Academic Writing — Craft Guide

Use this to structure manuscripts, strengthen argument, and match scholarly style. Engineering/AEC venues reward clarity, explicit contribution, and methodological transparency over rhetorical flourish.

1. IMRaD and the shape of a paper

Title → Abstract → Keywords → 1 Introduction → 2 (Background/Literature) → 3 Methods → 4 Results → 5 Discussion → 6 Conclusion → Acknowledgements → Declarations → References → Appendices The classic "hourglass": broad context → narrow to the specific gap/question → method & findings (narrow) → broaden again to implications. Empirical AEC papers follow IMRaD; review papers, DSR papers and conceptual papers vary (state your structure).

2. Section-by-section

Title

Specific, informative, keyword-rich, honest. State the topic + (often) the contribution/method/context. Avoid vague ("A study on…"), over-claiming, and undefined acronyms. (See /aec-scholar:title-keywords.)