Even the best of us need the occasional reminder about the best ways to write papers (and abstracts, which is something at which I have very little practise). Via Light Blue Touchpaper, Markus Kuhn tells us how not to write an abstract, and via his own Cambridge Labs home page, he gives us some tips for effective electronic publishing using LaTeX and PDFs.
I found the section in the latter regarding titles illuminating; I'd previously noticed that Europeans tend not to capitalise as much as us North Americans, and it actually bugged me. I can see the reasons for it, although I'm not sure that I'd switch - while many of my users are European, none of my fellow staff members are, and I don't want to confuse my bosses.
Apropos of not much, this paper drove me batty with poor layout and its use of "impact". Looks interesting, but dang. I hadn't been going to say anything about it til I'd read it in full, but then I came to this post and thought it would serve as a useful example for one of the things that makes me crazy. Its abstract isn't bad though, beyond the mere language. The table of contents, however, is just begging for some LaTeX love.


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