Manifold Atlas: Instructions for writing
From Manifold Atlas
Revision as of 15:21, 24 September 2009 by Diarmuid Crowley (Talk | contribs)
This page describes the scientific writing style of the Manifold Atlas.
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:
- For articles in the Manifolds chapter please review the suggested structure.
2 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 hyperlinking:
- you can use hyperlinks to both defined and emphasis 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.
2.1 Wikipedia
- Wikipedia:Wikipedia already contains a great wealth of mathematical articles and there is not point in duplicating this content.
- 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 precesion than Wikipedia.
- A good heuristic for linking to Wikipedia is the following:
- use Wikipedia links to define concepts but,
- do not reference Wikipedia for mathematical facts - for these refer to the peer-reviewed journals.
- 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 reference articles in the Atlas.