in
design. The rule is to not make visitors work too hard. We then also learned on
a few guidelines when working as a writer. Firstly, we need to welcome visitors
to the site. Secondly, maintain a respectful tone. Thirdly, do the work by
putting some thought and planning into resources we put online. Fourthly is to
simplify things. We may use bulleted lists, alphabetical indexing and logical
categories. Fifth, we can provide printable version and finally, keep
distraction to a minimum.
