Information Gaps and Traps in Engineering Papers

An analogy to the energy band structure in semiconductors is given. An information gap corresponds to the "forbidden gap" in semiconductor theory and an information gap corresponds to the "trapping states" of impurity atoms. Illustrative examples of gaps in manuscripts are poor reader orientation, lack of proper information in illustrations, and inadequate conclusions. Examples of traps are semantic confusions, superfluous illustrations which obscure the issues, and critical points of the paper which are "buried" in the manuscript.