How to read my Blog
After writing technical documentation for a while, I have lost the ability to write unstructured articles ( thanks to LaTeX ). As a consequence, all my blog articles will have a structure (similar to what LaTeX imposes). You can actually exploit this structure to read the blog effeciently. Let me elaborate. ( If you think I am paranoid for doing this, just have a look at my love for symmetry. I made it from scratch, and it took me 4 complete hours!)
Paragraph Structure. You will notice that most of my articles will have a lot of paragraphs ( corresponding to \section in LaTeX ). Each of which will be complete in itself and will cater to a particular aspect of the topic at hand. Each paragraph will further have some terms highlighted. These terms act as titles for that paragraph ( corresponding to \section{title} in LaTeX). So, in short, the paraghraph will be dedicated to that subtopic. If you are in a hurry, you can just read the highlighted terms and you will get a fair idea of what is being discussed. You can also selectively skim a paragraph just by reading the highlighted title(if you think you already know what is being discussed or that it is not important(formalism creeps into structured articles and some information might be present just for the sake of completeness))
Linking and Cross Referencing. Although my effort is to keep the article complete in itself, I resort to linking when the justification of an unqualified statement is out of scope of the discussion, but presense of it is integral to the discussion. ( corresponding to references in LaTeX ).
Even the flow of article will be quite formal. First paragraph will generally provide the motivation (corresponding to \abstract in LaTeX), and subsequent paragraphs will elaborate various aspects of the topic. Finally, the article will end with some conclusion/interesting observation. Quick Tip: Most of the passages that appear in reading comprehension section of various competitive tests are also structured in a similar fashion ( each paragraph complete in itself, flow etc. ) hence you can use skimming technique as a first read, jump to questions, locate approximately where the answer might be, just read the relevant part and you are done! ( you'll end up reading only 100-200 words out of a 1000 word passage! )
Hope this was useful (even this article is sturctured ... damn!)
Paragraph Structure. You will notice that most of my articles will have a lot of paragraphs ( corresponding to \section in LaTeX ). Each of which will be complete in itself and will cater to a particular aspect of the topic at hand. Each paragraph will further have some terms highlighted. These terms act as titles for that paragraph ( corresponding to \section{title} in LaTeX). So, in short, the paraghraph will be dedicated to that subtopic. If you are in a hurry, you can just read the highlighted terms and you will get a fair idea of what is being discussed. You can also selectively skim a paragraph just by reading the highlighted title(if you think you already know what is being discussed or that it is not important(formalism creeps into structured articles and some information might be present just for the sake of completeness))
Linking and Cross Referencing. Although my effort is to keep the article complete in itself, I resort to linking when the justification of an unqualified statement is out of scope of the discussion, but presense of it is integral to the discussion. ( corresponding to references in LaTeX ).
Even the flow of article will be quite formal. First paragraph will generally provide the motivation (corresponding to \abstract in LaTeX), and subsequent paragraphs will elaborate various aspects of the topic. Finally, the article will end with some conclusion/interesting observation. Quick Tip: Most of the passages that appear in reading comprehension section of various competitive tests are also structured in a similar fashion ( each paragraph complete in itself, flow etc. ) hence you can use skimming technique as a first read, jump to questions, locate approximately where the answer might be, just read the relevant part and you are done! ( you'll end up reading only 100-200 words out of a 1000 word passage! )
Hope this was useful (even this article is sturctured ... damn!)
posted by Paritosh Shah at 5:50 PM
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