Read your work aloud.

Reading aloud helps you to catch typos, word omissions, repetitive phrases, awkward sentence construction, etc.

When I edit, I ALWAYS read the text aloud. I wouldn’t catch half the mistakes I find without reading aloud.

I also find that reading aloud as I write helps me to develop smoother sounding sentences from the very beginning. I even read my text messages and emails aloud to ensure I’ve written what I mean to say in the most professional manner possible. There's nothing worse than noticing a typo after you've sent the email...

Reading aloud can be a little embarrassing, which is why I prefer to be completely alone in my office when I write or edit. If you want to become a better writer, I would suggest you find a quiet place where you can be alone and feel comfortable reading your work aloud. As you read, you’ll notice missing words and abrupt transitions. Stop and fix them before you continue on.

It really is as simple as that. You can dramatically improve your writing by simply reading it aloud as you edit. Try it and see the difference.

If you would like to learn more writing tips and tricks, check out my PowerPoint presentation An Introduction to Writing in Science, available in ebook format on the Amazon Kindle app. 

Acronyms are a type of abbreviation that are typically constructed from the first letters of the individual words in a phrase.

Example: single-walled carbon nanotube = SWCNT
(I’ve underlined the letters for emphasis only)

These abbreviations can also include letters from inside the word (as in nanotube), particularly when that word could be broken down into two individual parts that have meaning on their own (e.g., nano and tube).  

Acronyms can be useful in science so you don’t have to repeat long phrases like “single-walled carbon nanotubes” 50 times throughout a manuscript. However, you should follow these rules if you’re going to use them in your writing:

1) USE ACRONYMS SPARINGLY

Many scientists have a tendency to over-use acronyms, possibly because they believe that shortening phrases will make the work easier and faster to read, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.

The issue is that acronyms are essentially a code – they stand for some other idea. But readers have a hard time keeping track of multiple codes. If they forget what your acronym stands for, they’ll have to go back to where it was first defined in the paper, which is time-consuming and annoying. Or (and this is the much more likely scenario), they will simply give up and stop reading your work, because it’s too difficult to memorize so many new terms.

Don’t give readers an excuse to stop reading. Make their life easy. Define only the acronyms that are absolutely essential to communicate your work efficiently.

Generally, this means limiting acronyms to sample names or concepts that are unique to your research.

Example: carboxylic acid-functionalized gold nanoparticles = COOH-Au-NPs

In this example, I used the common chemical abbreviation for carboxylic acid groups (COOH), the elemental symbol for gold from the periodic table (Au), and then a simple acronym for nanoparticles (NPs).

You can see how the use of too many of these kinds of acronyms could become fairly confusing for the reader, who may not immediately intuit what COOH-Au-NPs means. However, you can expect them to easily learn one or two such abbreviations in the paper. 

As a rule of thumb, I would limit the number of new acronyms you define to three or less for a journal-length publication (~3000-6000 words). That doesn’t include well-accepted acronyms, like DNA and NMR, just the terms that are wholly original to your own work. 

2) Define the acronym on first usage, then use it exclusively throughout the text after that point.

What do I mean by “define the acronym?” I mean you need to write out the full term or phrase once on first usage, then put the acronym you would like to use in parentheses following this phrase.

Example: Although Sumio Iijima is usually credited with discovering carbon nanotubes (CNTs), the history of these unique materials extends back almost 40 years prior.

After you define the acronym, you must use it throughout the text thereafter. You can’t switch back and forth between the full phrase and the abbreviation. Once the acronym is defined, you are somewhat locked into using it (with exceptions based on journal-specific guidelines for headings and captions).

Example: Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are a one-dimensional material made of sp2-hybridized carbon. These nanomaterials can be more conductive than copper. CNTs also fluorescence in the tissue-transparent region of the near-infrared, suggesting potential applications in bio-imaging. However, the difficulty in processing CNTs has limited such proposed uses.  
​
Because you’re locked into using the acronym once defined, that’s why it’s a bad idea to use too many acronyms or to define acronyms for words or phrases that are fairly common. Otherwise, your writing will become riddled with unnecessary abbreviations, which can be awkward to read or distracting.

So keep it simple. Define acronyms sparingly on first usage and then use them thereafter throughout the text. 

Hope this helps!

If you would like to learn more writing tips and tricks, check out my PowerPoint presentation An Introduction to Writing in Science, available in ebook format on the Amazon Kindle app. 

I thought it would be interesting to start a blog series in which to discuss common writing mistakes I see while editing scientific manuscripts. Learning a few simple rules can make the writing process just a little less daunting, so maybe this series will help you.

Here's one of the most prolific errors I see when I edit: i.e. vs. e.g. 

What's the difference between these two abbreviations and when do you use them?

First, let's define these terms. I won't bother literally translating the full latin words, let's keep things simple. All you need to remember is this:

• "i.e." means "in other words" 
• "e.g." means "for example"      (thank you Grammar Girl for this great trick)

So when do you use "i.e." and "e.g.?"

Scientists often like to clarify their writing by adding a parenthetical aside in or at the end of a sentence. This is perfectly fine to do, and it's often very helpful (though be careful about over-doing it). Here's an example:

"Carbon nanotubes have many applications in biology (e.g., drug-delivery and near-IR fluorescence imaging)."

Adding "e.g." to the beginning of the parenthetical statement signals to the reader that the following words are an example of what you've just stated in the sentence. So you can read it as:

"Carbon nanotubes have many applications in biology (for example, drug delivery and near-IR fluorescence imaging)."

What if I were to replace "e.g." with "i.e." in that sentence?

"Carbon nanotubes have many applications in biology (i.e., drug-delivery and near-IR fluorescence imaging)."

It would be incorrect, because the statement would be read as:

"Carbon nanotubes have many applications in biology (in other words, drug-delivery and near-IR fluorescence imaging)."

That doesn't sound right, does it? Drug-delivery and fluorescence imaging aren't actually other words for different applications of carbon nanotubes. They're examples. 

Why is this important? After all, isn't the meaning clear enough when we use these abbreviations? Does it really matter which one you use?

I'd say yes, because scientists have to be precise, whether in their experiments or their writing. It's important to say exactly and not approximately what you mean.

Also, there are many scientists who have a deep knowledge of grammar and will notice these kinds of mistakes in your manuscripts. You might think these errors are small and insignificant. However, a grammar-minded scientist who is reviewing your work might consider the writing sloppy if they see a large number of these kinds of mistakes and perhaps unfairly also question the precision of your research. Don't give the reviewer any reason to get in a bad mood, especially when it is so easy to learn the difference between "i.e." and "e.g." 

So as you write, and you want to use one of these abbreviations, read the sentence aloud and consider whether it makes more sense to say "for example" or "in other words." Then use the appropriate abbreviation.

p.s. A note on punctuation.

You'll notice in those previous examples that I put a comma after the abbreviations.

So it's "(e.g., drug-delivery)," not "(e.g. drug delivery)."

Again, it's a small thing, but precision counts. I could explain to you why you use a comma here (it has to do with restrictive vs. non-restrictive clauses), but don't worry about it.

Just remember that "i.e." and "e.g." are followed immediately by a comma.

If you would like to learn more writing tips and tricks, check out my PowerPoint presentation An Introduction to Writing in Science, available in ebook format on the Amazon Kindle app. 

You've done the experiments, you've written the paper, and you've submitted to your top choice journal. 

"Great work," the reviewers write. "But the English needs improvement before it can be published."

So you spend hundreds of dollars to have a large editing firm polish your English. 

Except here's the dirty little secret: Of those hundreds of dollars, do you know how much the firm actually pays the graduate student editor?

About $35.

Isn't that insane? It's no wonder then that these graduate students don't spend more than 5 or 6 hours editing it. They'd be crazy to work at sub-minimum wage levels for very long.

And that's the second problem with these big editing firms. Their editors aren't actually trained copy-editors, and they don't last in these jobs for very long because they're so undervalued. You'll never be able to develop a long-term working relationship with the editor. Every time you need another paper edited, you'll get a completely new editor, who may be better or worse, but certainly won't be very familiar with your work.

You'll never get to develop a long-term relationship with an editor who could get to know your research and help you communicate its full impact to your peers.

It makes you wonder where most of that editing fee is going and how much you can expect to get back.

In my experience, editing an average 6000 word paper that was written by non-native English speakers takes around 10-15 hours to do it properly, sometimes more. That means catching obvious grammar errors, rewriting sentences to make them easier to understand, adjusting the manuscript's organization to improve its flow, and writing detailed commentary to help the authors understand where their data and arguments could be improved. 

Editing is a process and it's something I enjoy doing. Try Advanced English Editing and see the difference.