Manifold Atlas:Instructions for writing

Revision as of 20:05, 24 September 2009

This page describes the scientific writing style of the Manifold Atlas. You may also wish to read about writing groups.

1 Scientific style

• The Manifold Atlas aims to be an reliable scientific reference for researchers and students of manifolds.

• Please write rigorously and clearly for a topologically literate audience:
  • i.e. assume that your reader has taken relevant introductory graduate level courses for the area you are covering.

• Please give proofs or references to peer-reviewed journals for all non-elementary statements.

• As far as possible define the terms and concepts you use:
  • a quick way to achieve this is to hyperlink to Wikipedia or another web resource if the term is adequately defined.

• For articles in the Manifolds chapter please review the suggested structure.

2 The evolution of a page

• It will typically take many edits for a page to reach maturity.

• New and young pages bear the Stub template indicating that they are under development.

• After a page reaches maturity, the editorial board will organise for it to be refereed.

3 Hyperlinks

• A well-written article will find a good balance between the following extremes:
  • too few hyperlinks and your document is somewhat of a dead-end,
  • too many hyperlinks make texts hard to read and can distract the reader.
• Here are some guides for using hyperlinks:
  • you can use hyperlinks to both define and emphasise key concepts,
  • you only need to link a give page once per page or section, unless emphasis is sought,
  • broken hyperlinks, appearing in red, can be useful: they indicate pages you think should exist but don't right now.
  • for ease of writing on your first draft, simply write your hyperlink as [[intended link]]:
    • later on you, or other users, can fill in the links to make them active.

3.1 Linking to Wikipedia

• Wikipedia already contains a great wealth of mathematical articles and there is not point in duplicating this content in the Atlas.
• Atlas articles will differ from Wikipedia articles in that they assume a higher level of mathematical background and will typically discuss manifolds in greater depth and with greater precision than Wikipedia.
• A good heuristic for linking to Wikipedia is the following:
  • use Wikipedia links to define terms and concepts but,
  • do not use Wikipedia as a reference: refer to peer-reviewed mathematical literature.
• We hope that there will be a positive synergy between Wikipedia and the Atlas:
  • Atlas authors may wish to improve to and to Wikipedia articles to define the terms they use,
  • hopefully in time, Wikipedia can link and refer to articles in the Atlas.