Paper/Thesis Checklist

1. Spell check. You can use ispell or aspell on LaTeX documents.

2. Edit your bibliography. Use consistent abbreviations of conferences/journals in conference version to keep short. Use full name of conference/journal in journal version. Include page numbers, volumes, and issue number when appropriate. Ensure author are all first initial and last name. Use "et al." for more than about 3 authors on conference version. Put {} around acronyms and units in title to preserve case. BE CONSISTENT.

3. Each caption should conclude what the reader should infer about the table or figure. Don't say what the figure is, this information is in the title and axes.

4. Use Section~\ref (or Chapter in thesis), Figure~\ref, Table~\ref and Equation~\eqref for all references.

5. Fix any missing references to sections, figures or the bibliography. These show up as ?? in LaTeX generated PDFs.

6. Each paragraph should have a comment before it that summarizes the topic sentence.

7. Introduction should try to be one page and end with a summary about the remaining sections.

8. Make a bulleted list of the contributions of this paper before the paper summary at the end of the introduction.

9. Use LaTeX for all numbers: $2.9mW$, $3GHz$, $4ns$, for example. No spaces before units.

10. Define all acronyms on the first use Like This (LT). Space before the opening parenthesis.

11. Abstract should state in a few sentences: what is the problem, why it is hard and/or important, how we solve it, and our main result. No more and no less.

12. All plots should have titles and axis labels (with units).

13. Avoid color plots or at least have unique line styles so it is clear when printed in black and white. Make sure lines and dots are thick enough to see (Make sure all plots are consistent too -- having different formats looks sloppy.)

14. Never use a bibliography reference as a noun. For example, "In [4], the authors..." or "[4] showed that". Instead say Author et al. and use a citation.

15. Avoid unnecessary words: "so as to" -> "so" (see elements of style)

16. Avoid vague words and phrases: huge (use a number or comparison) X is important (say why!) X is a major problem (say why!)

17. Avoid subjective words: novel, exciting (if the first to do something, say so!)

18. Use active verbs:

20. Don't start sentences with And and Or. Instead, make a compound sentence.

21. Equations should be used in a sentence including punctuation and describe all variables unless previously defined. An example is a line,

      y=mx+b,            (5)

where m is the slope and b is the offset. The first letter after the equation shouldn't be capitalized or indented (by not leaving a blank line in LaTeX) since it isn't starting a new sentence.

22. When low power and high speed are used as adjectives, they should be hyphenated: a low-power, high-speed design compared to something that is low power or high speed since low describes power.

23. Only capitalize proper nouns (names, places), acronyms being defined or the beginning of a sentence.