Editage Blog
Inversion
Most journals arrange cited references alphabetically by author but different journals print the names differently. Have the names been inverted (surnames or family names first, then the initials, as in Watson J D and not J D Watson)? If so, have the names of all authors of a paper been inverted or is it only the first author that has been so treated (Watson J D and Crick F C or Watson J D and F C Crick)?
Case
Are the names in all capitals, in capitals and small capitals, or in capitals and lowercase (WATSON J D, WATSON J D, or Watson J D)?
Punctuation
Note the placement of commas: is there a comma between the surname and the initials or does the comma separate one author from the next (Watson, J D; Crick, F C; Franklin, R or Watson J D, Crick F C, Franklin R)? If a comma separates the name from the initials, does a semicolon separate one author from the next? Are initials separated by spaces or dots or both (Watson J D or Watson J.D. or Watson J. D.)? Are the names separated only with commas or is the last name preceded with ‘and'? Note also whether the ampersand (&) has been used to save space (Watson J D, Crick F C, Franklin R or Watson J D, Crick F C, and Franklin R or Watson J D & Crick F C, and so on).
Indent and spacing
Some journals use a hanging indent (the second and subsequent lines of each reference are indented), some do not use indents at all, and some may insert extra space between consecutive references. Ignore these devices. Focus on the characters (letters and punctuation marks) and their sequence but leave the design alone-leave this kind of formatting to the journal. Just as you do not use a double-column format for your manuscript just because the journal follows a double-column layout, leave these points of layout and design to the journal.
And this is just for starters: after all, a reference has many items other than the names of authors (title of the paper, title of the journal, volume number and page numbers, year of publication, and so on). But those will be topics for future blogs.
[This is a part of a series of posts, entitled Publish and Prosper, which talk about tips for researchers whose first language is not English but who submit their papers to journals published in English. The series will touch upon not only writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and style) but everything else relevant to publishing research papers that journal editors wish their authors knew.]
Common Mistakes by Indian Speakers of English
We'll look at mistakes in both spoken and written English. Let's first start with written English.
Written English Mistakes
Overuse of the -ing form: Mistakes of this kind occur in writing and speech. There is a tendency to overuse the -ing form of the verb. For instance, in response to questions such as "Where do you work," speakers who are not fluent in English will write "I am working with an international law firm." Although the response is grammatically perfect, it may sound a tad unnatural to the native ear. A more appropriate answer would be "I work with an international law firm." Here's another example:
Incorrect: I am not knowing the password to the system; how can I access it?
Correct: I don't know the password to the system; how can I access it?
Overuse of the -ing form of the verb becomes a very grave issue in cases like the above. This is because some verbs like know, have, and hear are not commonly used in the -ing form. And such sentences, like the one in incorrect example, are grammatically incorrect.
Spoken English Mistakes
Incorrect use of reflexive pronouns: Many Indians tend use reflexive pronouns, especially myself, incorrectly. Myself can be used in a sentence only if the pronoun I has been used earlier, e.g., I built this house myself. However, a common mistake that people make is using myself without the I.
Incorrect: Myself, Rahul Verma; this is my colleague, Sheena.
Correct: I am Rahul Verma; this is my colleague, Sheena.
Using myself in place of I is mistakenly thought of as formal, though it is grammatically incorrect.
Misplaced stresses: There are no classic pronunciation mistakes that Indians make. However, sometimes, the influences of regional languages do creep into spoken English. For instance, people who speak Malayalam, a language spoken in southern India, tend to place additional emphasis on the vowels in words like sorry and water. Some pronounce it as sow-ree and waater. Further, Indians who speak Bengali tend to use a bh sound for words that begin with v, e.g., "bhery good" instead of "very good."
[Native Eigo-juku is the Cactus newsletter providing essential English tidbits to interested non-native English speakers.]
In order to obtain funding for your research, the language and presentation of your grant application are extremely important. In fact, language, which is vital for conveying ideas and flow of thought in grant applications, could possibly be one of the crucial factors that determines whether or not your application will be considered.
Editage's Grant Application Editing Service
Editage's Grant Application Editing service is a natural extension of our existing English editing service. This service provides grant application editing support to researchers and students who wish to apply to various agencies for funding or grants. Through this service, Editage offers high-quality English editing for all components of a typical grant application. Our team of experienced editors will ensure that your grant application is well-written, easily readable, and conforms to a native English style; this will improve your chances of securing a grant.
This service is a premium service, which involves a two-round editing process. This is because a grant application typically requires dynamic editing such as modification and/or reorganization of the content. Occasionally, referees who are not familiar with the subject area may be involved in the grant application process. Therefore, while the application form still needs to contain the background of the research project, it should also be written concisely in order to be convincing. Hence, it is important that you check the changes made in the 1st round so that you can make modifications, if necessary, before the 2nd round.
How does it work?
First round:
- You submit your grant application to us for editing.
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Second round:
- You review the changes made by our editors and make relevant changes to your application.
- You then send the revised application for a second round of edit.
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In addition, we offer the same post-editing support as in the case of our existing English editing service. Our editors will answer any queries that you might have about the edited application until you are satisfied with the results. Further, since our editors have substantial experience in editing a variety of documents ranging from research papers to letters, you can be assured that your application will be delivered as a polished and presentable end-product.
What you will receive from this service
- Language editing of your grant application so that it conforms to native English style, thereby improving your chances of securing a grant.
- Suggestions and tips that will help you enhance your English writing skills.
A successful grant involves much more than simply filling out an application form or caring about your cause. It also involves persuasion and effective presentation. It is well to assume that your reader is a busy, impatient, skeptical person who has no reason to give your proposal special consideration and who is faced with many more requests than he can grant, or even read thoroughly. For a powerful and convincing proposal, it is essential that your application captures the reader's interest not only in terms of the content but also in terms of the language. Editage's Grant Application Editing service will help you in this regard.
[This is a part of a series of posts, entitled What Editage does and How, showing you a glimpse of what and how we do things at Editage, and Cactus in general, and how you can make the most of it.]
How much water does a lake hold? The capacity of any lake will, of course, depend on its dimensions: its length, breadth, and depth. In a table that compared a number of lakes, the capacity of each lake was given cubic metres, and the symbol used was Mm³, a notation that puzzled my students. However, this blog is for young researchers, and although they are less likely to stumble over such notations, it is just as well that we refresh our memories with a brief recap.
The notation Mm³ was logical enough: mega (106), that is million, cubic metres. The uppercase (capital) form is mandatory for all multipliers from mega onwards (and hence GW for gigawatts, Tg for teragrams - a common notation used to with carbon in discussions of climate change - and so on). The smaller multipliers, namely deca, hecto, and kilo, and all the dividers, from deci to atto, can only take the lowercase form: cm, mm, µm, and nm to denote progressively smaller lengths, for instance (as centimetres, millimetres, micrometres, and nanometres). Note also that SI favours metre and not meter.It is also important to remember that the prefixes (multiplier or dividers) combine with symbols to give the complete units and that the symbols appear only in the singular form: you may write kilograms and centimetres but never kgs and cms, nor can you write gms for grams.Lastly, symbols named after people, as in W, the SI unit for power (after James Watt) or Pa, the SI unit for pressure (named after Blaise Pascal), use the capital form but the units, when spelt out in full, go lowercase, as in watts, pascals, and newtons.
[This is a part of a series of posts, entitled Publish and Prosper, which talk about tips for researchers whose first language is not English but who submit their papers to journals published in English. The series will touch upon not only writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and style) but everything else relevant to publishing research papers that journal editors wish their authors knew.]
"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties." - Sir Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning
I was 16 years old when I first read about Francis Bacon, "the most powerful mind in modern times" in Will Durant's "The Story of Philosophy." He was the first philosopher mentioned after the chapter on Aristotle - a gap of thousand years. What struck me most at that time was the clarity of thought and the striking use of the English Language. In his own way, Bacon was the first scientific philosopher and a literary giant.
Bacon was born in England, in a noble family in the year 1561 - in the Elizabethan era, one of the greatest eras of one of the most powerful of modern nations. He joined Trinity College, Cambridge at age 12 and later described his tutors as "Men of sharp wits, shut up in their cells of a few authors, chiefly Aristotle, their Dictator." Bacon was a philosopher, statesman, and essayist. He wrote in both Latin and English. He is also known as a proponent of the scientific revolution. Bacon was knighted in 1603. He has been credited as the creator of the English essay and is also called "the Father of Modern Science. He is also often credited, arguably, to have created the works of William Shakespeare.
Bacon also delineated the principles of the inductive method, which constituted a breakthrough in the approach to science, even though philosophers and scientists of the day-and seemingly even today-repudiated both his theories and methodology, alike. Bacon, along with Galileo are known in literary circles as "the great anti-Aristotelians who created the 'modern scientific' view of Nature."
Bacon's finest literary product is the Essays, which reveal one of the best and most sophisticated usage of the English language, which is as supreme in prose as Shakespeare's is in verse. Each of these essays elucidates in a couple of pages the distilled subtlety of a genius on almost every major issue of life. And "Bacon's greatest performance," says his bitterest Critic, Macaulay, "is the first book of the Novum Organum." Never did a man put more life into logic, making induction an epic adventure and a conquest. If one must study Logic, let him begin with this book. In the Novum Organum (the new instrumentality for the acquisition of knowledge), Francis Bacon classified the intellectual fallacies of his time under four headings, which he called idols. He distinguished them as idols of the Tribe, idols of the Cave, idols of the Marketplace, and idols of the Theater. An idol is an image, in this case held in the mind, which receives veneration but is without substance in itself. Bacon did not regard idols as symbols, but rather as fixations.
Bacon's first work was The Advancement of Learning (1605). His second came along in 1620-Novum Organum; it was part of his larger philosophical work known as Instauratio Magna, of which he only completed two parts: Novum Organum and De Augmentis Scientarum which were published in 1623, were extensions of his work in 1605. Apothegms came out in 1624. His aphoristic Essays were continually worked on between 1597 and 1625. Bacon's utopian fable about the island of "Bensalem," the New Atlantis, was published in 1627 and appended to Sylva Sylvarum. And his final work, The World, was publishd three years after his death.
References
- Durant Will, The Story of Philosophy, Simon & Schuster, 1926
- Julian Martin, Francis Bacon: The State and the Reform of Natural Philosophy, 1992
- Crowther, J.G. Francis Bacon, the First Statesman of Science (Cresset, 1960)
- Wikipedia
[This is a part of a series of posts, titled Open Space, where we talk about things that generally interest us, and hopefully you as well.]
We'll look at mistakes in both spoken and written English. Let's first start with written English.
Written English Mistakes
Placement of adjectives: One of the major problems in written English for Arabic speakers is the placement of adjectives. In English, typically, the adjective is placed before the noun. However, in Arabic, an adjective that describes the noun comes after the noun. Below is an example of a typical error that occurs because of this confusion.
Incorrect: My car the red color one is parked outside.
Correct: My red car is parked outside.
In the incorrect example, note how the adjective the red color one follows the noun, whereas in English, red comes before the noun.
Missing auxiliary verbs: Mistakes in writing are usually the result of trying to translate from one language to the other-word for word. Thus, if a language lacks an equivalent for a word from another language, it usually leads to mistakes of omission. For instance, the to-be verb forms are absent in Arabic. And when a sentence is written without to-be verbs in English, it becomes difficult to tell the time of the action.
Incorrect: The children crossing the road.
Correct: The children are/were crossing the road.
Spoken English Mistakes
P vs. B: Just as Japanese speakers confuse the letters l and r in English, speakers of Arabic find it difficult to distinguish between the letters p and b. So an Arabic speaker may end up saying "bostbox" instead of "postbox." Note that such mistakes sometimes find their way into writing in the form of wrong spellings.
[Native Eigo-juku is the Cactus newsletter providing essential English tidbits to interested non-native English speakers.]
Is there any difference in quality between the Budget, Normal, and Express services?
These three service options available to our clients differ only in terms of the speed of delivery and the fees. There is no difference in the editing quality between them.
All documents edited by us come with the Editage Quality Guarantee. We go to great lengths to ensure that every document we edit is of the highest quality. If the quality of your edited document fails to meet the standards of quality, we take quick and effective action on it.
[This is a part of a series of posts, entitled What Editage does and How, showing you a glimpse of what and how we do things at Editage, and Cactus in general, and how you can make the most of it.]
High Impact Journals
The Impact factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure of the citations to science and social science journals. It is frequently used as a proxy for the importance of a journal to its field.
Science Watch has listed High-Impact Journals in 11 Fields. The rankings are by citations per paper, 1999-2004. In all 11 of the fields shown here, Nature and Science obviously predominate, with both appearing at either #1 or #2 in each field (although Science claims the slight majority with six #1 showings). In a few instances, as the rounded figures show, the results were virtually identical (in Space Science, for example, where Science squeaked by with 24.06 cites per paper, compared to Nature's mark of 23.86). PNAS was also in the thick of things, appearing in nine of the rankings, and within the top five in seven.
The entire list can be viewed here.
Source: ISI Journal Citation Reports®
[This is part of a series of posts, titled Useful Links, which shall feature "essential" online tools, discussions, blogs, essays and references that we find over the Internet.]
Journals of the Century
The Journals of the Century Project began with a mission of having subject expert librarians offer their views on the most influential journals in their respective fields over the past 100 years. The project gathered some of America's top subject expert librarians for this purpose. Thirty-two contributing authors led by Editor Tony Stankus reviewed journals from over 20 countries that have successfully shaped the evolution of their individual specialties worldwide.
A highly interesting book, Journals of the Century, edited by Tony Stankus, Holy Cross Science Librarian and Alumnus, was the culmination of the Journal of the Century Project.
Over the years, many others have produced core lists of journals in their respective fields; however, this is the only book that attempts to produce a highly discriminating list of journals, the creme de la creme, across a broad spectrum of subjects and that cover the entire twentieth century.
[This is part of a series of posts, titled Useful Links, which shall feature "essential" online tools, discussions, blogs, essays and references that we find over the Internet.]
"Give me twenty-six lead soldiers and I will conquer the world" - or words to that effect - have been variously attributed to Benjamin Franklin and Karl Marx, the reference being to letters of the alphabet made of lead, as they used to be when letterpress printing was the most common method. Now of course we have digital type. The quotation was figurative; we cannot imagine being stuck to just 26 letters, presumably capitals, as we used to be when telegrams and telex messages were the quickest means to transmit messages. Even then, we had to have the numerals. Now even the simplest keyboard gives us many more characters than those we could type with the manual typewriter. The standard, basic, ASCII repertoire gives us 128 characters - or 2 to the power of 7 (hence 7-bit) - to cover capital and lowercase letters, the numerals, some punctuation marks, and a few other essentials, the ‘at' symbol (@) included. And the extended ASCII gives us a total of 256 - or 2 to the power of 8 (hence 8-bit) - to include the diacritics (so essential to set French and German names, for example) and a few mathematical and scientific symbols including the multiplication sign (×), the degree sign (°), and the Greek lowercase mu (µ), for example.
Be a professional-use these characters. To use the letter X, no matter capital or lowercase, in place of the proper multiplication sign or a superscript ‘o' (again, no matter capital or lowercase) for the degree sign is amateurish. The first-hand data that you have so painstakingly collected from your laboratory experiments and field studies deserve that extra attention. Unicode gives us even more characters but let us begin with the simple utility: Start - Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Character Map, and off you go (if you are using Windows XP, that is) but the utility is there in both the Mac and the PC. Try it.
[This is a part of a series of posts, entitled Publish and Prosper, which talk about tips for researchers whose first language is not English but who submit their papers to journals published in English. The series will touch upon not only writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and style) but everything else relevant to publishing research papers that journal editors wish their authors knew.]
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The most meticulous study may be rejected if the Discussion is not impressive. Learn to write a Discussion that will do justice to your research.