Understanding the Usage of “Majority”
Like an indivisible nucleus at the center of an atom, the subject-verb pair unifies the sentence. It can be surrounded by any number of modifying words, taking on new shades of…
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Language & Grammar
Easy-to-understand guidelines on academic language & grammar
Why Is It Important to Use Gender-Inclusive Language in Academic Writing?
The pseudo generic “he,” that is, the usage of “man” to denote all of humanity assumes that the default and normal human being is male. While there are more pressing issues in the…
Top 6 Tips to Optimize Sentence Length in Your Research Paper
Academic writing conveys clear and accurate information, and to this end, places a high premium on well-constructed, carefully thought-out content. Alas! Many a time, these…
How Editing Services Help You Improve Chances of Publication
Editing: More Than a Wish List Item
Preparing a research proposal can be hard enough these days—research funds aren’t as plentiful, and the providers of those funds only seem to…
Word Choice in Academic Writing: Commonly Confused English Words
As an academic researcher, a part of the writing process that often causes confusion and leads to common mistakes is the word choice. While writing in English, maintaining the…
A Vs. An Vs. The: Knowing When to Use the Right Article
According to linguists, the earlier forms of English did not have articles to accompany nouns as the necessary information concerning number and specificity were conveyed…
How to Effectively Use Pronouns in Academic Writing
Pronouns are simple to define but can be confusing to use. For example, the statement, "Each person should follow their dreams," represents a failure to correctly balance the…
The Mystery of Capital Letters
Capital Compensation
When writers are looking to emphasize a word, but they’re not sure if they should bold it, underline it, italicize it, or upper case it, the go-to action…
Should You Italicize Latin Terms in Scientific Writing?
The English language has always been a promiscuous borrower of words from other languages, and for scientific writing, Latin has been one of the most common sources.
Currently,…
May Vs. Might? Which One Should You Use?
If your friends ask you where you are going on vacation this year, would your response be: “We may go to Disneyland,” or “We might go to Disneyland.”? What’s the difference, I hear…
Academic and Research Paper Writing in Layman’s Language
The Temptation of Overcomplication?
Teachers are familiar with the tricks their students attempt to use when looking to hit targets of a specific number of words for an…
How to Effectively Paraphrase in a Research Paper
When writing a research paper, a researcher will often need to refer to a previous publication and summarize the findings in a paraphrase. Why? Because quoting the entire passage…