Academic Writing in English

Michael Allen Physics Department, Mahidol University

Outline

General points Structure of a paper/thesis Formal English Grammar Theses Correcting your work

General points
Copying from one paper is plagiarism, copying from several is research. :)

The best way to learn how to write well is to look at well written papers and see
how it is done.

Observe carefully how information is conveyed to the reader. Make a note of some little phrases that you think you might use for your own
work.

Look at papers which have at least one native English speaking author and
which are published in an English speaking country. Their English is likely to be the most correct.

Format of a paper/thesis
Abstract like a mini-paper must contain key results be specic (give names of equations, etc.) if people arent impressed by the abstract, they wont download your paper Introduction Give necessary background relate other peoples work to yours outline for rest of paper/thesis Method + Results (usually not called this in theoretical papers) Discussion/Conclusions summarize what you have done give applications, possible future extensions, implications Note: A sentence should never appear more than once in a thesis or paper. If you want to say the same thing, for example, in the conclusions, then write it another way.

Style

Try to make one idea ow to the next. Group sentences about similar things together in a paragraph. (A paragraph
must have more than one sentence.)

Be concise, but clear. In other words, dont write too much, but dont write too
little.

Think carefully about whether it is really necessary to include large tables of

experimental data. Wouldnt a graph show the information more clearly?

General appearance

Dont itemize things. Only equations should appear in between lines of text. Figures and tables should have captions and oat that is, they should not be
attached to a particular place in the text.

In a thesis, dont put the gures at the end of a chapter it is very inconvenient
for the reader.

Never put any words in bold font or italics. If you want to stress a point then
write something like It is important to....

Giving references

Place references in sensible places in a sentence. Normally they go at the end

of a clause. In the case of lists, they immediately follow each item in the list.

Give a reference to anything you say which is controversial everything you say
must be justied by either a reference or your results.

In the method and results sections, be clear what is your own work.

Maths

Remember to italicize symbols where appropriate. E.g. p not p. vectors: use B not B . Choose sensible symbols for variables and parameters. Make it easy for the
reader to remember their meaning.

Use the same symbols as other people (if they use sensible ones!). Dont put too many steps in when showing mathematical derivations. Dont have a long string of = ... = ... =. Explain in words what you are doing. Only give an equation a number if you refer to it later. When referring to equations, follow the convention of the journal. Dont start a sentence with an equation number. Put complicated algebra or long proofs in an appendix.

Acronyms

Only use an acronym if it is commonly used by others or if you are going to use
it a lot (i.e. more than three times).

Always say what the acronym means, even if it is a well-known one.

E.g. Problems in magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) are notoriously difcult.

It is not worth using acronyms for short groups of words e.g. Dont use BH for
black hole.

Punctuation

Punctuation symbols: , . ! ? : ; There is a space after a punctuation symbol (except , and .). There is never a
space before a punctuation symbol.

There is always a space before (. There is a space after ) except when followed
by a punctuation symbol. There is no space after ( or before ).

Dont use ; in the text unless you know what you are doing. The only time you might use : is for something like ...following equation: which
is then followed by the equation.

Both : and ; can be used in captions for gures.

Spelling and Capitalization

If you are submitting to a journal published in the US, you should use US
spelling e.g. write color instead of colour, traveling instead of travelling.

Use small letters for disciplines or theorems, e.g. mean-value theorem, Unlike
quantum mechanics and relativity, nonlinear science covers systems of every scale and not Unlike Quantum Mechanics....

Formal English
The English that you should use when writing a paper or thesis should be formal (like a legal document) but also clear (unlike a legal document). There are certain things that can be done in spoken English or in written English in newspapers, magazines, or lecture notes (or presentations like this) which are not appropriate for formal writing.

Dont use adjectives with similar meanings to describe one noun. E.g. compare
it is a large and difcult problem with it is a difcult problem.

Dont start a sentence with And, Also, But, So, Or, Even so. Instead use
In addition, However, Hence, Consequently, Alternatively, Nevertheless.

Dont start a sentence with Therefore. Instead write, for example, We

therefore....

Dont start a sentence with Then or Now unless it is a command. Dont use dont, or any other shortened negative such as isnt, hasnt,

wasnt, etc. Use does not, is not, etc. instead.

Generally try to avoid s. E.g. Instead of the wavefronts curvature use either
the curvature of the wavefront or the wavefront curvature. There are exceptions to this. There are some cases where they are always used such as Laws e.g. Bedfords Law, or where the alternative seems clumsy e.g. todays stock market prices is better than the stock market prices of today.

Dont use ! or & or /. It is also very unusual to see ? in a paper. Dont put
questions in a paper unless you really know what you are doing.

Dont use etc. and be careful about using e.g. or i.e. When referring to the number of countable objects, use words rather than
gures when the amount is less than twenty. E.g. Dont write we used 3 methods instead write we used three methods.

Dont use OK. Use acceptably, permissible, satisfactory, etc instead. Dont use got. Instead use obtained.

Grammar
English is a difcult language. There are very few rules in it that apply all the time most can occasionally be broken. The best way to learn English is by looking at lots of examples and seeing when the rules apply and when they dont. If you are not very experienced at writing English, use the KISS principle. KISS = Keep It Simple, Silly! It is much better to write things in a simple way, than to try (unsuccessfully) to use complicated English which no one can then understand. Often the problem is not with the English even if the sentence were written in Thai, a Thai person would not understand it. Make sure you explain things carefully. This is particularly important when describing how you obtained your results.

Grammar: verbs

Check that the endings of verbs agree with their subjects and with the tense. Verbs without a subject must be in the present continuous (-ing form) except for
commands. E.g. Referring to Fig. 4, ...; A method has been developed for solving ...; Integrating (3.2) gives ....

Grammar: tenses

Be suspicious of sentences that contain verbs in different tenses. Should they

be in the same tense?

Be careful about when to use the past and present tense. If the thing is still true,
you should be using the present. Hence, analytical derivations should be described using the present tense. Experimental procedures that you carried out should be described using the past tense.

Do not use the future tense to refer to something that will be described later in
the article. E.g. do not write In Section 3 we will derive... instead write In Section 3 we derive....

Grammar: articles and nouns

Most, but not all, nouns need to be preceded by an article. Make sure you
understand the difference between a and the.

Peoples names followed by s are never preceded by an article. The Zipfs Law
states that... is wrong. It should be Zipfs Law states that....

Some nouns (like water and rice) dont have a plural. E.g. information, research,
work there is no such word as informations. These can also never be preceded by a or an.

Sometimes nouns behave like adjectives parametric values and progressive

report are wrong. It should be parameter values and progress report.

Grammar: articles and nouns

Be careful not to use adjectives instead of nouns. Make sure you know the difference between adjectives and adverbs. Is the
adjective/adverb you are using modifying a noun or a verb?

Adjectives must (nearly always) be associated with a noun. E.g. Similar to ... is
wrong. You must write something like In a similar way to .... [Adjectives can sometimes be used as nouns, but this is not commonly seen in scientic writing.]

Make sure you know when to use many and much. They are for discrete and
continuous things, respectively. A lot of can be used for either.

as follow is wrong. It should be as follows. in term of is wrong. It should be in terms of.

Grammar: sentences

All sentences must have a verb, but remember that a phrase containing a verb
might not be a sentence. E.g. Although the test results were positive. is not a sentence. It is a subordinate clause that must be preceded or followed by a main clause.

Dont use the phrase there exists except inside a mathematical theorem.
Instead write A ... exists ....

List things properly using and between the last two items. E.g. Dont do we
used three methods A, B, C. Instead you should write either we used three methods: A, B, and C. or we used three methods, namely, A, B, and C.

Theses: general points

Remember that a thesis is not a textbook. Only review what is relevant. Never call a section or chapter Literature Survey. Try to give chapters appropriate names that describe the content. Try to avoid
calling a chapter Results or Methods. On the other hand, dont make the name of the chapter too long.

Only things you have done, such as calculations or program listings can be put
in an appendix. If there is someone elses work which you feel is unsuitable to include in the main part of the text, give a reference to it instead.

Be sure to be clear which is your work and which is someone elses. Give
references if it is not your work. In a theoretical background section of a thesis, where you have already made it clear that you are talking about results that are not your own, it is OK to use we. In other cases, only use we when talking about your own results.

Theses: size

Never think that a thesis needs to be larger than a certain number of pages.
Think of a thesis in the same way as a paper. Make it no larger than it needs to be. There have been maths PhD theses of less than 40 pages.

Do not include large numbers of gures that all look similar. Use a single graph
and: average the results and show the standard deviation with error bars code different curves using line styles

Never think that just because you spent long hours collecting data, all the raw
data should appear in the thesis. Leave the raw data in your lab book or hard drive, where it belongs.

A thin thesis indicates that it is likely to be well written, and people interested in
that subject will want to read it.

Checking your work

Learn to use a spell checking program that allows you to add to its dictionary.
On Linux/Unix use the program ispell.

Read it through carefully nd the obvious small mistakes. Be suspicious of any phrase you use that you have never seen anyone else use
in a publication.

Be careful when using a dictionary. Check both Thai to English and English to
Thai. Try to nd an example of the word in a sentence so that you know how it is used.

If you are in doubt about whether a phrase is correct, you could search for the
whole phrase on the web using an advanced search engine such as

http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en. If most
of the sites found are in non-English speaking countries, your phrase is likely to be wrong.

Getting your work corrected

Learn from your mistakes! If someone corrects your work, try to see where you
went wrong.

Dont get your work corrected in parallel. Give it to the person whose English is
the best last of all that way they dont have to waste time correcting easy things and will spend more time improving the more difcult things.

Thank you for your attention

Good luck with the writing!