Module 1: Use of English in writing scholarly/scientific papers

Module 1: Use of English in writing scholarly/scientific papers

Compiler: Emeritus Professor Wieland Gevers

This module is a first version of a general guide to the use of English in writing-up your research in the form of an original article or letter. The module will be updated, enlarged and re-evaluated from time to time. Please remember that different disciplines vary greatly in the conventions they follow; other modules have already explored this to some degree. All papers in all disciplines do, however, need to meet the ‘five basic requirements’ of:

· conciseness and being to the point

· elegance and readability

· clarity and the absence of ambiguity

· avoidance of unjustified speculation and undue repetition

· sound grammar generally, and correct spelling and punctuation in particular

A number of other general recommendations will follow later in this module (1.7), but these are by far the most important.

Please note that the guidelines in this module are focused on any text that is being written in any part of a paper or letter; they must be read in conjunction with other modules that are intended to assist with the drafting of specific sections of a paper in the natural science group of disciplines or in the broad humanities/social sciences. Remember that abstracts are the most challenging parts of any manuscript, because of the sharpening of the demands in respect of the ‘basic five requirements’ as listed above, but it is a useful guideline to regard all parts of the text as ideally needing to reach this standard as well.

This module has been compiled by an experienced researcher and not by an authority on English grammar or style. It has accordingly been based on a ‘practitioner approach’ and not on theory, although useful authoritative influences, here gratefully acknowledged, have been (i) Robert A Day’s ‘How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper’, 2nd Edition, ISI Press, Philadelphia, (ii) William Strunk Jr. and E B White’s ‘The Elements of Style’, 3rd Edition, Allen and Bacon, Boston, and (iii) Nicholas Visser’s ‘Handbook for Writers of Essays and Theses’. 2nd Edition, Maskew Miller Longman, Cape Town.

Additional resources are listed in the Tier One section of this system.

1.1 What are the most important considerations in ‘paragraphing’ (i.e. dividing up continuing text into separate paragraphs)? 

The practice of ‘paragraphing’ ranges from using one sentence per paragraph to keeping a set of sentences together in a single paragraph because they essentially ‘tell one story’ or deal with one idea or set of ideas within the growing mass of newly drafted text. Journalists (who worry about the attention span of their readers and wish to impart a sense of high impact) like to use the ‘short-sharp’ model (have a look at any newspaper), while scholarly writers are concerned with setting a stage, developing an argument, and keeping things together which belong together.

Apart from being a matter of content coherence, paragraphing is also ‘something for the eye’, and the two aspects are usually looked at separately by a writer of text, first drafting text, then checking the coherence of the content, and then seeing how it looks on the page – readability requires a lay-out that attracts attention and doesn’t intimidate the reader by an over-dense appearance.

Generally, as in this module, writers use a mixed style of ‘paragraphing’, using short paragraphs when the content is limited, or when they want to heighten impact or summarise a conclusion, and longer (but not too long) paragraphs when the connected content is larger and they can assume a reasonable degree of scholarliness and power of concentration in their readers (not to mention the peer reviewers/editors concerned). Variations in the length of paragraphs also look more attractive and inviting to prospective readers.

There are different conventions for leaving spaces between paragraphs. The most usual (traditional) is to indent the beginning of each new paragraph by a few spaces, and to continue each new paragraph on the line immediately following the last sentence of the completed paragraph. Modern practice favours the absence of an indentation and a double space between paragraphs; this is now recommended.

1.2 How does one use punctuation within a paragraph to achieve the ‘basic five requirements’ listed above? 

The design of sentences within a paragraph through effective punctuation is a key issue in good writing. Many mentors initially emphasise the fact that the use of short, simple sentences, each with a subject, a verb, and an object if needed, is desirable to achieve clarity. Most will then move on to the virtues of connecting sentences or phrases that closely belong together, and/or of shortening the text to avoid repetitive phrases and to include additional information.

Example: Please compare the following two paragraphs:

Version A: “Many of the problems of expression and construction encountered in writing will disappear if care is taken to remain aware at all times of addressing an audience. Think of fellow scholars who will be reading this paper. Such persons may already be informed about the subject you are writing about. They need to grasp exactly (not just approximately) what you are now saying in your paper. They also need to be led carefully through the argument being constructed or the interpretation being made. If the needs of the intended audience are kept in mind at all times, a paper is unlikely to lapse into imprecise expression.”

Version B: “Many of the problems of expression and construction encountered in writing will disappear if care is taken to remain aware at all times of addressing an audience. Think of fellow scholars who will be reading this paper who may already be informed about the subject you are writing about but need to grasp exactly (not just approximately) what you are now saying in your paper, and need also to be led carefully through the argument being constructed or the interpretation being made. If the needs of the intended audience are kept in mind at all times, a paper is unlikely to lapse into imprecise expression.” Note how Version B connects the points about your audience into a single sentence, reducing the total number of words and lessening the repetitive ‘feel’ of the four separate sentences of Version A. Note also the way in which the comma helps to keep order in the long middle sentence of Version B. You could alternatively use a semicolon in the long middle sentence, to achieve a slightly different effect in which the two needs of the audience are separated a bit more and are not given quite the same weight:

“…Think of fellow scholars who may already be informed about the subject you are writing about but need to grasp exactly (not just approximately) what you are now saying in your paper; they need also to be led carefully through the argument being constructed or the interpretation being made.…” 

1.3 What are the different uses of commas, semicolons, colons and dashes in paragraph construction?

We will need to look at each of these very useful and often essential ‘punctuation marks’ in turn.

Commas: Commas are natural pauses or ‘breathing spaces’ in the text, a function which is often brought out by reading the relevant sentence aloud. They can be very important for avoiding ambiguity. Remembering a few simple rules about commas may be helpful:

· Use a comma after introductory words, phrases or clauses, e.g. Indeed, there was no shortage of possible interpretations; or In the same way, one must consider the possibility that the cells had been contaminated during the isolation process; or Although it was not strictly necessary, he thanked every person who had been involved in the project.

· Use a comma between independent clauses (clauses which could stand alone as sentences) joined by conjunctive words like ‘and’, ‘yet’, ‘since’, ‘but’, ‘as’, ‘or’, ‘nor’, ‘for’ and ‘so’, e.g. The question of ethics in this matter is central, since one cannot be certain that chimpanzees cannot grieve over the loss of a companion; The solution was initially clear, but turned turbid over a few hours; There was no chance that bacterial contamination might have occurred, as all solutions used were sterilized before use.

· Use commas both before and after words or phrases inserted ‘in parentheses’ into a sentence between the subject and the verb, e.g. The possibility of outside interference, however, had not been excluded; The argument, including both direct and corroborative evidence, can be summarised as follows; The notion of a direct relationship between high-carbohydrate diets and obesity, which has been disbelieved for decades, cannot be excluded at this stage.

· Use commas when words or phrases are put in series, also after the last but one component, e.g. Poverty, starvation, and disease were rife at this time in this community; One cannot exclude poor diets, lack of exercise, and inadequate health care as key determinants of the long-term outcomes in cases of adult-onset diabetes.

· Use commas when several adjectives qualify a single noun, e.g. The problem has been a serious, generally intractable, and potentially catastrophic issue for rural towns for years; The solution was yellow, turbid, and smelly.

· Avoid putting commas immediately before verbs, e.g. don’t write: The drought-related, poor quality of several harvests and the simultaneous occurrence of influenza epidemics, led to much-increased mortality figures for this region; rather write: The drought-related, poor quality of the harvest and the simultaneous occurrence of influenza epidemics led to much-increased mortality figures for this region. 

Semicolons: These are used to connect clauses that could stand as separate sentences, mainly to ensure they are understood as being connected matters. They can also serve to render a complicated sentence more clear and understandable.

· Use semicolons when you wish to connect two independent clauses with the special connecting words ‘however’, ‘moreover’, ‘nevertheless’, and ‘therefore’, e.g. The incidence of HIV infection in pregnant women was over 20% in every region of the province; however, transmission to the foetuses concerned was vanishingly, and puzzlingly, rare; The causes of poor drug compliance are many; therefore no simple measure will remedy the situation; One sees many obese people involved in exercise programmes; nevertheless, the evidence that they are really being helped to lose weight is scanty. 

Colons: Colons are used when two parts of a sentence are linked in such a way that the second part illustrates, expands on, or explains the first. Quotations are often introduced by colons as well, as are lists of items.

· Use a colon to link parts of sentences by way of illustration, expansion or explanation, e.g. The results could not have been more surprising: every case of a new infection was linked to infected cattle and not humans; The evidence for a causal relationship is definitely poor: no case has ever been associated with this factor in the absence of other plausibly causative factors; The outcome was clear: the direct and only cause of infection was the newly described lentivirus.

· Introduce quotations with a colon, e.g. The supposed relationship between high-fat diets and obesity was described by A B Jones as highly dubious: ‘All the studies purporting to show that obesity is related to the consumption of a high-fat diet have neglected to measure total kilojoule intakes in the groups being examined’; The current conceptual understanding of poverty persistence was accurately summarised by N Khumalo: ‘Poverty will persist while education remains ineffective’.

· Present lists of items after a colon, e.g. It has been established for many years that the causes of allergic conditions in squatter camps are multiple: damp, over-crowding, poor ventilation, dust, and lack of adequate sanitation; the sections of this paper deal with three related but separate topics important for bioconservation: uncontrolled invasions, habitat destruction, and climate change. 

Dashes: Dashes (typed as ‘space-two successive hyphens-space’ in some versions of MS Word, and as ‘space-hyphen-space’ in others) are a refinement of writing, permitting a little more informality in formal texts.

· Use dashes to insert a clause in another sentence when this is justified in being better than putting the inserted words within round or square brackets (see below), e.g. The results are highly suggestive — provided that no certainty is assumed in the absence of statistical proof — of a positive effect of this compound on the rate of cardiac contraction; There are indications – and the number of papers supporting rather than contradicting this has reached a new high — that global warming has entered an accelerated stage.

· Dashes can be used to permit a summing-up statement, comment or conclusion to be appended to a sentence or paragraph, e.g. The beneficial effects of this plant extract are remarkably similar to those of many drugs already known to be effective in chronic liver disease, there appear to be no safety risks in humans, and the costs of production are well below those of patented medicines — the extract in its present form simply must be approved for general clinical use as soon as possible.

Round brackets: The use of rounded brackets (one form of parenthesis) is widespread in scholarly writing; the enclosed words are kept separate from the text but remain essential to its meaning and utility.

· Round brackets are used when you wish to give the reader a useful hint that help is available, e.g. in the use of the terms (see above) and (see below).

· Round brackets can also be used to provide a reference, e.g. (Damiansky et al., 2003), or Damiansky et al. have postulated that vitamin D deficiency is the key to tuberculosis susceptibility (p.433).

· Longer clause insertions similar to those discussed and exemplified under ‘Dashes’ (see above) can be enclosed in round brackets rather than dashes, e.g. There are indications (and the number of papers supporting rather than contradicting this has reached a new high) that global warming has entered an accelerated stage.

· Punctuation marks belonging to the main sentence containing a round-bracketed clause must remain part of that main sentence and not be enclosed in the brackets, e.g. The last discovery in this field (and it may be the last one we will ever see), was made exactly fifty years ago. 

Square brackets: These are sparingly used in scholarly/scientific writing in order to provide inserted words or numbers as substitutes for quoted material.

· Use square brackets when you wish to supply a word or words, or a number or numbers, that replace words or numbers that are missing in a quotation, e.g. Dlamini said: He had never seen any evidence of [elephants] uprooting trees in the commercial plantation; Brink stated that he had never seen any evidence before this time [1996] of any poaching in the state forest.

Quotation marks: These are also known somewhat clumsily as ‘inverted commas’, and can be double or single.

NB PLEASE NOTE THAT THE RECOMMENDED PRACTICE DESCRIBED BELOW IS THAT OF THE UK AND COMMONWEALTH COUNTRIES; THE US CONVENTIONS ARE EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE!!

· Use single quotation marks in all cases where you are quoting directly what a person (live or as a publication) or a particular document has said or stated, e.g. The designated observer clearly said ‘There is nothing whatsoever to be seen of anything unusual in the experimental area’; As Gubbins has noted, ‘Copernicus was not the first to propose a heliocentric local planetary system’.

· Observe the following rules with quoted material: If a full sentence is quoted, put the full stop before the closing (single) quotation mark; if less than a full sentence is quoted, the full stop comes after the closing (single) quotation mark.

· Use single quotation marks around words that are ‘loaded with meaning’, i.e. loaded with more meaning than is applicable to the usual use of the word, e.g. He regarded the university as a ‘business’, and its council as a ‘board of directors’; He was using the word ‘evolution’ as referring to an area of public controversy rather than to a scientific theory.

· Use single quotes for titles of works or papers to which you refer, e.g. He had not ever read ‘The Origin of Species’ or any other work on evolution; Zuma’s paper ‘The Winter Migration of Hadeda Ibises’ is key to our understanding of this field. (Note that an alternative, possibly better convention, is to use italics for a title, without quotation marks.)

· Double quotation marks are used when a quotation is made within another quotation, e.g. Bertrand Russell said: ‘I have never heard anyone say “I have no doubts whatsoever about the existence of God”, but that does not make all my contemporaries atheists.’

Ellipsis marks: A row of three full stops (dots, periods) is used to indicate the deliberate omission of a set of words in a quotation, to save space and avoid boring the reader. The remaining words must always retain their correct grammatical construction, and must make sense, e.g. Marks said: ‘The children of wealthy people rarely, if ever, have feelings of guilt…about their situation of plenty’ and rarely give generously to charities. [The words omitted are: ’or special responsibility, pangs of conscience or even protestations of self-justification’]

Apostrophes: These are superscripts associated with possessives and are governed by strict rules, either for their use or their avoidance.

· Use the apostrophe for all possessives in the singular, always as [’s.], e.g. The child’s toys; Joe’s books.

· With all plurals ending in the letter s, add only the apostrophe [’], not another s, e.g. The woodpeckers’ nests; The Dlaminis’ home.

· With plurals not ending in the letter s, add the full apostrophe [’s], e.g. Women’s rights; Geese’s wings.

· Do not use apostrophes to form the plurals of dates, just an [s], e.g. 1980s

· Do not use apostrophes for the possessives of personal pronouns, e.g. “hers”; “ours”; ‘yours’; ‘its’ (and especially distinguish the last-mentioned ‘its’ from the apostrophised form of ‘it is’, which is ‘it’s’).

Hyphens: These are used to connect words which are best not kept separate in a sentence (most often to avoid ambiguity) or which have not yet become fully combined, as generally accepted practice, into new compound words. [Note: Unlike other languages closely related to it, such as German or Dutch/Afrikaans where often extensive compound words can be constructed ad libitum by any speaker, English generally ‘resists’ the adoption of compound words until these have ‘proved their worth’, so to speak. Thus ‘work place’ slowly became ‘work-place’ until it was widely accepted as ‘workplace’]

· Always hyphenate compound adjectives, in which two words (which are not adverbs) function as a single adjective, e.g. The slow-moving animal made its way to the nearest copse of trees. [If the adjectival words were not hyphenated, the sentence could refer to a slow ‘moving animal’]; The above-described phenomena were observed in every case where the conditions were similar.

· Do not hyphenate compound adjectives where either of the words is an adverb, i.e. do not hyphenate the term ‘heavily pregnant’ or ‘most usually’.

· Hyphenate compound numbers such as ‘twenty-one’ or ‘twenty-fifth birthday’.

· Use hyphens when applying prefixes to words in ways that are not yet ‘dictionary- standard’, to avoid ambiguity, e.g. you retrace your steps but you re-trace the drawing.

1.4 How does one handle abbreviations in the text?

Abbreviations are helpful when standard (i.e. included in most dictionaries, such as ‘etc.’; ‘et al.’; ‘e.g.’; ‘i.e.’; and unhelpful when not, e.g. ‘lab’ for ‘laboratory’; ‘incl.’ for ‘including’. The standard ones are used only in figure captions, tables and in parenthetic insertions in the text; elsewhere, the full words must be written out, such as ‘and so forth’, ‘and others’, ‘for example’, and ‘that is’ in the above-listed cases.

.Acronyms (names of organisations expressed as a set of capitals derived from their formal names) must always be defined at first use in a single paper/work, e.g. ‘National Research Foundation (NRF)’ when first mentioned, only ‘NRF’ afterwards.

1.5 How can one be sure the tenses in one’s writing are right?

As a general rule, the description of one’s methods, results and conclusions should be in the past tense, as they are new to readers and not yet confirmed by others. Similarly, the results of other authors should usually be described in the past tense, e.g. Khumalo et al. found that bee venom contained no free nucleotides. By contrast, descriptions of previously multiply published and by now generally accepted concepts or findings are put in the present tense, e.g. The “energy charge” of living cells is sensed by the ambient AMP level through a variety of mechanisms; Streptomycin inhibits the growth of M tuberculosis

1.6 Avoiding gender insensitivity

Traditional usage not referring to a definite person involved the now-inappropriate ‘universal’ male pronouns ‘he’, ‘his’, and ‘him’, e.g. ‘When a scientist writes up his work he always describes his methods in full’; ‘Let he who discovers this take all the credit’. This is now for good reason taboo. You have two choices: use plurals, e.g. When scientists write up their work, they always describe their methods in full, or you can use the (clumsy) form of ‘he or she’.

Do not use the terms ‘Man’ or ‘mankind’; rather opt for ‘humankind’ or ‘humans’.

1.7 How does one deal with some tricky words?

Affect or effect: The first verb leads to something/someone being ‘affected’ (influenced) by something, the second to something being ‘effected’ (made to happen).

Among or between: The first involves a division where more than two recipients are involved, e.g. The goods were divided among all ten participants, while the second involves only two recipients, e.g. The goods were divided between the twins.

Amount or number: The first refers to material, e.g. I added an amount of exactly 10 g of sucrose to the mixture, and the second to units, e.g. The number of rats in each cage varied from two to five. Similarly, ‘less than’ refers to material, and ‘fewer than’ to units. You also say Ten grams was added, not Ten grams were added.

Compare with, compare to: The first comparison is neutral between the two subjects/objects being compared, the result not being anticipated by the observer, e.g. The performance of the one group was compared with that of the other. The second expresses a comparison which starts off being clearly in favour of one of the subjects/or objects being compared, e.g. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?; He was already compared to Newton when he was a patent clerk in Basel.

Continual or continuous: The first implies something that must happen frequently or repeatedly; the second, something that must be happening all the time, without interruption.

‘Dangling modifiers’: This happens when a word ending in ‘-ing’ is detached (=left dangling) from the word to which it refers, and incorrectly made to refer to something else, e.g. Attempting to assess the extent of the conversion of the one compound to the other, the unreliability of the assay was the principal problem, instead of The principal problem in assessing the extent of conversion of the one compound into the other was the unreliability of the assay.

Data or datum: Strictly speaking, ‘datum’ is the (Latin) word for a bit of information, and ‘data’ is the plural. The word ‘data’ has, however, now become a singular OR a plural word, and it is permissible to say ‘data are’ OR ‘data is’, or ‘data have been’ OR ‘data has been’.

Differ with or differ from: The first indicates a contestation between two people, e.g. ‘He differs with Sweeney on the interpretation of this set of data’, the second indicates that something is different from another thing, e.g. This result differs from that obtained by Sweeney. Never use ‘different to’!

Due to or owing to: These are really interchangeable, although there was once a distinction. Try to use ‘because’ whenever you can, instead of these words, and avoid ‘due to the fact that’, which is a clumsy and too-long term.

However: This word can only be used at the beginning of a sentence in a particular way, e.g. However you look at it, this will never be a sound working model. All other uses, like the similar ‘nevertheless’, involve placing the word between commas, e.g. The data obtained in this way, however, were never consistent; One can confidently say, however, that more than half of the fat-fed animals were obese by the less rigorous criterion of body-mass index.

Indefinite expressions: These include ‘everyone’, ‘everybody’, ’anybody’, ‘nobody’, ’neither’ and a few others. They must be regarded as singular in formal writing, even though their use as plurals in everyday conversation and the media has become commonplace, e.g. Everyone wants a roof over their head; Nobody has ever lasted more than a few hours in the testing room; Neither the test compound not its close analogue exerts any effects on this process.

-ise and –isation, or –ize and –ization: American English (and most word-processing software packages) uses the ‘z’ in all words of this type, while British/Commonwealth English uses the ‘s’ in the same words (e.g. finalise or finalize, nationalisation or nationalization). Follow the American usage for US journals, and the other for all other journals.

Only: The placing of this word in any sentence requires thought and ‘feel’. Generally, you can find your way by following the simple rule of placing the word ‘only’ just before the word it qualifies, e.g. It was only possible to measure the gas exchange once during an experiment, as opposed to It was possible to measure only the gas exchange during the experiment, or It was possible to measure the gas exchange only during the experiment.

‘Split infinitives’: Although the casual use of split infinitives has increased inordinately in recent times, and its deliberate use is also sanctioned, formal writing is still most likely not to offend someone if the selected adverb is not placed between ‘to’ and its verb, e.g. To understand properly what is meant by this approach, one must master the equations underlying it (Don’t say: To properly understand…).

That and which: ‘That’ is a restrictive pronoun, and ‘which’ a non-restrictive one. Thus, one writes The only solvent that we used in the first experiments was acetone, which we purchased from Merck. In the first instance, acetone is specified (restrictive); in the second, any supplier could in theory have been used (non-restrictive).

Use and utilise: A useful rule is to deploy the word ‘use’ when something is being ‘used’ for its natural or usual purpose, e.g. ‘Water was used as solvent’, and ‘utilise’ when something is being ‘used’ in an opportunistic or unusual manner, e.g. An unexpected absorbent property of the material was utilised to bind the free nucleotides.

Varying or various: The first word refers to a single entity where a particular property changes (e.g. Varying concentrations of ATP were used), while the second refers to an undefined number of entities (e.g. Various drugs were tested in the same system).

1.8 General points of style in writing

These can be summarized as the following precepts:

· Use the active voice as often as possible, and the passive only when it is clearly better

· Be assertive rather than circumlocutory

· Use definite, specific concrete language

· Omit all unnecessary words

1.9 Some common errors made by writers whose first language is not English

It is important for Afrikaans first-language speakers to check every plural noun and associated verb for consistency, e.g. don’t say: Rabbits is plentiful in this area, but rather Rabbits are plentiful in this area. Tenses must also be carefully checked at all times, as Afrikaans uses the present tense in many cases where the past tense is used in English (see 1.5).

Speakers of African languages must be conscious at all times of the need to provide an article for each noun. Prepositions must also be chosen with care by all persons whose first language is not English (see Vivian de Klerk: ‘Afrikaans English: Use of Prepositions’, in ‘Focus on South Africa’, John Benjamin’s Publishing Company, 1996).