Sydney Dolan

I associate autumn with writing due to all the conference submission deadlines at this time. This past autumn brought me to another level of writing, as several of my students wrapped up research projects and drafts for their respective theses. As a research supervisor, I spend a lot of time with my mentees on their writing and presentations, because I think it’s an important professional skill for them to develop. But, I also understand opening a document with wall-to-wall comments can be overwhelming, particularly if you don’t know how to address the commentary. Below are some of my tips for understanding writing feedback from research advisors and collaborators and how to make the changes that they are looking for.

Feedback #1: ‘Rewrite this’ and Being Told To Just Write A Paragraph Again From Scratch

The first paper I wrote with my PhD Advisor, almost every single sentence in the first two pages of the paper were written up with comments along the lines of ‘no’, ‘delete this’, ‘this doesn’t make sense’ and ‘rewrite’. It sounds brutal sharing the story, but the process of having to line by line revise and re-write signficantly improved my writing. It was the first time I actually reflected on my writing. For once, I had to really think about the significance of each sentence, not the blur of writing to make a deadline or writing to sound smart. I was finally critically thinking about how much my writing matched nomative standard. And my PhD Advisor was correct, the stuff I had written was bad. The paper that I produced after those edits was significantly better. It was because I listened the feedback she gave, and also because she was spending the time to make me a better writer. Writing is so personal, so deeply human and individual to who we are and how we see the world, that it can hurt to get negative feedback. But it’s important to engage with this sort of feedback if you are getting it. People are trying to give feedback so that you can become a better writer, they’re not trying to tear you down. Try to view the process of this extensive feedback as a growth process, not a personal slight.

Remember that the process of revising writing is a natural one that even professional authors go through. Getting revisions is not meant as a personal attack on you as a person or even your ideas, but rather that the way you conveyed them was not easy for others to follow or may implicitly have incorrect elements or implications. When someone is asking you to re-write a passage, it is likely because the ideas that you want to convey have not been clearly articulated. 

 Below, I will cover the general structure for academic writing, and give some tips on how to approach the feedback that something needs to be re-written. 

When people are reading academic writing, they generally are looking for the following structure. 

Event cameras have gained traction in space situational awareness (SSA) applications due to their high dynamic range. Early work by Cohen et al demonstrated the feasibility of event cameras for space applications [1]. Using an event camera in conjunction with a ground telescope, they showed that event cameras can track both Low-Earth orbit and geosynchronous equatorial orbit objects during daytime. To improve the tracking reliability of this ground-based event camera system, Ralph et al. [2] proposed a slow-adapting network with an unsupervised feature extraction adaptive thresholds module [3] to learn spatiotemporal features and identify dim, sub-pixel objects. Arja et al. [4] proposed a contrast maximization framework for generating motion-compensated maps for Earth observation event data to improve feature visibility of event Earth observation data.

Topic sentences, shown in dark pink, are expected at the start of the paragraph, and they introduce the main idea of the paragraph. In academic writing, topic sentences are expected at the very start of a paragraph. Supporting sentences, shown in blue are meant to further clarify and support the topic sentence. In this example, the topic in the topic sentence is examples of event cameras in space situational awareness applications. This means that all supporting sentences should support this topic in some way.  Finally, depending on the topic, the end of the paragraph can include a transition sentence. Transition sentences connect paragraphs togehter, and serve as a lead in to the next topic sentence.

ID	Supporting Sentence	Relation	Rhetorical Argument
1	Early work by Cohen et al demonstrated the feasibility of event cameras for space applications [1].	Chronological	Earliest known application, established feasibility/seminal in the field
2	Using an event camera in conjunction with a ground telescope, they showed that event cameras can track both Low-Earth orbit and geosynchronous equatorial orbit objects during daytime.	Supporting (1)	Adds additional technical detail to establish significance of 1
3	To improve the tracking reliability of this ground-based event camera system, Ralph et al. [2] proposed a slow-adapting network with an unsupervised feature extraction adaptive thresholds module [3] to learn spatiotemporal features and identify dim, sub-pixel objects.	Chronological	Establishes a timeline of the field and provides secondary example
4	Arja et al. [4] proposed a contrast maximization framework for generating motion-compensated maps for Earth observation event data to improve feature visibility of event Earth observation data.	List	Completely unrelated example of a SSA application

When re-writing a passage, start with your topic sentences. Are they clearly articulating one idea? What is the fundamental topic they are meant to convey? When I give students the feedback a section needs to be re-written, it is because the topic is hard to identify (i.e. too many topics at once, or a topic that is not clearly articulated). When writing your topic sentences, think about the simplest way you can define the topic at hand. Remember that the purpose of academic writing is not to sound smart, it is to explain what you did in a precise, detailed way so that others can learn from your work.

Initial Topic Sentence	Suggested Alternate
Overview of event cameras functioning/components and best performing contrast maximization technique for space. –> Problem: Too Many ideas	Topic 1: event camera definition Topic 2: the best performing contrast maximization techniques
temporal granularity intrinsic to event-based vision sensors precipitates nontrivial complications. –> Problem: Overly complicated phrasing	Microsecond resolution of event cameras creates latency issues

With a topic sentence well defined, you can go through the rest of your paragraph and edit. Check that each sentence supports the topic idea, and that the logic connecting sentence to sentence is clear. If it is not clear, then that is a sign the sentence needs to be re-written, or perhaps another connecting sentence should be added to make your argument stronger rhetorically. If your writing falls in the first case, where you need to split up the paragraph into two separate paragraphs, go through and see which sentences fit best in each group. Just because it was suggested to rewrite a paragraph doesn’t mean that all of the writing has to be scrapped. It’s about identifying the key idea and the best way to convey it. If your writing falls in the second case, identify the point, and go through sentence bt sentence and see if the writing is supporting the point.

Feedback #2: ‘I have no idea what this means’ and other sentence level re-writes

Sentence edits are meant to address more nuanced elements of style, flow, and clarity within a paper. Similar to the tips I introduced on section rewrites, in a sentence rewrite you should be able to clearly articulate the singular point that a sentence conveys. When a sentence needs to be rewritten, it means the underlying mechanics are obscuring this fundamental point. In the table below, I highlight some sentences, the issue with the mechanics, and my suggested rewrite. For each grammatical issue, I provide a definition and elaborate more on the cases where it should be avoided. As with anything in grammar, there are obviously exceptions that can be made to every rule, so this guidance should be taken on a case-by-case basis. The purpose of introducing each of these potential issues is for you to identify what exactly makes writing hard to read, and how to go about fixing it.

Problem	Initial Sentence	Suggested Sentence Rewrite
Run On Sentence	When evaluating a heat flow path for a satellite system, it becomes apparent that, for the sinking of the energy generated within the system, only radiation from the satellite’s outer surfaces is available, as in vacuum operation, there is no convection or conduction due to the absence of a medium that transmits heat.	When evaluating a heat flow path for a satellite system, only radiation from the satellite’s outer surfaces can dissipate the energy generated within the system. In a vacuum, there is no convection or conduction because there is no medium to transmit heat.
Passive Voice	This event is then recorded and transmitted off the chip via peripheral circuitry.	The event camera then records this event and transmits it off the chip via peripheral circuitry.
Dangling Modifier	A conduction approach was therefore adopted, striking a balance of performance and cost. This enables the conceptualization of the heat flow path of the system, utilizing only conduction.	A conduction approach was therefore adopted to strike a balance between performance and cost. This approach enables engineers to conceptualize the system’s heat flow path using only conduction.
Faulty Parallelism	Satellites use event cameras to detect light changes, tracking debris, and enabling star tracking in real time.	Satellites use event cameras to detect light changes, track debris, and enable star tracking in real time.
Inconsistent Tense	The spacecraft collects event-based data and transmitted it to Earth for analysis.	The spacecraft collects event-based data and transmits it to Earth for analysis.
Lexical Ambiguity	The event camera improves resolution in space missions.	The event camera improves temporal resolution, allowing spacecraft to detect rapid motion changes in microseconds.
Nominalization	The implementation of real-time event-based photodetection for the facilitation of autonomous orbital navigation, combined with the optimization of microsecond-level motion recognition algorithms, resulted in the enhancement of spacecraft situational awareness and the mitigation of collision probabilities.	Event-based detection enables autonomous orbital navigation, and microsecond-level motion recognition algorithms improve spacecraft situational awareness.
Incoherent Logical Progression	Event cameras are useful for tracking debris in orbit. Space missions require careful planning. Therefore, event cameras reduce latency in image processing.	Event cameras are useful for tracking debris in orbit because they reduce latency in image processing, enabling faster response times in space missions.

Run-On Sentences

A run-on sentence is when two or more independent clauses are joined without proper punctuation or a coordinated conjunction. They can be fixed by adding a period, using a semicolon, or adding a comma with a coordinating conjunction. Run-on sentences can be fairly easily identified by counting the number of words in a sentence. A sentence with longer than 25 words should be flagged and reviewed as a potential run-on sentence. There are certainly times when very long sentences are grammatically correct and clear in their content. A run-on sentence is an issue when the sentence has become so long that the initial subject and connecting logic are unclear. When I say something is hard to understand, I mean that the mental model that the reader is developing as they read your writing gets fuzzy at the fundamental point of the sentence. In good technical writing, your reader should be primed for what information should be coming next. When your writing has too many run-on sentences, they can have a hard time remembering the argument of the paragraph or understanding the main message you are trying to convey within a single sentence.

Passive Voice

Passive Voice occurs when an action is done to a subject rather than a subject doing the action. Passive voice is a tricky thing in academic writing, and there are certainly cases where its use is warranted. Depending on the convention in your field and preferences of your research collaborators, passive voice can be preferred over the usage of “we” or “I” directly in text. There are also just times where passive voice might be the most simple way to describe something. Passive voice is not an absolute rule that you must avoid, but rather something to be aware of when you are writing. Certainly, the example in this table for passive voice is actually not that bad of usage of passive voice, but I did want to include something just to demonstrate how the structure shifts from passive to active.

My main concern with passive voice is that it often makes sentences unnecessarily wordy. This can create a run-on effect, where the lack of a clear subject–verb structure makes the sentence difficult to follow. The run-on example in the table above illustrates this issue. For instance, the phrase “It becomes apparent that, for the sinking of the energy generated within the system…” uses passive construction. The subject (heat flow) is unclear, while the action “the sinking of the energy generated within the system” is expressed as a nominalized phrase, making it the focus of the sentence instead of clearly showing who or what performs the action. I talk more about nominalized phrases below!

Dangling Modifier

A dangling modifier is a grammatical construct where a grammatical modifier could be misinterpreted as being associated with a word other than the one intended. This often happens when the sentence lacks a clearly stated subject performing the action in the modifying phrase.

Typically in English, introductory or trailing phrases such as “utilizing only conduction” or “striking a balance between performance and cost” are assumed to describe the subject that immediately follows or precedes them. If no clear subject is present, or if the subject does not logically perform that action, the sentence becomes confusing or misleading. In multi-sentence writing, this problem is compounded when vague references like “this” or “it” are used alongside dangling modifiers. The reader may struggle to determine both what the subject is and what the modifier is describing, especially if multiple subjects appear in the surrounding sentences.

The corrected sentence in the table resolves this issue by explicitly naming the subject and properly attaching the modifier. For example, replacing a vague construction with “this approach enables engineers to conceptualize the system’s heat flow path using only conduction” ensures that the modifier “using only conduction” clearly refers to how the engineers conceptualize the system, rather than floating ambiguously in the sentence.

Faulty Parallelism

Faulty parallelism occurs when clauses or phrases joined by conjunctions have differing grammatical structures. For clarity and readability, each item in a list or series should follow the same form (i.e. all verbs in the same tense or structure). In the incorrect sentence, the list mixes verb forms: “detect” (base verb), “tracking” (gerund), and “enabling” (gerund). This inconsistency makes the sentence harder to follow. In the corrected version, all elements follow the same parallel structure (detect, track, enable), making the sentence clearer and more grammatically consistent.

There is also a fairly entertaining wikipedia hole that you can go down on the rule of three. There is some research to suggest that trios of entities are more satisfying, humorous and effective than other numbers, and thus more memorable. Thus, when you screw up the rule of 3, it is particularly striking to the reader.

Inconsistent Tense

Inconsistent tense occurs when a sentence or passage switches verb tenses inappropriately, creating confusion about the timing of actions

As written on the Purdue OWL, the general guideline is that you should establish a primary tense for the main discourse, and use occasional shifts to other tenses to indicate changes in time frame. Present tense is good for stating facts, refering to perpetual or habitual actions, and discussing your own ideas. Future action may be expressed in a variety of ways, including the use of will, shall, is going to, are about to, tomorrow, and other adverbs of time, and a wide range of contextual clues.

Just as a side note – The Purdue OWL is an incredible grammar and citation resource! They have so many descriptive pages on many different elements of English, I highly recommend reviewing all the resources they have to offer there!

Lexical Ambiguity

Lexical ambiguity is a very fancy way to say the meaning of a word is unclear. Lexical ambiguity happens when a word has more than one meaning. This causes a word or phrase to be interpreted differently from how the speaker or writer intended. This sort of ambiguity is very common in AI or multi-agent spaces, where even words like cooperation or centralization can have different assumptions around them. To address this error, make sure that the key terms you will be using are defined, just so that you and the reader are on the same page. The example in the table above points out the ambiguity that exists in the word “resolution.” Resolution could mean in time, in image quality, or in another quality altogether. By amending the word “temporal”, this ambiguity is clearly addressed.

Nominalization

Nominalization occurs when a writer expresses an idea by using the noun form, rather than the verb form. Such constructions often involve using a verb in the passive voice or using a “weak verb” like to have (read more here).

Texts that contain a high level of nominalized words can be very dense. In the before sentence, phrases like “implementation of event-based detection,” “facilitation of autonomous orbital navigation,” “optimization of microsecond-level motion recognition algorithms,” “enhancement of spacecraft situational awareness,” and “mitigation of collision probabilities” all convert clear actions into dense, noun-heavy expressions. As a result, the sentence becomes difficult to read, and it is harder to immediately understand what is happening or who is performing the actions. The suggested rewrite changes these nominalizatons into active verbs, rather than buried nouns.

You might notice that some of the advice in nominalizations is close to the advice on passive voice. Nominalizations are not the same as passive voice, but both state the action in less direct ways.

• The police will investigate the theft. (active)
• The theft will be investigated by the police (passive)
• An investigation of the theft will be conducted by the police (passive +nominalization).

Notice how the nominalization variant was the wordiest of the three options. Like passive voice usage, nominalizations are not grammatically wrong, but can make the writing harder to process.

Incoherent Logical Progression

Incoherent logical progression occurs when the argument of the preceding sentences does not support the existing sentence. This can happen when a new sentence introduces a concept that has not been adequately supported or prepared by the preceding text, leaving the reader confused about how the ideas connect

Problems with logical progression can stem from any of the issues discussed above , or problems may arise from a content problem, where the reasoning itself is unclear or underdeveloped. While this issue often appears at the paragraph level, it can also occur in shorter texts, where a single sentence contains reasoning that is hard to follow.

The example in the table illustrates this well. The original sentence attempts to link multiple ideas (debris tracking, latency reduction, and mission planning) without establishing a clear logical connection. As a result, the reader must infer relationships that are not explicitly introduced, disrupting the flow of reasoning. In contrast, the revised version separates these ideas into distinct sentences and clearly signals the causal relationship using “therefore”, producing a smoother and more coherent logical progression.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully, this blog post has been helpful in understanding the feedback to rewrite part of your technical writing. Some additional resources I highly recommend for learning more about these elements of grammar and style are:

• Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) – my holy grail for everything citation related
• University of Toronto’s Writing Advice Site – some really great stuff on intros/conclusions/organizing
• The Synthesis Matrix – a technique for writing literature reviews, how to organize different sources together meaningfully