Tips for Writing a Power Engineering Paper
Writing is to know yourself
Articulating your ideas helps know your own opinions, even if you have many vibrant thoughts before writing. As a result, it would be a little bit challenging to write down something without carefully thinking it.
Some students might already have the capability of critical thinking before graduate school, but some might need to develop the skill when they are asked to write a formal article. For the second group, the first article can be a little bit painful, but no worry, it will be better and better.
Balance the key message and the presentation quality
Regarding the engineering papers, I would say people expect to learn something new from it. Otherwise, the article might be considered more of performance art, as it mainly shows the author’s superiority of intelligence or writing.
Before writing, it is important to clarify what is the key message you want to deliver to the audience. Although people can have diverse opinions on what is interesting, convincing at least a few people is a good start.
Once you determine the key message, you can start to write. However, the key message can change during the paper development, and it is okay to adjust the message as long as you feel it is exciting. The following book gives a good guide on how to write a paper in engineering:
H. B. Michaelson, How to Write and Publish Engineering Papers and Reports, 3rd edition, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990.
Common mistakes in writing IEEE papers:
There is a summary of the common mistakes in writing IEEE papers by Dr. Leon Tolbert. The summary is informative and thus excerpted here for power engineering students.
- Follow IEEE formatting for references:
- Format figures as follows. In the main text, it should read, “… as shown in Fig. 1.”
Or, another example, “as seen by the waveform in Fig. 2(a), the voltage has significant harmonic content.”
Figure captions should be formatted as follows:
Fig. 1. Voltage waveform for the output of the dc-dc converter. - After an equation, where you want to list what some of the variables are, the word “where” should be lowercase and at the left margin (not indented). Microsoft Word incorrectly will indent and capitalize.
- References should be inside [ ] and should be inside the period at the end of the sentence:
Examples: “… and hence the amount of shunt compensation in the power system can be controlled [2].”
“… with small effects on the dc link voltage [7, 9-11].”
“Reference [8] provides information on how the …”
- Equations should be numbered in parentheses () and mentioned by number only without saying “Equation” or “Eq.” except at the beginning of a sentence:
“… by substituting (3) into (1), the following expression is obtained.”
“Equation (8) shows that torque is directly proportional to …”
- The unit should be abbreviated and follow the number separated by a space:
Examples: 10 kW, 1200 V, 5.5 mA, 10 MHz, 300 °C, 20 s, 75 kHz.
Wrong: 100W, 300C, 50 KHZ, 60 sec.
- Italicize symbols when used in the text:
“… With reference to wind speed v, wind turbine radius r, turbine rotational speed ω, turbine sweeping area A, and air density ρ.” - Do not use contractions in the paper (don’t, can’t, it’s, etc.). Instead, write out the words (do not, cannot, it is).
- Spell out abbreviations for the first time: “hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), pulse width modulation (PWM), insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT)”
- Use a comma after introductory phrases: “With the increased use of non-linear loads on the utility, better metering and compensation techniques are needed...”
"Before researching any new ideas on a subject, it is useful to look at current standards in the area."
"For a single phase active filter using a voltage source inverter and coupling inductor, the limit cycle parameter after linearization are given by (24-25)." - For a list of 3 or more items, separate by commas including before the word “and”.
Example: “SiC devices have lower on-resistance, higher blocking voltages, and higher thermal endurance.” - For a compound sentence (subject - verb, and subject - verb), separate by a comma.
Example: “The IGBT and diode are soldered directly to the collector plate, and solder is used on each side of the spacers.”
"Its function is limited, but its cost is low since it just makes a small improvement on the existing distribution transformers in the grid." - Avoid using the following words (these are a little too simple and vague):
- big
- got
- good
- bad
- problem
- “a lot” - use “several” or “many” instead
- “Analysis” is a noun; “analyze” is a verb.
- Write papers in the third person. Do not use “you”, “we”, “us”, “our”.
- Do not use the words “firstly”, “secondly”, etc. Use “first”, “second”.
- Do not use the word “Besides…” to start a sentence. Instead, use “In addition…” or “Also…”.
- “Unbalanced” is preferred over “imbalance”.
- Capitalize the headings in papers, e.g., “A. Basic Converter Control” instead of “A. basic converter control”.
- Be specific in figure captions. It should say, “Fig. 10. MPPT control strategy for cascaded H-bridge multilevel converters used in wind generators.” and not “Fig. 10. Control strategy.”
- Be sure figures are fully labeled with units and identify what each waveform represents.
- Keep paragraphs short - about 4 to 5 sentences each; it makes the paper much more readable.
Note that some of the above rules are specific to IEEE papers and might not be applicable to other disciplines.
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