Scientific Writing for Computer Science Students - FTP Directory ...

4.14. ABBREVIATIONS 834.13.3 Possessive form of pronounsWhen the possessor is a pronoun, use the possessive pronouns!{my, your, her/his, its, our, your, their} + possessed.If the possessive pronoun is not followed by noun, then special forms {mine,your, hers/his, ours, yours, theirs}. Seldom needed in scientific writing! (Inspoken language e.g. ”Whose cat is this? It is mine.”)In some special cases (rarely) you can use structure ”of it” (referring tounanimate things) to emphasize the possessed. ”I don’t remember the nameof it.”4.14 Abbreviations• Use abbreviations sparingly, especially the abbreviations which you defineyourself for technical terms. E.g.”The performance of NB and LR classifiers are measured by TP andTN rates” vs.”The performance of naive Bayes and linear regression classifiers aremeasured by true positive and true negative rates”• As a rule of thumb, if the term is used less than three times, don’tintroduce any new abbreviation for it.• Use only those abbreviations that help you to communicate with yourreader.• When the term is mentioned first time, write it out completely and givethe abbreviation immediately in parantheses. E.g.”According to maximum likelihood (ML) principle ...”• Notice that standard abbreviations do not have to be written out onfirst use! Such abbreviations are a.m., i.e., vol., ed.Notice that p.=page, pp.=pages• Do not switch between the abbreviation and complete term in the sameparagraph.• If you use special abbreviations in figures or tables, describe them inthe caption.