/asplos-writing-style

name: asplos-writing-style
description: Use when drafting or revising ASPLOS prose — engineering the first two pages that rapid review actually reads, stating the cross-layer insight as one quotable sentence, structuring per-layer mechanism sections, writing bounded claims, and fitting everything into 11 self-contained pages that include figures and footnotes.

ASPLOS Writing Style

Two 2027 mechanics dictate ASPLOS prose (CFP, checked 2026-07-08): the rapid review reads **only the first two pages**, and the 11-page limit counts **all text, figures, tables, and footnotes** — references excluded. The first makes pages 1-2 a survival organ; the second makes every figure a budget decision. Style here is mostly resource allocation.

Engineering pages 1-2 as a standalone document

By the bottom of page 2, a screener must hold four things. Audit for them mechanically, in order:

| Element | Test | Common failure | |---|---|---| | Cross-layer problem | Can a reader from any of the three communities restate it? | A single-community problem with "co-design" sprinkled on | | One-sentence insight | Is there a sentence a screener could quote in their note? | Insight diffused across three paragraphs, or a category ("we co-design X and Y") instead of an idea | | Mechanism sketch | Does the reader know what each layer *does*? | Architecture described, software hand-waved (or vice versa) | | Headline evidence | Result + platform class (silicon/FPGA/simulator) + baseline named? | "Significant improvements on a variety of workloads" |

Corollary: background sections, notation, and roadmaps do not belong on pages 1-2. The worked example (`../../resources/worked-examples/01-introduction.md`) shows a full before → after against exactly this table.

The insight sentence

The load-bearing sentence in an ASPLOS paper names **information or capability that crosses a layer boundary**: what the hardware knows that the OS needs, what the compiler can prove that the microarchitecture can exploit. Drafting discipline:

Weak:   "We propose a hardware/software co-designed approach to memory tiering."
        (names a category and a topic; contains no idea)
Strong: "The contention data the OS needs already passes through the memory
        controller on every access; the fix is a narrow architectural channel,
        not a smarter kernel heuristic."
        (names the information, its current location, and the boundary moved)

If this sentence cannot be written, the problem is usually fit, not prose — return to `asplos-topic-selection`.

Structuring the mechanism across layers

Give each layer its own subsection with its own contribution statement, then a section for the **interface** between them — the interface is the paper's actual thesis and deserves first-class treatment (encoding, semantics, virtualization behavior, failure modes). Reviewers from different communities will each read "their" subsection closely; the interface section is where they meet.

Claim calibration, systems dialect

• Bound claims by construction: "never regresses more than 2% on our non-tiered

suite" is a stronger sentence than "negligible overhead."

• Attach the instrument to the number in the same sentence: "1.18× gmean on real

hardware (14 workloads)" vs "up to 3.4× in simulation" are different epistemic objects and must not blend.

• Write the losing case in the same register as the winning ones. One honestly

analyzed regression buys more reviewer trust than a page of wins.

The 11-page budget with figures inside it

Because figures count against the limit, they compete with prose on equal terms:

• Every figure must either carry a claim or explain the mechanism; delete gallery

plots and merge panels that make one point.

• Prefer one annotated diagram of the boundary/interface over three block diagrams

of components — reviewers cite the diagram that explains the *idea*.

• Compression order when over budget: cut duplicate-message plots → collapse

per-workload bars into summary + appendix grid → tighten mechanism prose → never touch template geometry (mandatory template; violations risk rejection unread).

House-rule details that mark a native submission

• References carry every author's full first and last name — no "et al." — with

hyperlinked in-text numbers and DOIs per entry; a hygiene-signaling detail reviewers notice early.

• Third-person self-citation throughout; no "removed for blind review" text.
• GenAI assistance, if any, disclosed per ACM policy (Acknowledgments, immediately

before References).

A load-order for the abstract

Six sentences, in this order, cover what both the rapid screener and the eventual citer need: (1) the friction two layers create today; (2) the insight sentence; (3) the mechanism, one clause per layer; (4) the headline number with instrument and baseline; (5) the bound on the downside; (6) what the interface enables beyond this paper. Most first drafts invert 1 and a background sentence — delete the background sentence; ASPLOS readers do not need to be told memory matters.

Section skeleton that serves three readerships

A cross-layer paper defaults well to: motivation-with-evidence (measured, not asserted — a characterization figure beats three citations); design overview around one boundary diagram; per-layer mechanism sections; the interface section; evaluation ordered by the claim matrix; related work by lanes (`asplos-related-work`); then discussion of what the boundary change costs. Each community's reviewer should be able to find "their" section from the table of contents alone — a paper organized by implementation chronology instead forces reviewers to reconstruct the design, and annoyed reconstruction reads as "unclear writing" in reviews.

Revision-aware prose

Because Major Revision is a standing outcome, write sentences that can absorb revision without rewiring: quantitative claims phrased with their scope ("across the 14-w