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in the past, in those days
The various past tenses in English permit temporal ordering and indications of having or not having finished. An adverbial indicating a temporal duration in or into the past acts as…
Top 10 Online Fallacies
How to Spot Them and How to Avoid Them in Your Own Writing In today’s digital age, it’s more important than ever to be able to spot fallacies online. Fallacies…
Three common grammar mistakes in academic English
In this post I would like to share three mistakes that I see very often in my proofreading. 1 Use of the with nouns used in a general sense Incorrect:…
Imply or infer?
The words imply and infer are worth adding to your repertoire as their formal and academic tone and meaning lend academic style to your writing. Unfortunately, they are quite close…
Academic style: impersonal language
Academic English emphasises objectivity and use of evidence. Because of this, opinions tend to be expressed indirectly by using impersonal language. Most important is to remember to avoid personal language…
Economic or economical?
Both words are adjectives but they have different meanings. Despite creating high levels of public debt, the government’s new ________________ policy was welcomed by businesses. Use of robots in production…
Consistency
is extremely important in academic English. Awareness and checking for consistency is key since consistency may not be as important in continental styles and thus writers may forget to…
Despite, in spite of, although, even though, though
These expressions used to show a contrast are commonly confused. All can be used in the beginning or middle of a sentence. Their usage differs according to the types of…
Tenses: use of the present simple tense in academic writing
“Present simple is the most common tense in academic writing, and it is usually considered as the “default” unless there is a certain reason to choose another tense (e.g. a…
Common uncountable nouns in academic writing
This post provides a list of uncountable nouns frequently used in academic writing. It follows on from the post Articles: uncountable nouns, which focused on usage. Incorrect usage of uncountable…