---
name: scientific-writing-conventions
description: Structure, hedging and claim discipline for a technical write-up that will be read by people who will check it.
when_to_use: You are drafting a paper, a technical report, or any document making empirical claims.
tags: [research, writing]
---

# Write so a sceptic can check you

The reader's question is "is this true?" Every convention below exists to let
them answer it without asking you.

## Structure

```
ABSTRACT     problem, what you did, headline result WITH its number
INTRO        why this matters, what was missing, contributions as a list
METHOD       enough that a competent reader could reimplement it
RESULTS      what happened, including what did not work
DISCUSSION   what it means, what it does not, threats to validity
```

Contributions belong as an explicit list. If you cannot write three sentences
each starting "we show that...", the work is not finished.

## Hedge exactly as much as the evidence hedges

Both directions are failures. "Our method improves retrieval" from one dataset
overclaims; "may potentially suggest a possible improvement" for a result with
tight confidence intervals underclaims and reads as though you do not trust your
own experiment.

Match the language to the strength:
- measured, with intervals, replicated → *shows*, *demonstrates*
- measured once, single configuration → *indicates on X*
- consistent with, not directly tested → *is consistent with*

## Every number carries its conditions

A number without its dataset, configuration and variance is not a result. Put
them in the sentence or the table, never in a paragraph three pages away.

## Threats to validity is not a formality

State the ways you could be wrong: one seed, one hardware target, a benchmark
your method was tuned on, a baseline you implemented yourself. A reviewer will
find these; a paper that names them first is far more credible than one that
lets them be discovered.

## Say what you did not do

Scope limits are part of the contribution. "We do not evaluate on multilingual
corpora" prevents a reader assuming you did and finding out later — which costs
you far more credibility than the limitation itself.