Huanfa Chen

Huanfa Chen

he/him

Associate Professor in Spatial Data Science, UCL CASA

LLM prompt for academic writing

1 minute read

Published:

Can large language models help us improve our writing? Absolutely! But hold on—they’re not great at turning a single sentence into a fully developed paragraph; that often leads to results that miss the mark. Instead, their real power lies in refining and enhancing existing paragraphs, making your ideas clearer and more polished. For non-native researchers, this can be an invaluable tool to communicate complex thoughts with precision and confidence.

Below is the prompt that I have been using to ask ChatGPT to improve my writing. If you are researching a different topic from GIScience, please replace the journal names in the first sentence.

You are a senior editor of several prestigious academic journals, including *Applied Geography*, *International Journal of Geographical Information Science*, *Computers, Environment and Urban Systems*. Your task is to assist in refining a paragraph written by non-native English-speaking PhD students. Please follow these guidelines carefully:

 

1. **Language Style**: Rewrite the paragraph using British English conventions.
2. **Clarity and Conciseness**: Aim to make sentences clearer and more concise. If you encounter any run-on sentences, split them into shorter, more manageable sentences.
3. **Grammar and Spelling**: Correct any grammatical errors and spelling mistakes throughout the text.
4. **Word Choice**: Reduce repetition and replace words as necessary while ensuring that you do not introduce complexity. The replacements should maintain the original text's meaning and context. If the text contains quotes, please repeat those verbatim.
5. **Formatting**: Retain the original markdown format of the text. Highlight all changes made by using **bold** text.
6. **Documentation of Changes**: After rewriting, list all modifications made along with the reasons for each change in a Markdown table format.
7. **Tone and Formality**: Use an academic tone that is not overly formal, ensuring the overall readability of the paragraph is maintained.

 

Your response must be in English and adhere strictly to the above guidelines. Here is the paragraph to rewrite:
```
<INSERT THE PARAGRAPH HERE>
```

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Book notes of Science Research Writing

4 minute read

Published:

This post contains the notes from reading this book: Glasman-Deal, H. (no date) Science research writing for non-native speakers of English. London Hackensack: Imperial college press Distributed by World scientific publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. Read more

Introduction to Overleaf

2 minute read

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Updates 2025/02/11 TL;DR: Using overleaf is much better than Microsoft Word (or MS Word) for academic writing that involves lots of formulas, and is very convenient for collaborative writing. UCL provides free and life-long Overleaf license.

Problems of MS Word in academic writing

  1. There are obvious differences between the desktop software of MS Word and the MS Word 365 on a browser, especially the formulas and figures.
  2. MS Word would crash if the file contains more than 100 pages, such as PhD dissertations.
  3. It is very hard to maintain lots of mathematical formulas in MS Word.
  4. It is time-consuming to change the template of MS Word. For example, IEEE journals requires two-column layout in submissions, which is a nightmare for MS Word.
  5. There is always a conflict if multiple people are simultaneously editing a Word doc via OneDrive, Dropbox, etc.
  6. etc …

Benefits of using Overleaf

  1. It is totally web-based and no installation is required.
  2. Many universities (e.g. UCL) provide free and life-long license of Overleaf, which allows many collaborators for one project.
  3. It is very easy to change the template. For example, if my paper submission to Journal A is rejected and I want to submit it to Journal B, it may take 30 minutes to change the template on Overleaf and resubmit. If I use MS Word, it might take hours or days.
  4. It has a rich text mode (see link), which resembles MS Word interface.
  5. It has functionality of “Track Changes” (see link) and “Add comments” (see link).
  6. It can be integrated with Github, Zotero, etc.
  7. There are lots of template of Overleaf. You can use it to write papers, prepare slides (using Beamer), prepare and update CVs.

Problems of using Overleaf

  1. The learning curve of Overleaf is quite steep. However, it is worthy for a four-year PhD and you don’t need to learn everything about Overleaf in one go (think about how you learn Python).
  2. As Overleaf is on a browser and depends on their server, sometimes the connection is unstable (but this is quite rare!).
  3. Some people don’t use Overleaf or resist using Overleaf. If your coauthor is one of them, you can either teach them to use Overleaf or download the Overleaf paper as MS Word document and send it to them. The latter way is really a pain, as you will maintain two versions of a paper in two different formats.

Tutorials of Overleaf

  1. UCL webpage and overleaf course at UCL: see link.
  2. 30-minute tutorial from Overleaf (link). Please note that you don’t need to learn everything about overleaf and Latex in one go. You can download an Overleaf template and write your own draft using template, and gradually learn Overleaf techniques when needed.
  3. Overleaf templates (link). Here you can find templates for UCL dissertation, Springer Nature LaTeX Template, etc. You can find more templates from Google/Github/CASA folks.
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