英文写作注意事项笔记

The most common habits from more than 200 English papers written by graduate Chinese Engineering students.

Section One.

Articles “a, an, the”

Articles signal that a noun will follow. Among them, a and an are indefinite articles, the is a definite article.

Mistake: The, a, and an are 1) omitted where they are required, 2) used where they are not needed or contribute to wordiness, and 3) used wrongly in place of the correct article.

We should pay more attention to articles.

Very long sentence

A sentence with more than sixty words can be seen as a very long sentence. Very long sentences are especially common in Chinese-English writing because the writers often directly translate from Chinese to English. But it is unusual in English. Why not use very long sentences? Because it may result in the misunderstanding of readers and the difficulty in reading.

Very long sentences can be divided into two types. The first is translating directly from Chinese to English. In this case, we should notice that do not mix a lot of ideas in a sentence, we can separate the main idea and the supporting idea into different sentences. In addition, semicolons can be used in a very long sentence to help people understand your idea. The second type is that the writer wants to give a large amount of data, such as parameters, in one sentence, however the best way to give such type and quantity of information is to tabulate it (put the data in a bulleted list).

Putting many unimportant sentences, such as purposes, reasons, and time, before the main idea.

Bring the main idea to the beginning of the sentence and place other factors, such as time, reasons, and locations, afterward. Chinese writers often preface the main topic of a sentence by first stating the purpose, location, time phrase, and example as introductory elements. However, this has the effect of demoting the importance of the main idea and making the reader think that author is indirect.

Which/ that

The antecedent of “which and that” usually is not specific causing confusion.

Respective and respectively

Respectively is usually at the end of the sentence. In general, the order must be important to the meaning of the sentence otherwise it is not used.

Mistakes: Chinese writers use the respectively in the middle of a sentence;

Used respectively where it is not needed (the order is already implied elsewhere in the sentence or it is no need to mention the order).

It is unclear to what “respectively” refers.

In this paper, and in this study

The two phrases are usually overused. But the “study” is the work the author/s did. The “paper” is the mode to present this work and is what the reader is reading.

Numbers and equations

Do not use Arabic numbers directly, but spell out the word. And never be used Arabic numbers at the beginning of sentences. In addition, Arabic numbers should be used to give data, rather than give order and general information.

Equations should be introduced as much as possible, not inserted in the place of words.

Format

1. paragraphs: All English paragraphs start on a new line with an indent of about one inch.

2: Figure and Table: The abbreviations for figure and table are Fig. and Tbl (rare to see), respectively. After choosing one, use it throughout the paper.

Correct format: Figure 1 or Fig. 1; Table 1 or Tbl. 1.

3: variables: should be italicized in technical papers to distinguish them from English words.

4: capitals: be careful that capitals are not in the middle of the sentence.

“Such as” and “etc.”

Such as means “for example” and implies that an incomplete list will follow; etc. means “and so on” and is used at the end of a list to show it is incomplete. Therefore, using such as and etc. together is redundant. In addition, if a list is complete, we can not use such as.

Section two

1) Some words have identical singular and plural forms.

2) Avoid redundancy. For example, research work is a redundancy phrase.

3) Some words, such as “different, various, and number words”, should follow plural.

4) Never use abbreviations, Arabic numbers, and “how to……” at the beginning of a sentence.

5) Do not write “by this way”. Instead write “by doing this”, or “using this method”

6) Notice the tense of verbs.

7) Do not use obviously in a technical paper

8) Do not use the terms, such as “my country”, and “abroad”, instead of “in China”. In other words, write your specific location.

9) Avoid overusing the phrases “that is to say” and “namely”. Instead, try to convey your meaning in a sentence.

10) Do not use “too” at the end of a sentence.