Common errors in writing technical English papers

Bob Bailey

Outline

General comments Grammar Specific words

General Comments

General comments

The most important goal in writing a paper is to make yourself understood by the intended audience.

General comments

The goal of an editor is first to make a paper readable. This is usually a job by itself.

Correcting errors in the content is the job of a reviewer, particularly since technical papers use a lot of jargon understood only by experts in the field.

General comments

For papers that are to be published in technical journals, it is desirable that the construction of sentences be relatively simple since the audience will consist of people from many non-English speaking countries.

Don’t try to use fancy words that you don’t have a good understanding of how to use.

General comments

Manuscripts should be double-spaced.

General comments Try to write concisely or succinctly. Remove unneeded words and

sentences. Don’t repeat what you have already

said using different words. Eliminate the "fat" in a paper.

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/concise.htm

General comments Make the paper target the intended

audience. If the audience consists of other

researchers, do not discuss introductory ideas. A research paper does not target undergraduate students.

Use references, preferably to books or well-known journals, so that a reader can learn about basics somewhere else.

Again, research papers should be concise.

General comments

Make sure that you define special terms, acronyms (e.g., PSNR) and symbols at their first use in a paper.

But, don't define terms that the intended audience should be assumed to already understand.

General comments

Spend time organizing your paper. Write a rough draft and then revise it,

revise it, and revise it again. PROOFREAD your paper carefully

before sending it for editing or review. The editor or reviewer is not going to

rewrite your paper for you.

Grammar

Grammar Subject and verb do not agree. Eliminate all words in the sentence except

the subject, verb and object or adjective describing the subject.

Make sure the result is a sentence (with subject and verb) and not a fragment.

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/sentences.htm

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/fragments.htm

Grammar

Make sure both subject and verb are singular or plural.

This is easily confused by modifiers such as proposition phrases which end in a plural noun when the subject sentence is singular.

Similarly for any independent clause. Example: ??

Grammar

Don't run sentences together with only commas.

They should be separated by connecting words: and, so, but.http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/runons.htm

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/combining_skills.htm

Grammar

Don't write sentences that run on for several lines.

Break long sentences up into simpler, shorter sentences.

See "comma splices" in www.wikipedia.org/Chinglish.

Grammar

Start new paragraphs appropriately when the topic shifts.

For the most part, a paragraph that is 1/3 page long is getting a little long.

A paragraph that is a page long is much too long.

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/paragraphs.htm

Grammar

Be aware of parts of speech: noun, adjective, adverb, verb.

These have different forms of words. http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/

grammar/definitions.htm#parts

Grammar

It is usually wrong to use a noun as an adjective: “the golden rule” not “the gold rule.”

But sometimes in jargon, it is accepted.

Example: ??

Grammar

Avoid contractions in formal papers. don’t = do not

Grammar

Active vs. passive: Usually active is more direct and

simple. “Bob made a presentation.” “A presentation was made by Bob.”

Grammar

Mixing up male and female pronouns - more a problem in spoken English

Grammar

Consistency Be consistent. Don’t change the names of things. Don’t use “procedure” one place and

“method” in another to refer to the same thing.

Specific words

Besides

Misuse of Besides as a replacement for Also, Moreover, Furthermore, etc.

Best to think of Besides as 除了 in Chinese.

Besides

The only time Besides can mean Also is when one is expressing a very subjective opinion, feeling, desire, such as giving an additional reason to not do something that you do not want to do.

"I don't want to go to the park today. I am very busy. Besides, it is raining.“

Not to be confused with “beside.”

respectively Respectively must be used only with two

lists of things which are being matched up one-to-one. If there are not two lists of things specified, then do not use it.

When you do use it, separate it from the sentence by commas.

“Serena Williams and Roger Federer won the women's and men's singles titles, respectively, at the 2008 U.S. Open.”

a, the Generally, we use a when introducing

any arbitrary example of a kind of object: A taxi is coming.

Then use the to refer to that same example: OK, now let's all get in the taxi.

About 60 percent of the time a proper noun does not need a or the

“I go to NTNU.” “I go to the university on Heping East Road.”

the

Many nouns need a "the": algorithm, approach, coefficients, method, model, process, property, transform

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/determiners/determiners.htm

fewer, less

Use fewer for countable objects, and less for uncountable.

“fewer errors with less water.” “There are fewer elephants than people.”

Use more for both countable and uncountable.

Firstly

Firstly, secondly, thirdly, etc. Number things with first, second,

third, etc. and not with these adverbial forms.

However, they are common in British English.

British or American?

If you want to use British English, then do so consistently.

Do not mix American and British styles or spellings.

Target the style for the publisher.

can, could can: able to. “When it stops raining, we

can leave.” could

1. Simple past of can. “Before he came to Taiwan he could

not speak Chinese.” 2. Used to show the possibility that something might happen, or to suggest something. “If it is raining tomorrow, we could stay home, or we could go to a movie.”

as follows

Avoid using "... as follows:" for introducing equations.

“The probability can be computed by….”

find, find out

Find an object: “Please find the money.”

But “find out where the money went” for where, why, how, when, what, etc.

Not: “Find out the parameters for the equation.”

This means…

Not: “That means …”, “It means …” Use: “This means …” if you must.

input, output Traditionally, input and output are

nouns, not verbs: “The output consists of one image file and two text files.”

Inputted and outputted sound very strange to me. Try to use them as nouns rather than verbs.

I prefer to write: “The computer put out the results” rather than “The computer outputted the results.”

Prepositions

Prepositions are a problem for Asians: for, of, in, on, at, into, up, to

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/prepositions.htm

Examples follow