Welcome to the revamped IBM Research Blog! Read on to learn more about the site's capabilities, and how to best use them.

For anything not listed below you're not sure about, default to AP Style — or just ask Mike.

What's in here?

Our audience

Our stories are aimed at a wide, but technical, audience. These are people we assume understand what AI is and don’t need that spelled out, but who might appreciate an explainer on the difference between convolutional neural networks and recurrent neural networks.

Our primary audience consists of researchers, technical executives, developers, and scientists. We’re also writing for potential clients, partners, people interested in joining IBM Researchers well as members of the media, academia, and analysts.

Writing style

Try to write like you might speak if you were explaining a complicated topic to an old friend. You might start high-level and conceptual, and even through in a choice metaphor or two. But then when you drill down into the meat of the idea, when you know they’re following along, you get into the technical specificities of what makes this idea so interesting.

• Don’t use jargon.

  • Terms that commonly accepted in your industry are fine, but we don’t want to obfuscate our stories with phrases or acronyms meaningless to most people.

  • Don’t use business-speak. Impactful, leverage, alignment, synergy, paradigms — these are all words that should not be in your lexicon anymore.

  • If you need to introduce an acronym to save words as you write, do it on first mention, like this:

    “recurrent neural networks (RNNs).”

• Write like you speak.
  • Don’t drop prepositions or articles in headlines, or use ampersands and other unpronounceable figures.
  • Contractions (like don’t, won’t, and can’t) are encouraged.
  • Overly flowery language is not. Be like Hemingway.
• Use the Oxford comma.
  • There’s a big difference between a panda who eats shoots and leaves, and one that eats, shoots, and leaves.
• Use metaphors and similes sparingly.
  • It’s easy to get lost in the tales you spin. Stick to the reality of your work where possible.
• Don't use puns.
  • Unless you’re really good at them. Which you probably aren’t.
• Strive for accuracy.
  • Taking care to do all of the above should result in some clear, well thought-out stories that will make the reader want to learn more about the work you’re doing.

Headlines