Be sure to re-read the writing hints documents that I posted.  I
updated them as I found new items recurring in your papers. Below are
some things that I saw over and over. 


GENERAL COMMENTS:

Read your paper, preferably aloud.  I can't believe some of you
actually read what you turned in, given the bizarre non-sentences that
appear. 

Have an Introduction and Conclusions section.  The Introduction should
describe why you're writing the paper, what you plan to accomplish,
and define any terms from the title that may not be completely clear.
For example, if your paper contrasts whistleblowing and leaking,
explain in the Intro what you mean by those terms.  End the Intro with
a paragraph that says: In Section 2, we'll do ...  Then in Section 3
we cover ...  And so on.

The Conclusion sums up what you showed in the paper and gives your
findings / conclusions.

Write the paper for an educated reader, but one who knows almost
nothing about this specific topic.  For example, if understanding your
paper depends on the reader understanding Bitcoin blockchains, explain
what they are. 

A reader should be able to understand the overall structure of your
paper from reading just the headings.  Do a sanity check and make sure
that subsections really are subordinate to the section, that all
headings at a similar level are of equal importance, etc.  If you have
15 top level sections, your structure is too flat. 

Don't have a single subsection within a section.  E.g., if you have
a section 3 with subsection 3.1, but no 3.2, then combine 3.1 into the
body of 3. 

Bibliography entries are designed to show the reader where to find the
information.  If on-line, the URL should be included.  If you use
BibTeX, it will guarantee that you have all required fields. 

If you have something in a biblio entry that needs uppercase, you can
enclose it in braces, e.g., {DARPA}, {FBI}, or {LaTeX}. 

If you include a hard fact that isn't common knowledge, give a
citation to the source.  Quotes always need a citation. 

If some section in your paper borrows very heavily from one source, be
careful.  Look for other sources and paraphrase everything.  If you
quote exactly, use quotation marks.  Avoid plagarizing at all costs.

Be consistent in your citations.  

Avoid sentences that are long, complex and hard to parse.  I'd suggest
re-writing any sentence that runs for 6 or more lines.  Also, if you
have a paragraph that runs for an entire column, it probably needs to
be broken into paragraphs.

Almost every paper had missing quotation marks, single and double.  I
suspect it's because you composed the paper in Word and then copied it
over to LaTeX.  The problem is easily fixed with a global
substitution.  Make sure you do that. 

Any quote longer than 4 lines should be set off from the surrounding
text.  In LaTeX, use the following form:

 \begin{quotation} 
    text of quote here
 \end{quotation}
 

Using tinyurl in the bibliography makes them more compact, but
isn't a good idea.  Tinyurls are not guaranteed to persist.  It's
better to use the real urls.  

Use typewriter font for computer commands.  You can use {\tt
command} or \verb|command|.  See the hints doc for more on this. 

The dash should be used sparingly as a punctuation mark.  It's not
an alternative to a comma or semicolon. 

Don't ramble.  It better to have 7 well written pages than 10 rambling
pages. 

Consider using the url package for long urls. 

Often a one-column figure is too small to read.  Make it a floating
figure across two columns ( use \begin{figure*} ... \end{figure*} ).