acmmm-writing-style

ACM MM Writing Style

Use this to revise an ACM Multimedia draft for the venue's expectations. The reader is a

busy reviewer scanning across sixteen thematic areas; the paper must announce *what is

multimedia about it* before the model diagram.

The ACM MM first-page arc

Lead the abstract and first paragraph with: **problem → why one modality is insufficient →

the cross-modal method or system → media-grounded evidence → why it matters for

multimedia**. The multimedia contribution belongs on page one; a paper that opens with a

single-modality benchmark reads as a CVPR or ACL paper that wandered in.

• State the fusion or systems mechanism as the contribution, not a backbone swap.
• Make every media element do work: a teaser figure that shows the cross-modal signal, a

video that is evidence for a claim, an audio clip that a reader can check.

• Scope claims to what the evidence supports; "improves engagement" needs a measured

engagement result behind it.

Media-as-evidence table

| Media element | Weak (decoration) | Strong (evidence) |

|---|---|---|

| Teaser figure | A pretty system diagram | The moment where modalities disagree and the method wins |

| Qualitative grid | Cherry-picked successes | Paired success/failure across modalities with captions that state the point |

| Supplementary video | "See our results" | A clip tied to a specific claim, with the baseline shown alongside |

| Audio sample | An unlabeled waveform | The case the vision-only baseline misses, annotated |

Compression into the sigconf body

The 6–8 page body is short by ACM standards, and figures compete with text for space.

• Push proofs, full protocols, extra qualitative media, and hyperparameter tables to the

supplement; keep the body's argument self-contained without them.

• Write self-contained captions — a reviewer reading only figures and captions should

grasp the cross-modal claim.

• Budget page space before writing: decide which two or three media elements earn body space

and which move to the supplement.

Revision passes

Pass 1 (contribution): Does page one name the cross-modal/systems contribution?
Pass 2 (fusion): Is the mechanism the claim, and is it ablated later?
Pass 3 (media): Does each figure/clip support a specific claim, with a self-contained caption?
Pass 4 (scope): Is every "better/more engaging/higher quality" tied to a measured result?
Pass 5 (budget): Does the body fit 6-8 sigconf pages with overflow holding references only?

Title and abstract for cross-area reviewers

Your reviewers may come from different thematic areas, so the title and abstract have to be

legible to a vision person, an audio person, and a systems person at once.

• Put the modalities and the mechanism in the title where natural ("audio-visual," "text-and-

image," "cross-modal") so area chairs assign the right reviewers.

• Make the abstract's first two sentences carry the whole contribution; a reviewer triaging many

papers may read little more.

• Avoid single-community jargon in the abstract; define the one term your cross-area readers will

not share.

A body-budget worked pass

Treat the 6–8 page limit as a budget you allocate before writing prose:

p1  intro: contribution + why one modality fails + teaser figure
p2  related work (tight) + problem setup
p3-4 method: the fusion/alignment mechanism, one architecture figure
p5-6 experiments: main table, the decisive ablation, failure cases, user-study summary
p7-8 discussion + limitations; references spill onto the overflow pages (references only)

If a section will not fit, move detail to the supplement rather than shrinking the font or

margins — template tampering is a desk-reject risk, and a cramped body reads worse than a clean

one with a fuller supplement.

Common ACM MM style failures

• Modality as garnish — audio/text mentioned but never shown to matter; fix by leading

with the seam and ablating it.

• Vision-paper voice — the whole framing is a benchmark race; fix by foregrounding the

multimedia question.

• Unbacked perceptual claims — "more natural," "more engaging" with no user study; fix

by measuring or softening.

• Caption starvation — figures that only make sense from the body text; fix by making

captions stand alone.

• Overflow abuse — method text pushed onto the references pages; those pages are for

references only, and misuse risks desk reject.

Output format

[First-page verdict] multimedia contribution up front / buried
[Fusion visibility] mechanism is the claim / hidden behind a backbone
[Media evidence] each element earns its place / decorative elements: <list>
[Scope] claims matched to evidence / overclaims: <list>
[Page budget] fits 6-8 sigconf pages / over by <n>
[Top three fixes] <ordered>