Page 116 - English for Writing Research Papers

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We tend to read words in small groups. Often we think that if two or three words
immediately follow each other they must be related in some way. S10 is initially
confusing.

S10. The European Union (EU) adopted various measures to combat these phenomena. This
resulted in smog and pollution levels reduction.

When we read resulted in smog and pollution , our initial interpretation is that the
smog and pollution are the result of the EU’s measures. Then when we move on and
read levels we have to reprocess the information. This is not important if readers
have to change their interpretation only once or twice in a paper. But if they have to
do it many times, the cumulative effort required becomes too much. Some readers
will stop trying to guess the meaning and stop reading. In your case, it may mean
that your paper could be initially rejected. S11 is a much clearer version of S10.

S11. The European Union adopted various measures to combat these phenomena. This
resulted in a reduction in smog and pollution [levels].

6.3 Beware of pronouns: possibly the greatest source

of ambiguity
Some sentences that would not be ambiguous in your language may become ambig-
uous in English. For example:

S1. *I put the book in the car and then I left it there all day.
In English we do not know whether it refers to the book or the car . Some languages
have a case system or a gender for nouns. Thus if your word for book is – for
instance – masculine, and your word for car is feminine, you will use a different
form of it to indicate whether the noun it refers to is masculine or feminine, and this
will make it clear for your reader. In English it can refer to all nouns (apart from
those that refer to human beings).

In any case, if you use it in one sentence to refer to a noun you have mentioned in a
previous sentence, you may be forcing the reader to re-read the previous sentence to
remember what it refers to. So if you think that there could be possible ambiguity or
that the reader may have forgotten the subject, then simply repeat the key word:
S2. I put the book in the car and then I left the book there all day.

You may think this is not very elegant, but it is much clearer for your reader and is
not considered bad style in technical English.