Sigcomm writing style

SIGCOMM Writing Style

Use this when revising the main paper. A SIGCOMM paper has to make a networking mechanism feel inevitable: the reader should see the measured problem, the principle that solves it, and the evidence that it works under real conditions — inside 12 pages where figures count. Reopen the current CFP for format specifics.

Revision rules

• Lead with measured pain. Put the operational cost in numbers on the first page — which percentile, how bad, under what traffic — not "congestion is a well-known problem." An asserted motivation is the first thing a SIGCOMM reviewer discounts.
• Name the design principle. State the invariant your mechanism defends, not just what it does. "Steer at the timescale congestion forms" is a principle; "avoids hotspots" is a behavior.
• Pair every claim with evidence. Each performance claim maps to a table, a figure, a sweep, or a documented break point — and the evidence lives on a testbed, trace, or deployment, not in simulation alone for a fabric claim.
• Report the distribution. Tails are usually the point in networking; give percentiles and variance over repeated trials, and hold the fair variable (throughput, load) fixed.
• Spend the 12 pages on the spine. Figures count against the cap, so every figure must earn its space; push depth to appendix and artifact without making the body incomplete.
• Keep blinding clean. Anonymize authorship and deployment identity — a named backbone plus a topology detail can deanonymize as surely as a byline.

Sentence-level rewrites

Draft pattern	SIGCOMM-safe rewrite
"significantly improves performance"	"cuts 99th-percentile FCT by 2.4x at matched throughput"
"congestion is a serious problem"	"incast inflates P99 short-flow FCT by 3.1x on our testbed"
"our system avoids hotspots"	"reroutes flowlets on instantaneous backlog, so response tracks queue buildup"
"outperforms in most cases"	claim scoped to the workloads and topologies actually tested
"we evaluate in simulation"	"we measure on a 128-server testbed replaying a production trace"

Structure discipline

• The first page carries problem, principle, mechanism, and headline evidence; a reviewer should be able to accept-or-reject on the first page and have the rest confirm it.
• Every declarative claim near a number is something a reviewer may try to reproduce; do not write a sentence you cannot back with a run.
• Separate what you measured from what you designed from what you conjecture; mixing an unproven stability claim into a measured-result paragraph is a credibility leak.
• Motivate with measurement, then build the mechanism; the "measurement motivates mechanism" arc (as in VL2) reads as native SIGCOMM.

Vignette: compressing into 12 figure-inclusive pages

A draft with eight figures and a sprawling background section: keep the measured-motivation figure and the two decision-critical tail plots in the body, fold three micro-benchmarks into one multi-panel figure, move two sweeps to an appendix with forward references, and compress background into contribution contrasts. The test of a good cut: a reviewer reconstructs the whole argument from the body alone, and no surviving figure is decorative.

Output format

[Writing diagnosis] clear / under-motivated / behavior-not-principle / mean-only / overloaded
[First-page fix] <measured pain + principle + headline evidence>
[Claim discipline] <claim -> table / figure / sweep / break point>
[Tail reporting] <percentiles + variance + fixed fair variable>
[Compression cuts] <merge / move / delete>
[Anonymity edits] <authorship + deployment phrases to neutralize>