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How to Write a Paper

Professor Ashby has contributed the following introduction:

To the student. This brief manual gives guidance in writing a paper about your research. Most of the advice applies equally to your thesis or to writing a research proposal. The content of the paper reflects the kind of work you have done: experimental, theoretical, computational. I have used, as a model, a typical Materials project: one combining experiment with modelling and computation to explain some aspect of material behaviour.

To the instructor. This manual started life as an aid to masters and doctoral students in the Engineering Department at Cambridge. The aim was to help students plan, structure and write a paper or thesis, and to do it in a way that was entertaining as well as instructive (many books on writing are deadly dull). It has since been adopted and found useful by others elsewhere, and for this reason it is made available here. It can be reproduced and distributed to students without restriction, or students can be directed to this web site from which they can download it themselves.

How to Write a Paper (PDF format, 560 KB)