Writing Guidelines

mediocre ideas + brilliant spelling, grammar, formatting, etc. != brilliance

brilliant ideas + mediocre spelling, grammar, formatting, etc. != brilliance

When doing any writing for CS 416, please follow these guidelines for presentation, citations, and the paper submission process.

Presentation

All writings this semester, whether they be an e-mail, a post to a discussion board, or a submitted paper, must be professionally written. This includes the way the writing is formatted as well as how it is written.

Formatting

Please include your name on every assignment. The preferred way to do this is the upper left-hand side of the page in the header.

Please use 12-point proportional-spaced serif font (e.g., Garamond).

Please do not include any of the following: cover page, table of contents, index, or blank pages. Conserve electrons! Save Trees!

If there is a length requirement for writing, do not include the following in that computation: headings, figures, graphics, tables, charts, endnotes, works cited, bibliography, or similar document parts.

Writing

Eschew obfuscation! Don't use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice. Remember that your goal is to communicate technical ideas, not showoff your vocabulary.

Do not confuse technical writing and creative writing. Technical writing is succinct. Technical writing is unambiguous. Avoid synonyms. Leave no room for interpretation. Keep it plain, simple, and obvious. Use complete sentences everywhere. Do not use a plural pronoun with a singular antecedent. Represent numbers appropriately! Know when to spell them out and when to use digits. Possessives require apostrophes; know where to put them.

Use headings or keywords from the assignment to clearly indicate you are providing the required information.

Use gender-neutral (non-sexist) language. A couple sources which may help are:

Stereotypes and Biased Language: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/608/05/
Appropriate Pronoun Usage: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/608/06/

Know the difference between the following words:

stake holder and stakeholder
accept and except
affect and effect
as rather than as being
based on rather than based off of
causal and casual
customer and costumer
ensure and insure
internet and Internet
it's and its
manner and manor
morale and moral
principal and principle
role and roll
than and then
that and which
their and there
toward not towards
versus and verses

Citations

Almost everything we do in CS 416 will require a citation. Failure to do so will constitute plagiarism.

Plagiarism

While I encourage you to work with your classmates, all submitted work must be original. Share ideas, but DO NOT SHARE CODE/TEXT (or anything like unto it)!

To plagiarize is

"to steal and pass off as one's own (the ideas or words of another) : use (a created production) without crediting the source
to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source" [1]

Review BYU-Idaho's policy at http://www.byui.edu/student-honor-office/ces-honor-code/academic honesty. Additional information is available at http://plagiarism.org/ There is no acceptable excuse for plagiarism. Plagiarism may be intentional or unintentional. Regardless, the penalties are the same. Penalties for plagiarism:

One-eighth of the total possible points will be deducted for each occurrence of material that is obviously from another source but not properly cited. Examples: verbatim quotations enclosed in quotation marks, graphics
A score of zero will be given (for the entire assignment) for other forms of plagiarism; grading stops with the discovery of plagiarism. Example: verbatim text without quotation marks (with or without a citation)

How to use a citation

Citations are not limited to quotations. Any time data or ideas are used from a source, that source needs to be cited.

References to works cited shall be a number (or a comma-separated list of numbers) in square brackets; do not use superscripts. These are not array indexes — a space shall precede the opening square bracket ([).

The list of works cited shall be in numerical order and shall be sorted according to the order it appears in your paper.

The proper format is IEEE 2006:

Author List, "Article name," in Journal Name, vol. Volume, no. Edition, pp. Page Range, Publication Date [Online]. Available: Hyperlink.

For example, the first paper to be read for the semester is:

J. Miguel et al., "A review of software quality models for the evaluation of software products," International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications, vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 31-54, Nov. 2014,
[Online] Available: http://airccse.org/journal/ijsea/papers/5614ijsea03.pdf

The parts of this citation are:

Author: J. Miguel et al.
Maintain the order of paper, use first initial and last name, if there are three or more authors, use "et al."
Article name: "A review of software quality models ..."
The article name is in quotes, the first letter of the article name is capitalized
Journal Name: International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications
This is italic and title cased
Volume: vol. 5
Edition: no. 6
Page Range: pp. 31-54
Publication Date: Nov. 2014
Notice how the month is abbreviated
Hyperlink: [Online] Available: http://airccse.org/journal/ijsea/papers/5614ijsea03.pdf

Perhaps the simplest way to perform citations is by using a word processor such as Microsoft Word. Many have a citation feature allowing you to specify the author, title, year, and other data in a dialog box. It will then generate the citations and works cited for you. Microsoft Word can be configured to use the "IEEE 2006" style of citations which is very close to the above style.

Please see the following:

IEEE, (2009, Sept.). IEEE Citation Reference
[Online] Available: http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecitationref.pdf

Submitting Papers

Nearly all of the assigments this semester will be turned in the same way:

Face to Face students: The assignment is due Saturday night at 5:00 PM in my inbox. Please include a rubric and self-assess to make sure you did not miss anything. Failure to attach a rubric will result in 10% reduction of your score. You are responsible for the quality of your own printing. If the quality is not sufficient due to problems with the printer or lack of ink, it is your responsiblity to find a printer that works.
Online students: All the papers for CS 416 are to be submitted as a Microsoft Word .docx file. f you use another editor, you may want to make sure it looks the way you expect in Microsoft Word because that is how it will be graded. All filenames will use the following convention: Lastname_Week.docx. For example if my name were "Jones" and I wish to submit a paper for Week 04, my filename would be Jones_04.docx.

It is your responsibility to submit homework correctly, including, but not limited to, the correct content, the correct location, the correct format, and the correct file extension. I am not responsible for homework I do not receive. All assignments are due at the due date; I-Learn will not accept your files after that date and you will get a zero. One second after that and the work is "everlastingly too late" (Helaman 13:38). Late homework shall not be accepted unless a prior arrangement is made with the instructor

Works Cited

[1] Merriam-Webster, (21 Dec. 2011), Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged.
[Online] Available: http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com.