Book about technical and academic writing

Question

I'm in the process of writing my Master's Thesis on automata theory. The writing must be in English which isn't my mother tongue. So the question is, given that this is my first time long (hundred pages) writing and since English is a second language for me, what is the book you recommend for academic writing style? Ideally the book:

• must address things like how to structure the writing and/or align it with the research
• address the technical nature of the writing
• recommend general styling and language rules
• and as a plus, some hints to those of us for whom English is a second language

Best regards.

Answer 1

Nicholas Higham's book Handbook of writing for the mathematical sciences is detailed, clear, and overall very useful. He covers all the four bullet points that you have raised. Moreover, he gives an annotated reference to useful style guides, technical writing guides, dictionaries, and so on. I am sure you won't be disappointed!

Edit: I guess you might already be familiar with the classic: The Elements of Style by Strunk & White --- this book is a gem on writing, and is worth reading again and again every few months.

Finally, here is a paper with very practical advice. This paper really underscores the importance of structure, and offers concrete advice on how to attain good structure: The Science of Scientific Writing, by G. D. Gopen and J. A. Swan. The fundamental thesis of the paper is: Writing to meet the reader’s expectation.

Answer 2

I found Krantz's A Primer of Mathematical Writing helpful, though not deep.

Answer 3

The Chicago Manual of Style is one of the standard style guides for English and has lot of useful advice for academic writing.

Answer 4

A set of lecture notes from a course on mathematical writing run by Don Knuth http://tex.loria.fr/typographie/mathwriting.pdf

Answer 5

Here is another: Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences - Nicholas J. Higham.

Answer 6

How to write mathematics is a free essay by Paul Halmos which fulfills your first three criteria. It is short, but has several good points.

Answer 7

The book Trzeciak J. Writing mathematical papers in English, is kind of a cookbook for English language usage in mathematical papers. It provides examples of sentences that are typically used in definitions, theorems, introduction etc.

Here's google books link, and link to the book at the publisher's website.

Answer 8

Writing for Computer Science by Zobel is also very nice and it is not restriced to CS despite the title.