“Provided they are not obscure to the reader, abbreviations communicate more with fewer letters. Writers have only to ensure that the abbreviations they use are too well known to need any introduction, or that they are introduced and explained on their first appearance.” —From “The Cambridge Guide to English Usage” …
What is a dangling modifier? The term “dangling” means hanging or swinging loosely. A modifier is used to describe or qualify another part of a sentence. Dangling modifiers is a common grammar mistake in writing that make for illogical sentence constructions, usually by leaving a phrase to hang precariously at …
Importance of a well-structured PhD dissertation If you are reading this, you might have just finished writing or are in the process of finishing your PhD dissertation/thesis. Congratulations are in order, but before submitting your work for review, it’s essential to check your work, focusing on the content and readability. …
The proper use of punctuation can help to strengthen arguments made in your research paper. But knowing the English grammar rules and using these correctly can be confusing, especially for researchers with English as a second language. One of the easiest punctuation marks that you can get wrong is quotation …
Latin abbreviations, such as, etc., versus, circa, et al., ibid. and id., often crop up in academic writing. While their English phrases are acceptable, researchers use Latin abbreviations as they take less time and fewer characters to write. Yet it’s not always easy to get these right. In this article, …
Your research papers or reports will be easier and more pleasant to read if there is an agreement in their grammatical structure. This principle is called parallelism, parallel structure, or parallel construction. Parallelism is vital in good academic writing, impacting both the grammar of sentences and the presentation of your …
“As far as he can achieve it, readability is as important for the scientific writer as it is for the novelist.” – Donald O. Hebb Readability is communicating your research ideas with simple word choices and sentence structures. People are busy and have no time to slog through long sentences …
