VB037/13
Justin Zobel. Writing for Computer Science: The Art of Effective Communication. Singapore: Springer, 2000.
Joseph M. Williams and Joseph Bizup. Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace. 11th ed. New Jersey: Pearson, 2014.
Exercise 1) Look at the following two texts. Focus on the order in which the information is presented and rewrite
accordingly. The important information is in bold.
Competition by Asian companies with American companies in the Pacific is the first phase of this study. Labor costs
and the ability to introduce new products quickly in particular are examined. A plan that will show American
industry how to restructure its facilities will be developed from this study.
A determination of involvement of lipid-linked saccharides in the assembly of oligosaccharide chains of ovalbumin
in vivo was the principal aim of this study. In vitro and in vivo studies utilizing oviduct membrane preparations and
oviduct slices and the antibiotic tunicamycin were undertaken to accomplish this.
Faked coherence
Exercise 2) Look at the following text. Is there something wrong with it?
Because the press is the major medium of interaction between the president and the people, how it portrays him
influences his popularity. Therefore, it should report on the president objectively. Both reporters and the president
are human, however, subject to error and favoritism. Also, people act differently in public than they do in private.
Hence, to understand a person, it is important to know the whole person, his environment, upbringing, and
education. Indeed, from the correspondence with his family, we can learn much about Harry S. Truman, our thirtythird
president.
Needless Complexity
Exercise 3) The following texts are too complex. Change accordingly.
And, therefore, it is important to note that, in Eastern states since 1980, acid rain had become a serious problem.
Some people are predicting, because of the length of Internet calls and the amount of bandwidth the calls take, that
one day in the not so distant future, the entire telephone network, or at least a great portion of it, will cease to
function, and all telephone calls will fail to connect. This idea is referred to by some as the “Gridlock Theory.” Others
advise that steps can be taken to avoid such a disaster, such as upgrading telephone lines and limiting Internet use.
VB037/13
Justin Zobel. Writing for Computer Science: The Art of Effective Communication. Singapore: Springer, 2000.
Joseph M. Williams and Joseph Bizup. Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace. 11th ed. New Jersey: Pearson, 2014.
Ambiguity
- Make sure the reader understands what you are trying to say. Compare the following sentence with the
rewrite:
The compiler did not accept the program because it contained errors.
- The program did not compile because it contained errors.
Exercise 4) Rewrite the following sentences to avoid ambiguity.
There is a new version of the operating system, so when using the “fetch” utility, the error messages can be ignored.
In addition to skiplists we have also tried trees. They are superior because they are slow in some circumstances but
have lower asymptotic cost.
Additional memory can lead to faster response, but user surveys have indicated that it is not required.
Lack of clarity
- Sometimes you know your material so well that you forget to make it clear for the reader.
- The problem may be in ambiguous wording or lack of additional information.
- Do not be afraid to split a statement into multiple sentences.
Exercise 5) Rewrite the following so that it becomes clearer and more elegant.
The results show that, for the given data, less memory is likely to be required by the new structure, depending on
the magnitude of the numbers to be stored and the access pattern.
In the first stage, the backtracking tokenizer with a two-element retry buffer, errors, including illegal adjacencies as
well as unrecognized tokens, are stored on an error stack for collation in a complete report.