Academia Stack Exchange
Academia Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [writing-style]

Questions about the tones, turns of phrase and other writing patterns that are appropriate for writing in an academic context.

601 questions
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Why do researchers sometimes use extremely complicated English sentences to convey their meaning?

I will begin with a disclaimer, I am not an English native speaker, but I can speak fluent English and understand English in almost all research papers I read. However, occasionally I come across some papers published in peer reviewed journals …
user3508551
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Is there any good reason to write "it is easy to see"?

Many academic papers, particularly in mathematics and similar fields, use the phrase "it is easy to see that..." (e.g. in a mathematical proof). I never understood why this sentence is used. Such a sentence is inaccurate at best, since it is not…
Erel Segal-Halevi
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Is being a poor writer a serious impediment as a researcher?

Is being a poor writer a serious impediment as a researcher? I mean if you're particularly bad at writing reports and always get bad feedback as a student for your reports, does that mean my research career would never take off? The question asks…
Some Student
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Adjective order in academia: "Italian young adults"

It's always been my understanding that age precedes nationality in standard adjective order (see, for example, The Royal Order of Adjectives); thus, it should be "young Italian adults" rather than "Italian young adults". However, I'm revising a…
Matt
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Amusing remarks in papers

I have had to read so many papers, and papers on writing papers, that I noticed how engaging and more pleasant to read a publication is when the author inserts the occasional funny remark. I'm also writing so many project papers lately (mathematics…
Snowflake
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Unprofessional to write (in a paper) that something is "really cool"?

Is it unprofessional to write (in a paper) that something is "really cool", for example, when describing a colliding black hole simulation?
User 17670
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Is it a must to write a paper in passive third person, for all types of papers in all journals?

As I read in some papers, most verbs in a paper are written in the passive third person. For example: "This method was experimented; satisfying results were achieved..." My question is, is this a must and all types of papers in all journals should…
virtouso
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What words should I capitalize in the title of a PhD dissertation?

I am unsure about how to capitalize the title of my dissertation. In my case, I am wondering about "testing" and "empirical": Four Essays on the empirical testing of the Efficiency Hypothesis Should I capitalize gerunds?
TobKel
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Abbreviation of "number (of)" in a table heading

In a table, I would like to use abbreviate the word number. The column heading is namely: Number of items In what is the correct abbreviation for the word “numbers”? both "No" and "#" are suggested as abbreviations. The Chicago Manual of Style…
ebosi
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How to remove the word "we" when discussing results in an academic paper?

I was given feedback by a reviewer that the article I had submitted shouldn't contain we-type sentences, as they made the article sound less scholarly (yes; I know; it’s a peculiarity of my field). I want your advice on how to rewrite the following…
thanks_in_advance
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Switching tenses from past to present within a paragraph in a research paper

I am confused about which tense to use in presenting my results in a paper. "In this study, we created a mathematical model of the herding behavior using the A-algorithm. The goal of this mathematical model is to allow the ..." Am I correct in…
cgo
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Should I use abbreviations such as PDE or DN map in a paper?

Should I write PDE or partial differential equation in the body of a mathematics paper? In a similar way, should I expand Dirichlet-to-Neumann map or write DN map or DtN map? A somewhat related question Can I use abbreviations in the title of a…
Tommi
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Convention: Comma and period in an enumeration

I am writing a master thesis in maths and I use lots of enumerations in theorems. I am not sure, how I use a comma and period correctly. As I was told, there has to be a comma after an item, except the last, which has to be ended by a period. Like…
Lereu
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Is it acceptable to use an acronym for a set of adjectives?

In science, it is very common to shorten nouns with acronyms (e.g. deoxyribonucleic acid -> DNA). However, I am struggling to think of any examples of sets of adjectives that are written as an acronym. I am writing a scientific document, in which I…
Danica Scott
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How to learn the format of a scientific paper, to emulate it?

I'm a high school student, and I'm planning on doing a few simple chemistry experiments in my spare time (not as a part of any class). I thought it might be fun to write up a faux-paper on one or more of them. Unfortunately, I don't know anything…
Mr. Student
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