Questions tagged [academic-writing]
Writing texts in a scientific or educational setting: peer-reviewed articles, theses, text books, and others. Use the tag [scientific-publishing] in addition, if relevant.
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Word order for adverbs in professional prose
I've been editing for my girlfriend, a non-native speaker, recently, and she asked me an interesting question, which we have modified to the following two questions:
Which sounds more natural?
Which ...
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Combatting crippling perfectionism
I am attempting to begin writing a Substack newsletter, but I have hit a serious problem: I am a chronic, crippled perfectionist. I can't get through a sentence of any given post without freezing up ...
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"Uniform" or "uniformly" random sampling?
Random sampling is a process whereby one collects data points (a sample) in a way that involves uncertainty/randomness/stochasticity. If the distribution associated to each data point is "the ...
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How do you write a scientific genus name in an already italicized text?
I am currently working on finishing up a thesis about my research in the field of biochemistry. The text that I am using to describe the figures is italicized. My question is: when I am trying to ...
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I’m back in graduate school and I’m struggling with writing APA. What’s the best way to learn?
What is the best way of learning APA writing if you have never written in that format?
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How do you structure a term paper that involves comparing journal articles?
As part of a course on statistics and stochastic processes, I have to read 3-4 journal articles and write a paper explaining and comparing them and explaining my learnings from them as they relate to ...
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Handling alternate spellings of a personal name
I'm dealing with a text that mentions several times the architectural historian Siegfried Giedion. A number of Giedion's books feature his first name as "Sigfried" and others as "...
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How to mention the Excel attachment under a form
I'm filling out a form and section A of the form refers to the content of the Excel attachment . (The Excel attachment and the form are combined together as PDF, they are one document)
Is this correct ...
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"morally dialectical" is this phrase usable?
I'm wondering if this phrase can be used to characterize two characters, one who is morally good and one who is bad. Specifically I am trying to say that "I want to examine character A and ...
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When you write a book that seeks to inform people about some issue or some event, how do you structure your book?
Let's say I am writing a book about environment policy in China and how China managed to clean the air in its biggest cities drastically by going green, how would you structure a book like that? I ...
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How to detect if a research team is outsourcing writing to increase paper publishing?
I have suspicions of a situation where a Computational Science research group is using paid writing services (outsourcing, using AI or human services) to increase their publication ratio in scientific ...
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verbs in enumeration
I was wondering if verbs need to be used in an enumeration in academic writing. Given an example where I would like to talk about three objects. I use an enumeration to talk about each of these ...
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Two documents, one reference list
I am using Endnote (20.4) to manage my references in Microsoft Word for Mac (16.65). I have two documents: the main text and supplemental materials. Both these documents will contain references, but ...
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Lower case or upper case letters at the beginning of rows and columns in tables?
On a recent review of an academic paper, a reviewer has pointed out that we sometimes use lower case letter at the start of expressions, and that we should check our tables in particular. True enough, ...
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Is there a term describing two poems that start simultaneously or in succession?
I am studying a poem called Unbearable Weight of Staying by Warsan Shire. It includes regular type and then indented, italicised type e.g
I don't know when love became elusive.
My mother's laughter ...
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Can I reference italics in academic writing?
I am analysing a poetry collection for college and one poem is 'Unbearable Weight of Staying' by Warsan Shire. She includes both regular and italicised type in the text, e.g:
I don't know when love ...
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What is good introductory book to learn scientific academic writing and publishing process?
I would like some help to find a good reference or textbook that covers the following points regarding scientific academic writing :
What are the types of different publications and explaining their ...
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Is "point out" appropriate in formal writing?
Is it acceptable to say something like "[person] pointed out [things] as [things] that [action]" in formal academic writing?
If not, what are some phrases with similar meaning that would be ...
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Using "etc." at the end of list introduced by "e.g."
According to the Strunk & White's The Elements of Style (p. 46)
at the end of a list introduced by such as, for example, or any similar expression, etc. is incorrect.
However, I have seen "...
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Can there be text in a section that isn't in a subsection?
Are there any recommendations against having text in a section when it's followed by subsections but that itself isn't in a subsection? For example, compare
Case A:
CHAPTER 1: Title of chapter 1
...
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Referring to an earlier defined phrase so that it's not taken literally
Say I define a phrase like 'pen' or '10 miles'. Then when I refer to these defined phrases inline in the text, how should I refer to them to let the reader know that I am referring to the defined ...
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Resources for beginner/intermediate writers
I'm an undergraduate student who's currently self-studying writing in quarantine. At present, I've read some books and browsed writing workshop websites on academic or technical writing. However, the ...
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This, that, these, those [closed]
English is not my first language. I am writing a more or less formal text (nonfiction).
When I am talking about something that I introduced in a previous paragraph or sentence, is it correct to always ...
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After submitting a "complete" manuscript, what role does the author take?
After many years of work, I'm ready to send the manuscript of my textbook to a university publisher. This is a very professional publisher, with a large team, who publishes dozens of books quarterly.
...
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What's the solution for "language being subjective" affecting readability? To write more concisely or what?
What's the solution for "language being subjective" affecting readability? To write more concisely or what?
To me it seems like knowing how to make a "well understood" text seems ...
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Is using non-sentences bad writing?
Consider the following extract of text (content not important, only sentence structure):
When the jump is made, from seeing a subject as vocational, to worthy
of study for the sake of knowledge alone,...
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Avoiding two sentences ending with same word?
How can I avoid that these two sentences end up with medical system? I do not want to use a synonym for medical system to avoid ambiguity. I further do not want to change the word order of sentence ...
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Relapse or relapses?
I'm writing an academic paper on the topic of substance use relapse. I am wondering when it is appropriate to use 'relapse' without a preposition when used as a noun in a singular form. Two examples ...
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Good techniques to keep track of error-freeness without ending up having to proof-read all of a long finished text?
Good techniques to keep track of error-freeness without ending up having to proof-read all of a long finished text?
This is a problem that I've had, but I assume that it's in fact quite common problem....
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How to refer to a definition that might not be standard but will be used in an article?
Let's say that for some math article there's a concept that is used many times, but the author does not know a standard name for this concept, if it exists. The author creates a name for this concept. ...
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Are there techniques that would minimize need to proof-read?
Are there techniques that would minimize need to proof-read?
This puzzles me, because I find that it's difficult to get things right "while one writes" (because the flow is different, one ...
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How do you develop an observation into a thesis?
I'm having major issues with this. I'm working on papers for some literature classes I'm taking at Uni, and my professors are...less than helpful (it has been a wild two years, I can't blame them. ...
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Help linking ideas for a literature review together [closed]
I would like to construct a literature review for an academic paper. I am stating what each paper presents, what their contribution was, and the strength of their argument is.
3 Reading Tea Leaves: ...
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Effort equivalence between video course and written course
If 1 page of a technical course is worth 1 point, how many points is 1 hour of a technical video course worth, creation effort-wise?
Background and context:
I work in academia in a technical field (...
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Can I use a quote from a fictional character in a scientific essay? [duplicate]
I want to use the quote about the law of equivalent exchange from Fullmetal Alchemist and relate it to our chemistry lesson as an introduction for my essay. If it's possible, how can I use it?
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Citation throughout my book rather than at the end as a bibliography
My book is a health/ wellness/ diet book/ metabolic issues etc. Throughout my book which I am 3/4 of the way through I have added in the website links after a piece of evidence. I have used 95% of my ...
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Punctuating consecutive usage of "and"
What should a transcriptionist do if the speakers utters,
"You need to accept the consequences and deal with the problem and focus more on growth."
Be informed that transcription ...
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A question on comma usage
I was proofreading an article when I stumbled upon the following sentence:
"The truth is, basically we haven't laid the foundation of the medical infrastructure in our country."
I know that ...
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Referring to one of the coauthors--should I simply use his or her name?
For example, Wang and Zimmermann are writing a research paper together. In their paper, they want to refer to Zimmermann's previous work (possibly with other coauthors).
Should they write "In the ...
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Are "floating quotations" to be avoided in academic writing?
I am finishing my dissertation, and my advisor was highly critical of my use of "floating quotations" or "stand-alone quotations." She directed me to a University of North Carolina ...
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How to shorten the sentence with parallel words?
Today I want to write a sentence with the full version is:
"We use the same set of control variables as in our main regression that is controlling for firm-fixed effects and industry*year fixed ...
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How should we use possessive form in an academic paper?
In daily writing, I normally use the possessive form as "shareholders' wealth" or "firms' cash holding", but it seems that in research, I did not see people use the " ' " ...
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Providing examples for the sake of it
I am writing an academic text about linguistics. I have managed to obtain examples from endangered languages that are rarely included in research (one in particular has less than 500 speakers ...
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Capitalizing the name of a specific Theorem
What is the standard criteria of capitalizing the theorem names when writing a paper? Consider, for example, the Unique Games Conjecture. There are the following three possibilities of writing it (or ...
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"Pros" and "Cons" Separately
I am writing a paper. I am wondering can I use "Pros" and "Cons" as the title of two subsections separately? In other words, is it acceptable to use "pros" and "cons&...
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Seasoned tips for Academic writing? [closed]
Writing has to me been an painful endeavor since I’ve felt what I’ve written isn’t quite right. However when I do manage it, it’s very fulfilling. So I might as well try and get better at it.
So so ...
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Leaving out the definitive article in academic writing
I'm currently finishing up my bachelors' thesis and I'm experimenting with the abstract.
I checked my first draft with Grammarly and right away some words were underlined that Grammarly felt were ...
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An alternative word for 'should'
I'm writing a policy-relevant paper with policy recommendation. My supervisor (non-native in English) told me that I should not use a word 'should' for writing sentences for policy recommendation ...
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Is my method of arguing here bad?
For my English class, we had to write an essay on The Prince and while I thought that my essay had a good structure and sufficiently proved my claim, my professor thought it read like a "high ...
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How to write less like a student and more like a researcher?
I'm writing my first academic paper, and the feedback I got from my supervisors was that my writing sounds more like a student report than a scientific paper.
What advice would you give a student when ...
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