Spelling Errors to Watch For

A “trail,” not a “trial.”

A spell checker is an excellent tool, but it is not foolproof. For instance, if a misspelled word is also an English word, the spell checker will not catch it. I often see the following errors in my edits:

• “form” instead of “from”
• “expect” instead of “except”
• “leaning” instead of “learning”
• “trail” instead of “trial”
• “filed” instead of “field”

If any of these words pop up in your paper, it is worth having a quick check for their common misspellings.

Three Tips for a Shorter Paper Title

Consider the title “A novel method for kitten clustering based on fluffiness.” To ensure it is as short and concise as possible without losing information, I suggest looking at the following three issues.

• Avoid starting the title with an article.
  • Starting the title with an article can affect alphabetic indexing. For instance, if many titles begin with “A,” there will be many titles listed at the beginning of the index. To avoid this, some indexing systems list titles with the article at the end: “Novel kitten clustering based on fluffiness, A.” However, this is a complicated solution. It is best to avoid articles altogether, and indeed, some journals specifically forbid it.
  • New title: “Novel method for kitten clustering based on fluffiness.“
• Do not use the term “novel” or “new.”
  • It is often said that “publication implies novelty.” This means that all work  that has not been rejected at the peer-review stage is novel (or new), as that is a requirement for publication. Hence, it is unnecessary to specify that the work is novel.  Of course, novelty is not necessarily true for articles published in “sound science” journals, but these are an exception.
  • New title: “Method for kitten clustering based on fluffiness.“
• Do not use terms such as “method,” “algorithm,” “technique,” “framework,” or “process” unless necessary.
  • At least in computer science, almost ALL papers are about some sort of method, algorithm, technique, framework, or process. Hence, it isn’t necessary to specify this either. In a few cases, these types of terms cannot be avoided. For instance, the term “framework” might be needed, as a framework is broader in scope than a method, and this fact might be important.  However, if framework is just a synonym for method, it should be eliminated.
  • New title: “Kitten clustering based on fluffiness” or even “Fluffiness-based kitten clustering.“

Using these tips, we went from the nine-word title “A novel method for kitten clustering based on fluffiness” to the three-word title “Fluffiness-based kitten clustering” without losing any critical information about the content of the paper.