Some university writing centers recommend Chicago Manual of Style format for papers in Information Services and Computer Science. CMS employs footnotes and Latin abbreviations. A useful overview of Chicago Manual of Style format is available on Purdue University's OWL (Online Writing Lab) site. If you prefer to use MLA format or APA format, they are acceptable. Purdue's OWL has good overviews of MLA format and APA format as well. Just be sure to be consistent in applying whatever format you use.

The Writing Center often refers students to the Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students written and maintained by several universities: Penn State, Georgia Tech, University of Illinois, University of Texas, and Virginia Tech.

You will want to be aware of Bridgewater College's plagiarism policy, Ethics in Academic Work.  You may find it interesting to look at the ACM Plagiarism Policy as well.

• The Central Focus of your paper, often expressed as a Thesis
  In most college classes you are expected to include a thesis in your papers. In papers that explain information, the thesis may be implied through an introduction that raises questions or that identifies a subject that can be subdivided into categories or situated in a historical context, etc.   
• Outlining Your Paper/Organization
  See the Purdue OWL handout on outlining. You can establish an outline from an early point in your writing process, perhaps starting with a list of questions you know you will need to answer in your paper. Or you can start with a list of important points or areas to cover.  To develop this list into an outline, you will want to follow the principles of dividing your information, subordinating more specific information to more general headings, and using parallelism in the wording of your outline, as explained in Purdue's handout.
  Alternatively, you may want to think about the nature of the information that you are presenting and select an organizational pattern that fits your topic.  The University of Washington provides a good overview of organizational patterns.
  Whatever approach you take, it may be useful to think in terms of a hierarchy of parts of your paper when you create your outline, rather than in terms of a linear path through information. For example, if you think about what you need to say as comprised in four major sections of your paper, you have four major points in your outline. Then break down each of those sections, or points, into two or more subtopics for the next level in your outline. You can break each subtopic further into two or more sub-subtopics. In this way, you preserve the preferred pattern of outline organization.
• Information from Sources
  In research-based writing, make sure to make your point in your own words. Use research to support your point, but do not let another's words carry your argument.  You will not want to use very many quotations in technical writing.  Instead, do as much paraphrasing and summarizing as possible--but it is essential, when you put others' information into your own words, that you carefully avoid plagiarizing.  This means using your own sentence structure as well as your own words.  For more information on paraphrasing, see Ethics in Academic Work.  You may also find it useful to look at guidelines about what to cite in Appendix B: Documenting Sources of  Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students.
• Style
  You should adopt a fairly formal style in this paper.  You won't want to use "you" in your paper and you'll want to limit use of "I" to the rare personal example of an experience with your topic.  Use appropriate technical terminology. Avoid using slang and clichéd language.  Be as direct as possible:  this may mean using some long sentences and some short sentences, but above all, be clear.  See this list of characteristics of technical writing from Georgia Tech's Professional Communication Program. Also of interest: "Thoughts on Technical Writing" on the Navy's SPAWAR [Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command] website. A reference work that is often endorsed by technical writers is the 100-year-old handbook The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr.

Approaches to Writing:

1. Give yourself plenty of time to write your paper. Try to write early, even if you don't have all the information yet. Most of the writing that professors complain about as poor writing was done hastily and/or at the last minute. So don't wait to have the perfect plan; once you start writing, you may find that you are refining your outline.
2. As you think about your paper, make lists of info or lists of questions a reader might need answers to or flow charts showing the chunks of writing that your paper will need. This is important writing activity, even if you don't see finished paragraphs coming out of it. Jotting down the information you see as necessary to your reader can lead into outlining.  You may also use subtitling as a route into writing an outline, or start with a bare-bones PowerPoint as an organizational tool, which you can later fill out for your presentation.
3. As you draft, if you don't know everything you need to include, skip parts. Get as much down as you can, because it's easier to revise to produce a good final product if you have plenty of material to work with (and cut from). Schedule times for writing and make good use of them.
4. If you find yourself staring at the screen, waiting for inspiration, do something else for 10 minutes or 30 minutes--but with a firm commitment to returning to the writing at that point. Think of it as a doctor's appointment that you really need to show up for.
5. And you don't need to wait till you've done all your writing before consulting a Writing Center tutor. Come in and talk through your ideas for the paper or your information, and a tutor can help you organize it. You can chat with a tutor on Facebook between 7:00 p.m. and midnight Sunday through Thursday, and even share your PowerPoint in Google Docs to get feedback from a tutor. Go to https://www.facebook.com/bcwritingcenter.

Updated by A. L. Trupe Feb. 11, 2013