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Abstract

Consistency is the orderly treatment of a set of linked elements, and it is a necessary characteristic of polished, highly readable prose. Consistency is either 'uniform' or 'harmonious,' depending on whether a set of linked elements is indivisible or divisible into subsets. From the perspective of text characteristics, we can speak of semantic, syntactic, stylistic, spatial, and mechanical consistency. To deal successfully with consistency problems, technical communicators should establish patterns that are logical, evident, functional, resource efficient, and stable. Because of its importance, the concept of consistency should be more fully recognized. Indeed, consistency should be a component of any comprehensive rhetoric of technical communication.
... Peer feedback is sought to evaluate the effectiveness of synonym usage and make necessary adjustments [59]. 10. ...
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Pedestrianization is a significant discourse focus within urban planning and design research. However, the need for more clarity from the inconsistent use of near-synonym concepts or terms necessitates attention. This review article addresses this issue through a comprehensive analysis of synonym proliferation in pedestrian research, culminating in developing a robust "near synonymous toolkit" and "synonym selection framework". Employing a linear snowball sampling technique, numerical analysis, and a qualitative content analysis-based summative approach, we examined sixteen peer-reviewed articles from 11 scientific journals. Through systematic classification based on consistency and variability, the summative review identifies three primary groups of near synonyms: dominant and widely utilized conceptual or terminological near synonymy in pedestrianization in the urban planning and design literature, near synonyms directly associated with a pedestrian, pedestrianize, and those indirectly linked to another conceptual or terminological synonymy. Further analysis delves into the nature of near-synonym concepts or terms, revealing three discernible patterns: the use of distinct, precise concepts or terms with near-synonym meanings, similar concepts or terms conveying divergent meanings, and the juxtaposition of unrelated vocabulary lacking semantic resemblance. These insights illuminate semantic relationships within the studied vocabulary, underscoring the importance of addressing inconsistency for clarity, precision, and coherence in scientific discourse. By offering practical guidance through the proposed framework, this study empowers academic researchers to navigate synonym selection adeptly, thereby enhancing the caliber of scholarly writing in urban planning and design.
... • Consistent: Consistency, which is the systematic handling of a group of related parts, is a crucial element of wellwritten, highly accessible text. Depending on whether a set of linked items is indivisible or split into subsets, consistency is either "uniform" or "harmonious" [16]. • Accuracy: While the accuracy is dependent on the method's accuracy and precision, there are other elemens that have a larger impact on measurement variability, such as operator expertise. ...
... Broadly, in written communication, consistency ("the orderly treatment of a set of linked elements in a document") is "a necessary characteristic of polished, highly readable prose" [17]. Ensuring it is essential to increase the persuasiveness and credibility of all actors involved in science production and diffusion. ...
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For various reasons, despite previous linguistic, formatting, and other checks, beginner-authored or multi-authored manuscripts may be rushed to submission while lacking consistency. This article provides a clear outline of the final round of checks for section consistency, subsection consistency, and overall coherence that a scientific manuscript should undergo before submission. Checks for consistency should target the following: consistency between full and short titles; the exact answer in conclusion to research objectives (questions) and matching between methods and results in the abstract; consistency from a comprehensive view of the research field to the announcement of a single specific objective in the introduction section; coherence between methods and results sections and between results and illustrations in the rest of the text; and, recalls of the objective, the results, and the conclusions in the discussion section. Finally, consistency should be ensured between the various sections of the abstract and those of the manuscript, with the ideal abstract being a true miniature of the manuscript. An original figure provides a handy visual checklist authors might use to implement and achieve manuscript drafting. This round of checks increases readability, comprehensibility, confidence in the results, and the credibility of the authors. Subsequently, confidence and credibility will increase the probability of publication and the visibility of a whole team’s work.
... Editing technical documents requires a complex editing process (Cohen et al., 1999), especially to maintain the document's constraints and internal consistency (Farkas, 1985). We first conducted critical object interviews (Mackay, 2002) to better understand how professionals manage such constraints and consistency in their technical documents. ...
Thesis
Millions of users work with documents for their everyday tasks but their user interfaces have not fundamentally changed since they were first designed in the late seventies. Today’s computers come in many forms and are used by a wide variety of users for a wide range of tasks, challenging the limits of current document interfaces. I argue that by focusing on extreme users and taking on a principled perspective, we can design effective and flexible representations to support document-related knowledge work. I first study one of the most common document tasks, text editing, in the context of technical documents. By focusing on legal professionals, one example of extreme document users, we reveal the limits of current word processors. Legal professionals must rely on their memory to manage dependencies and maintain consistent vocabulary within their technical documents. To address these issues, we introduce Textlets, interactive objects that reify text selections into persistent items. We present a proof-of-concept prototype demonstrating several use cases, including selective search and replace, word count, and alternative wording. The observational evaluation shows the usefulness and effectiveness of textlets, providing evidence of the validity of the textlet concept. During my work with legal professionals in the first project, I was introduced to the domain of patent writing and filling. In the patent process, patent attorneys write patent submissions that describe the invention created by the inventor. Patent examiners review the submission and decide whether the submission can be granted as a patent. In collaboration with a European Patent Office, I studied the patent examiners’ search and review process. The study reveals the need to manage text from multiple documents across various interconnected activities, including searching, collecting, annotating, organizing, writing and reviewing, while manually tracking their provenance. I extend Textlets to create Passages, text selection objects that can be manipulated, reused, and shared across multiple tools. Two user studies show that Passages facilitate knowledge workers practices and enable greater reuse of information. These two projects led to another important aspect of knowledge work: file management. I focus on scientists, another example of extreme knowledge workers, to study their document management practices. In an age where heterogeneous data science workflows are the norm, instead of relying on more self-contained environments such as Jupyter Notebooks, scientists work across many diverse tools. They have difficulties using the file system to keep track of, re-find and maintain consistency among related but distributed information. We created FileWeaver, a system that automatically detects dependencies among files without explicit user action, tracks their history, and lets users interact directly with the graphs representing these dependencies and version history. By making dependencies among files explicit and visible, FileWeaver facilitates the automation of workflows by scientists and other users who rely on the file system to manage their data. These three document representations rely on the same underlying theoretical principles: reification, polymorphism and reuse. I reflect on my experience designing and evaluating these representations and propose three new design principles: granularity, individuality and synchronization. Together with the empirical findings from three examples of extreme users, technological demonstration of three proof-of-concept prototypes and three design principles, this thesis demonstrates fresh new approaches to working with documents, a fundamental representation in GUIs. I argue that we should not accept current desktop interfaces as given, and that by taking on a principled and theory-driven perspective we can contribute innovative interface concepts.
... The attainment of this process was assured as the result of the teacher's guide to the experimental class. Hence, the process of learning has been in line with the functional principle in learning language (Farkas, 2005;Mountford, 2010). Further, this process of learning involved in the functional linguistics-based text. ...
Book
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Academic writing is a fresh, structured approach to an important aspect of higher education scholarly work. It extends the existing body of knowledge in the field by synthesising fundamental strands that have existed in a fragmented, loosely structured state. Beginning by examining the meaning, nature and importance of academic writing, this book also explains the role and types of evidence in the context of scholarly writing. To this end, criteria for assessing the credibility of sources in the present Information Age are discussed. Additionally, this text explores critical thinking, analysis and argumentation. There is also guidance on rigour and academic content creation. Complementing this, the book offers essential insights into structure and cohesion, particularly cohesive devices under the broad areas of grammatical and lexical cohesion. As a book designed for learning and teaching, whether self-directed or classroom-based, the book’s other unique features are predesigned modules, with ready-to-use schemes, assignments, assessment criteria and exercises. Another aspect readers of this book will find valuable are academic phrases for different aspects of academic writing. These distinguishing features will appeal to higher education students and teachers interested in academic writing, English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and Academic English.
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