PhD students Fourth class. A common error Chinglish? If x equals to y, then... OK: If x equals y,...

PhD students

Fourth class

A common error Chinglish? If x equals to y, then ...

OK: If x equals y, then ... If x is equal to y, then ... If x and y are equal, then ...

Amusing We find a solution by exhausted search

Should be: We find a solution by exhaustive search

The name of the method is: “exhaustive search” or “brute force search”

Others need hyphens: Depth-first search, breadth-first search, ...

Strange section heading Problem formation

Any of these is OK Problem formulation Problem statement Problem description Problem definition

What is wrong here? In this paper, we discuss the problem of

computer visions.

Count vs non-count We study computer vision. (non-count)

Joan of Arc had visions. (count) She saw God and He told her to go to war.

He saw a vision in a red dress. (count) A vision = an amazing-looking woman

In an abstract Our method solves the 18 queens

problem in 6.96E+3 milliseconds

6.96E+3 milliseconds Just say 6960 milliseconds

Better: 6.96 seconds

In an abstract, maybe just: Under 7 seconds

How much precision? Their algorithm takes 49.87321 seconds Ours needs only 6.12345 seconds

Their algorithm takes 49.9 seconds. Ours needs only 6.1 seconds.

Our algorithm is over eight times faster.

Numbers One to about twelve, write it out Also zero Also hundred, thousand, million, billion,..

Avoid using billion, trillion, ...! US billion = a thousand million, 109

UK billion = a million million, 1012

Ordinal suffixes First or 1st

Second or 2nd

Third or 3rd

Fourth, fifth, ... 4th, 5th, ... 0th

Others depend on last digit 245th 973rd 121st 900th

April 1, 2011 Do not use these: US:04-01-2011 Canada & Europe: 01-04-2011 Beware of them when reading

International Standard & Chinese way: 2011-04-01 http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html

Exponents Not good in text: 3.2e-3, 4.77E4 10^7, 10**7

Better .0032 or 3.2*10-3, 47,700 or 4.77*104

10 million, ten million or 107

Handy numbers Pi seconds is a nano-century 232 seconds is about 130 years

Atoms in universe < 1081 ~= 2270

Age of universe ~= 14*109 years < 260 s

Two ways to say somethinglAnglo-SaxonlBreaklUselMethodlDo, performlSendlChange

lLatin, Greek, Arabic, ...lFracturelUtilizelAlgorithmlImplementlTransmitlTransform

Greek & Latin Much used in technical English Some odd plurals

Often use roots from those to make words eg. trans = across Transfer, transcend, transpose, transmit,

transform, translate, ... trans vs cis in chemistry

Another example Cryptography, from Greek roots: κρυπτός kryptós "hidden," γράφειν gráfein "to write"

Geography, photography, biography, ...

More Greek Auto = self Automobile, moves itself Automatic Autobiography

What is wrong here? We give the following statement of the

definition of x. x is ...

If it is our definition We give the following statement of the

definition of x. x is ...

We define x as ... Let x represent ... Call ... x.

Someone else's definition Bloggs [cite] defines x as ... x is defined as ...

We use Bloggs' definition of x [cite] as ... We follow Bloggs [cite] in defining x as ...

Reviewing your own paper Spelling checker & grammar checker

Can you simplify? Nouns to verbs? Move data to tables?

Can anything be cut? Is there repetition? On my own papers, I shorten about 30%.