21jul13 

TERMPAPER ADVICE

This is a supplement to the Advice pages taken from the Moodle for 
netMA348Su013. 

This thread develops general advice applicable to more than one
student. I will add to this thread as I read through the Project Report
2 this weekend. Note, that in the full draft, due this coming week, I
may just write a the key word as defined below:

KEYWORDS AND THEIR EXPLANATION 

MACARONI: 
Mixing roman font (text) with mathfont in formulas and
equations. All math symbols, even single, inline letters, must be
in mathfont. Failing to do this is a serious stylistic error and will, 
if still present in the final submission, cause demerits.

This bad habit is aggravated by a common error by LaTeX beginners,
namely to switch in and out of mathmode too frequently. Most 
commonly, you forget to dollars around the same letter, which occurs
inside a formul, when you refer to it again. Also, note that in
proper LaTeX, trig,  log, exp functions take an escape so that 
they are printed in roman font and properly typeset. 
For example, instead of writing

3$\mu$ sin($\phi t)$+ L , write $3\mu \sin(\phi t) + L$ in your code.

QUOTES : LaTeX, as opposed to pseudo-LaTeX (Moodle, texPad, filecards) 
distinguishes between opening quotes and closing quotes. The former
are writte as  `` (two back-ticks) not as '' (two fore-ticks) or " (quote key).  
I will yellow mark at least one of your occurrences of
this error, and you're responsible for the remaining instances.

MISQUOTES :  
Much more serious is the common misuse of quotes in typeset
and word-processed compositions because you are too used to internet editors 
(email, facebook, twitter) which cannot not handle italics and boldface. 
In an email, for instance, we put quotes around a word which we do not want
to be taken literally; a word that does not mean what you read, 
but something else than it says. Since this can be read either as a 
technical use of the word, or an ironical use of the word, we often use
emoticons to help distinguish.   

In typeset text, such a technical use of a word or phrase comes in italics
the first time it is used (and usually defined by its usage). And after
that, no quotes are needed. 

Quotes, in a typeset text, when they do NOT indicate an actual
quotation, indicate an ironical meaning of the word or phrase. Thus the
reference to "the desktop" (for the virtual-desktop on your computer) is
appropriate in email, but not in an essay. If you think the reader
doesn't know the techical meaning in the current context, italicize 
and explain. Thereafter, use neither quotes or italics, because there is 
nothing odd about jargon. The initial italics mark the word as jargon.

GRAMMAR: 
MA348 ACP is considered the second composition course for which
Comp I is a prerequisite. Therefore, standard English grammar is your 
responsibility. 

This is paricularly difficult problem for non-anglophone students.  
So, those of you who find the "grammar" comment in your drafts, please
find yourself an anglophone proof reader. This person does not need to
know any mathematics. But they should find such common errors as 

(a) missing articles, 
(b) mixed tense and number, 
(c) ungrammatical sentences
(d) unconventional and ambiguous sentence structure.

Such grammatical errors in the final version of the paper will cause demerits.

CAPS or FONT: 
In English we do not use capitalization for emphasis. 
Proper names of people and objects have an initial capital. 
For example: Python, Chevrolet, Pythagoras and Pythagorean Theorem. 
All caps are used for acronyms, FORTRAN, UIUC, NAS, NKVD. If you want to 
emphasize a word, you should use italics or, rarely, bold face. 

FORMAT: 
There is a prescribed format for the termpaper discussed
previously and in Advice. You must use it, and not some other you find
on the web. In particular,  citations, references (bibliography), and
figures.

CITATION: 
Verbatim copying of found text is plagiarism, unless it is
explicity quoted. In math you never quote (well, almost never). 
You should paraphrase in your own words, and cite where you got it 
from. Citations belong at the end (NOT at the beginning !) of the
paraphrased text. Put a citation to a reference in the bibliography. 

The above advice applies also to figures you lift from the web. 
The citation goes into the caption of the figure.

FIGURE: 
This means something is wrong with your figure. It may be 
unreadable, undocumented, inappropriate, or poorly drawn.
When you do use a found figure, make sure that the labeling in the figure 
is about the same size as the text.  If the labeling which 
comes with the figure is too small to read (proofread the PDF !!) in 
a draft before submitting it, then you either should redraw it yourself 
with a drawing program you know (gsp, gex, kseg) or edit the figure in 
Paint or iPaint etc.

CITATION: 
Regarding where to place the citation: Do not put it where the bracketed
number will make your text hard to read. It never goes at the beginning
of a sentence. If it comes at the end of a sentence, it must be before
the period or other punctuation.  Otherwise, nobody knows what you're citing. 
Never cite or footnote a formula because your readers will think the 
numbers are part of it.  And don't forget, the citation goes where it 
first applies. You do not have to keep repeating it. You can always say 
something like "the following discussion was taken from [42], or 
"more detail will be found in [13]."

Remember, every entry in the references must be cited in
 your text. Essays are too short to require or permit longer bibliographies.
Also, you must cite any source you made substantial use of. But if you 
want to show off how many sources you found, you can cite references
not already used, in a general acknowledgement near the end of your paper.
"The author also found  [1], [17], [43] and [128] useful sources in the 
preparation of this paper." 

WIDOWS, ORPHANS, BROKEN FORMULAS:
These is a visual blemishes which detract from the glory of your prose,
and annoy the reader. 

A widow consists in a word or short phrase (less than 2 lins) at the top
of a page which continue a paragraph from the previous page.
An orphan is a lone section header or opening line of a paragraph at 
the bottom of the previous page (Chicago Manual of Style).  LaTeX has many 
more tricks than, say MS Word, to manipulate how your
manuscript looks. There is \newpage to avoid widows and orphans. This
forces a page break.

 An inline formula or equation which breaks across two line is unreadable.
That's why we have \[ ... \] for exposed math.


FOOTNOTES:
Many journals forbid footnotes. Even if they are allowed, unlike philosophy 
or law, math uses them sparingly. If something needs elaboration, you probably
didn't take the time to do so in the text. To practice footnotes, you may
use them for urls to a website unless the url refers toa  website for a 
published textbook or journal article. Those must be cited. But you should
include suc URLs also in the references, even though you point to them in 
a footnote.