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D

Double quotes

by Yee Wei Law - Sunday, 25 June 2023, 5:02 PM

To typeset double quotes around a string, do ``string'' 👈 two back quotes for the opening quote, and two apostrophes for the closing quote.

H

Hyphenation

by Yee Wei Law - Sunday, 25 June 2023, 5:08 PM

Hyphenation is probably one of the most overlooked aspects of good writing. Grammarly has a useful guide.

One of the rules mentioned in the guide governs the combination of an adverb and a past participle, e.g., “forward biased”.

When “forward biased” is used before a noun, it should be “forward-biased”, e.g., “a forward-biased diode”. Without the hyphen, “a forward biased diode” could be mistaken as a “biased diode” that is “forward”.
When “forward biased” is used after a noun, it should be written as is, e.g., “the diode is forward biased”.

Keyword(s):

R

Reference management

by Yee Wei Law - Monday, 27 February 2023, 3:09 PM

Curating references

The starting point of learning is identifying reliable sources of information and obtaining learning resources.

Given the right search words, a search engine (e.g., Google Scholar for academic publications) would typically return more references than we have time for. We need to identify the good-quality references — separate the wheat from the chaff — by checking:

For academic literature

the number of citations — the higher the better but what is considered “high” depends on the area of research;
the journal or conference the reference was published in, or the publisher, e.g., an IEEE Transactions article is preferrable to an IEEE Access article;
the academic standard of the content.

For non-academic literature

the organisation that produced the reference, e.g., NIST is preferrable to a vendor, and a market-leading vendor is preferrable to an obscure one;
whether the treatment is more about informing the public or promoting a product/service;
whether the author has a credible track record in the area.

Fig. 1: Tell-tale signs of an unsuitable reference.

Fig. 1 shows an example of a low-quality conference paper. This paper has a Google Scholar citation count of 25 (which happens to be an unreliable indicator in this case), was published in a generic conference, and the content is riddled with problems. Avoid referencing publications like this.

Among the good-quality references, prioritise the more recent ones, because they might provide a good literature review that introduces you to older, potentially significant references.

If a reference is not available in the public domain or library, make an inter-library loan request. Sometimes, informal but publicly available resources such as web pages, lecture notes, lecture videos can provide a quicker introduction to your topic.

Recording references

Upon acquiring a reference, its details need to be recorded. See attachment below 👇 for guidance.

record_ref.pdf