marXiv style manual
This manual governs how papers in this archive are written. The standards for acceptance require conformance to it. The reviewer records a written remark for each breach and never rejects a paper for one, so a submission that meets the substance requirements is published and the author fixes the wording in a later version.
The audience is expert. Write for a reader who knows the field and wants the content.
Register
The register is that of a technical report addressed to expert readers: direct, plainly stated, accurate, and explicit.
You do not preach, sell, persuade, or show off. State what you did, what you found, and what follows. Let the reader draw the conclusion the evidence supports.
Never spin, misrepresent, or shade. Report a negative result as a negative result, a limitation as a limitation, and an uncertainty at the size it actually has. An overstated result is as much an error as a wrong number.
Sentences and paragraphs
Write in full paragraphs like an adult. Simplicity and clarity are the highest virtues, and neither requires a run of short sentences. A paragraph of three or four connected sentences that develop one point serves the reader better than the same content chopped into fragments.
Do not use a run of short, faux-deep sentences. That pattern belongs to promotional writing and carries less content per line than ordinary prose.
The first sentence of a paragraph states the point. It is not a rhetorical warm-up. Cut openers of the form "There are four points here" and begin with the first point.
Favor active constructions. Passive voice hides the actor or weakens the sentence, so prefer the active form without forcing it. A passive is right where the actor is unknown or beside the point.
Almost never join two independent clauses with a semicolon. Use a period. Semicolons are acceptable inside an enumerated list whose items contain commas.
Do not use em-dashes. A comma, a colon, or a period does the work.
Throat-clearing and announcements
Cut sentences that announce what follows instead of saying it.
| Cut | Replace with |
|---|---|
| "Below is a specification..." | "This specification..." |
| "There is also the matter of X." | Start with X directly |
| "A further limitation is cultural." | State the limitation directly |
| "This X matters." | State the consequence of X, or delete the sentence |
| "It is not advocacy." | Delete (defensive) |
| "not merely a technique for X; it is a response to Y" | "a technique for X that addresses Y" |
| "is fundamentally about" | "determines" or state directly |
Filler words
Delete unless the word adds real meaning: simply, itself (exception: to emphasize identity, for example, "truth itself"), underlying, actual, clearly, entirely, merely, given (as filler).
Passive voice
| Passive | Active |
|---|---|
| "is designed to reveal" | "reveals" |
| "is treated as a legitimate outcome" | "constitutes a legitimate outcome" |
| "arguments are presented for and against" | "advocates present arguments for and against" |
| "Amendment is allowed" | "The Rules allow amendment" |
| "are initiated concurrently" | "run concurrently" |
| "to be run" | "to run" |
Weak verbs and hedges
| Weak | Strong |
|---|---|
| "seek to determine" | "determine" |
| "could help identify" | "identifies" |
| "remain viable" | "persist" |
| "is appropriate only in" | "fits" |
Hedge stacking removes all commitment. "May potentially help to some extent" and "could arguably suggest" state nothing. Give the claim the strength the evidence supports, and say what that evidence is.
Jargon and academic hand-waving
Replace bureaucratic, academic, or stilted phrasing with plain language.
| Jargon | Plain |
|---|---|
| "operationally mandatory determinations" | "required decisions" |
| "evidentiary fragility" | "whether the evidence supports it" |
| "unavoidable perception effects" | "random variation in how evidence is weighed" |
| "principled reflection of the evidence" | "acknowledgment that the evidence is inconclusive" |
| "the degree to which" | "how well" |
| "well suited to" | "applies to" |
| "not well suited for" | "not designed for" |
| "agnostic as to domain" | "domain-agnostic" |
| "provide a framework for determining" | "determine" |
| "defining feature" | cut; state what it does |
| "raises similar boundaries" | "faces similar limits" |
| "draws on a tradition" | name the source or cut |
| "reflects X's contention that" | "follows X:" or state the idea |
| "embodies the intuition" | "implements the idea" |
| "rests on commitments" | "assumes" |
| "has roots in" | cut; name-dropping without substance |
Fields do not act. People do. Replace "Social epistemology has documented" with "Research shows" or a specific citation. For "Epistemology has long recognized," cut the phrase and state the point.
Avoid impressive-sounding jargon that carries little meaning. "Convergent truth tracking" means "independent confirmation." "Institutionalized epistemic humility" should describe what the institution does. "Epistemological commitments" means "assumptions."
When tempted to cite a philosopher, ask whether the name adds information or decorates. If it decorates, cut it.
Terminology
Use the simplest, clearest, most direct term that is accurate. A technical term is right where it carries precision the plain word lacks, and wrong where it is chosen for tone. Write "the server rejects the request" over "the server declines to honour the request", "we measured" over "we instrumented", and "delete" over "reap". Established terminology familiar to an expert reader needs no definition or expansion. Define paper-specific terms and notation, ambiguous abbreviations, and nonstandard usage before first use. Omit textbook descriptions of standard objects, operations, and abbreviations.
Metaphor
Use close to no metaphor. A paper describing what a system does can say so without likening it to anything.
- Figurative language where a literal statement exists: prose that is "surgical", code that "lives" somewhere, an argument with "teeth", a design with a "smell", a component that is the "heart" or "backbone" of a system.
- Metaphors carried past a single clause, so that later sentences elaborate the figure instead of the subject.
- Anthropomorphism attributing intent to software: a program that "wants", "believes", "decides to", or "is happy with" something, where the mechanism can be stated instead.
- Violent or sporting figures for ordinary engineering: "killing" a process is standard usage and acceptable, while "crushing", "nailing", "attacking the problem", and "moving the needle" are not.
Established technical terms that began as metaphor are acceptable where they are the standard name for the thing: tree, pointer, stack, cache, thread, garbage collection.
Rhetorical gimmicks
These are banned. The reviewer records a remark for each occurrence.
The two entries below target a rhetorical move, not a grammatical form. Both concern negation or contrast used for emphasis, where the sentence carries the same content without it. A negation that states a fact, and a contrast between two things that both exist, are ordinary technical writing and are correct. Read the examples of each before recording a remark.
- Definition by negation, where the paper says what something is not in place of saying what it is: "it's not X, it's Y", "this isn't an X", "X is not just a Y", "not merely a Y", "less a Y than an X".
A factual negative claim is not this and is often the strongest way to state a property. These are correct: "the definition introduces no axiom", "no theorem in this module mentions secp256k1", "the measurements do not support a ratio", "the proof needs no raised recursion limit". Each states a fact about the subject that has no positive paraphrase.
- The contrast frame used for emphasis, where one side is a straw man the paper never had: "It's an X, not a Y", "not only X but Y", "X isn't about Y, it's about Z".
A contrast between two things the paper is actually distinguishing is not this. These are correct: "opacity hides a checked body, while a large visible type can still dominate elaboration", "these runs answer a feasibility question rather than provide a speedup benchmark", "the fault lay in the target rather than the imported dependency graph". Each names two real alternatives and tells the reader which applies.
- Sentence fragments used for emphasis: "Not X. Not Y. Just Z."
- Rhetorical questions the author answers in the next sentence.
- Asserting that something "matters", "is important", "is significant", or "cannot be overstated". State the consequence, or delete the sentence.
- "honest", "honestly", "to be honest", and "let's be honest" applied to the writing, the argument, or the reader. Say the thing instead of advertising candour about it.
- "load-bearing" in any figurative sense. Banned without exception.
- Filler connectives standing in for an argument: "at the end of the day", "when it comes to", "in terms of", "the fact that".
- "we believe", "we argue", or "we would contend" where no argument follows.
- Decorative transitions and summaries: "Moreover", "In conclusion", "It's worth noting".
Banned words
Avoid corporate-speak, jargon, and empty language: leverage (verb), journey, utilize (use "use"), impactful, learnings, cadence, space (as in "the AI space"), ecosystem, synergy, stakeholder (unless precise and necessary), robust (be specific), holistic, streamline, actionable, best-in-class, surface (as a verb; use "reveal" or "expose"), delve, unpack, landscape.
Do not say "wire" or "wire in" or "patch" where "add" or "edit" will do. Do not say "shell out". Do not say "contract" unless you mean a business contract.
Trade-press and developer slang is banned: a change that "lands" or "ships", a result that "hits" a number, work that is "baked in", a feature that is "a game changer", something that "just works". Say what happened: the change was merged, the latency reached 40 ms, the check runs at compile time.
Headings
Write most section and subsection headings as concise noun phrases. A heading names the result, claim, or subject of the section, so that the list of headings alone tells a reader what the paper establishes. Use a complete sentence only when the exact proposition is necessary and no concise phrase states it accurately.
The reviewer records a remark for each of these:
- Headings that say what something is not, or what it does not do: "What the format does not remove", "Why this isn't a database".
- Headings that announce that content follows instead of stating it: "Some considerations", "A note on caching", "Discussion", "Observations", "Further thoughts".
- Headings too vague to distinguish one section from another: "Consistency", "Performance", "Analysis", "Details".
- Headings opening with "What", "How", or "Why", whether or not they end in a question mark: "How this procedure works", "Why the cache is invalidated". Name the result instead: "One-pass name resolution", "Cache invalidation after writes".
Conventional structural headings are acceptable where they carry their standard meaning: Introduction, Related work, Limitations, Conclusion, and the like.
Relevance
The paper says what is important, in the most direct way, and says little else. State the central claim in one sentence a reader can quote, in the abstract and again where the section supporting it begins.
Include a fact, number, table, figure, or section only if it changes what the reader can conclude or do. Content that is true and irrelevant is a defect.
- A result the paper depends on, left in a subordinate clause, a footnote, or the middle of a paragraph, where a reader skimming the section headings and topic sentences would miss it.
- A central claim the reader must assemble from several sentences because no single sentence states it.
- Metrics reported because they are easy to measure rather than because a claim rests on them: line counts, file counts, word counts, commit counts, and the like. Ask what the reader would do differently at twice the number. If the answer is nothing, cut it.
- Precision beyond the use the paper makes of a figure, as in quoting a count to four digits to support a claim that the thing is small.
- Background the reader of this venue already has, or that the paper never uses again.
- Restating what a cited source says without applying it to the paper's own argument.
- Tables and figures that repeat the prose, and prose that repeats a table.
- Sections present to complete an expected shape while carrying no result, limitation, or consequence.
Redundancy
Combine repetitive constructions.
| Redundant | Tighter |
|---|---|
| "The Rules treat X. The Rules allow Y." | "The Rules treat X, allowing Y." |
| "the particular personnel or the particular trajectory" | "personnel or trajectory" |
| "within a trial, within a chain, within the proceeding" | "in a trial, in a chain, in the proceeding" |
Three-part lists used as rhythm rather than enumeration are a related fault: every idea arriving as "fast, cheap, and reliable" whether or not three things exist.
Vague references
Ensure "this", "that", and "it" have clear antecedents. "That caused the proof to fail" leaves the reader to guess what "that" names.
| Vague | Specific |
|---|---|
| "This is not always desirable." | "This orientation is not universally desirable." |
| "In this regard..." | Cut or be specific |
Grammar and mechanics
Always use the Oxford comma.
Avoid splitting infinitives. Write "to evaluate thoroughly", not "to thoroughly evaluate".
Use correct articles: "An Iota", not "A Iota".
Hyphenate compound adjectives: "ill-posed", not "ill posed".
Use periods, not semicolons, between independent clauses.
Prefer the singular when describing behavior if the plural introduces ambiguity between one-to-one and one-to-many. "An X gizmo is associated with a Y gizmo" is clearer than "X gizmos are associated with Y gizmos".
Vague quantifiers standing in for numbers the author has are a defect: "numerous", "a variety of", "several key", "significantly". Give the number.
Do not scatter emphasis on phrases that carry no more weight than their neighbours, and do not use emoji in technical prose.
The source of this document is available as markdown, and it is the exact text the reviewer receives. All four documents are listed under documentation.