Page 368 - English for Writing Research Papers

359

The samples were weighted and founded to be 100 g. (weighed, found)
It was different form what was expected. (from)

We asses the values as being … (assess)

Be careful of: choose / chose / choice, filed / field / filled, from / form, there / their,

then / than, through / trough, use / sue, were / where, with / whit .
Remember that spell checkers tend to ignore words in CAPITALS. Given that sometimes
titles of papers and other headings are in ‘all caps’, you need to double check them.

An additional problem is that your paper may have been written by various people
and the language set for the spell checker may vary throughout the text. It should be
the responsibility of the person who sends the paper to the editor to ensure that the
language is set on English throughout the paper, and that American or British
English have been chosen as appropriate.

Regarding US vs GB spelling, don’t worry about -ize vs -ise , both forms are used by
US and GB authors indifferently (it is only Word that has decided that - ize is US
spelling). However, differences such as color /colour, modelled / modeled should be
taken into account.

There is a tendency to ignore Word’s (and other software’s) red underlining of tech-
nical words. Just because such words are not in the software’s dictionary, does not
necessarily mean that you have spelt them correctly.

Spell checkers may not be perfect, but they are very useful. Grammar checkers are
also likely to find a few mistakes that you may not have noticed. They will help you

find errors connected with subject verb agreement, word order, punctuation (before
which and and , and with hyphenation between words), unnecessary passive forms
etc. Obviously the grammar check can only make suggestions, but Word’s grammar
check found several mistakes in the draft of this book.

To learn more about spelling see Chapter 28 in English for Academic Research:
Grammar, Usage and Style .

20.12 Write a good letter / email to accompany your

manuscript
If your English is poor in your email, the editor may suspect that the English will be
poor in the manuscript too. This is not a good start.