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• What’s wrong with “the present study”?
Difficulty: Intermediate Uni-edit English Editors are accustomed to seeing the self-referential phrase “the present study”, which an author uses in a paper to refer to itself or accompanying research. It’s not a particularly technical term, nor is it subject-specific: it appears in the natural sciences and social sciences with equal frequency. Most Asian languages have a word with exactly this meaning: for example, 本研究 in both Chinese (běn yánjiū) and Japanese (hon-kenkyuu), so it’s easy for non-native speakers of English to translate directly from...
• Semi-colons for monster lists
Level of difficulty: Intermediate Your research reports often include long lists of complex items. Sometimes using only commas is insufficient to offset the items. Here is an example: Incorrect: We had four professors on our committee: Peter Wursthorn, Professor of Mathematics, Ronald Pepin, Professor of English, Cynthia Greenblatt, Professor of Education, and Nada Light, Professor of Nursing. As each item already includes a comma, separate the items using semi-colons. You can think of semi-colons as big commas in this situation. Correct:    We had...