Writing Scientific English. Timothy Skern
the use of the articles “the” and “a” in English
The text below is based on an abstract written by a student whose first language does not use this type of article. The original has been modified to make it more accessible, whilst keeping the errors in the use of “the” and “a.” The idea of “patient-specific design of medicines” is fictitious but it fits well with the original text. Read the text, concentrating on the position and presence or absence of the articles “the” and “a”. Some are used correctly, some used incorrectly. Occasionally, an article is missing completely. Each sentence needs at least one correction. Use the guidelines to decide how to improve the text. My suggestions are to be found in section 1.6.2.
Patient-specific design of medicines (PSDM) is novel method which was first described by Smith and Jones. PSDM method is based on the conventional designs modified by using alternative gene-based protocol. Main feature of the PSDM approach is its high specificity of treatment. The principle of the PSDM approach is depicted in the Figure 1.
Using PSDM method, we observe the shift in the specificity of the treatment. During the normal design of medicines, specificity is obtained from experience of the scientists. In the PSDM method, the specificity is obtained from the genes of the patient. Specificity of the PSDM method can be augmented by adding information from the family members. The PSDM method is estimated to increase specificity by factor of five.
1.3Words for writing scientific English
Words don't come easy.
F.R. DAVID
The English language has, as mentioned in section 1.1, a rich vocabulary. Nevertheless, box 1.7 presents a suggestion for a basic scientific lexicon that contains only about 200 of the thousands of words available. Learn the meaning of these words and use them actively in your writing. If you can exploit the words from this lexicon, your scientific writing will rapidly become stronger and more mature.
The majority of the words from the basic scientific lexicon were used in writing this book. Up to five illustrative examples of their use in this book are marked in italics. section 8.2 provides the pages on which the marked words can be found. If the use of a word in this book does not make its meaning clear, refer to a dictionary or a thesaurus.
An alternative approach to finding the meaning of a word from box 1.7 is to look for words in scientific databases. Examples of these databases include PubMed (www.pubmed.gov) or Google Scholar (scholar.google. com); others are listed in section 7.1. Searching these databases for an unknown word will provide you with many articles that have your word of interest in the title or in the abstract. From these, you should be able to obtain hints on the meaning of the word and see how it is used in scientific writing. As an exercise, try to determine the meaning of the important scientific words “purport”, “pinpoint”, “feasible”, “plausible” and “flaw” by typing them into PubMed. Actively investigating the meaning of words in this way will help you to use them more regularly in your own writing.
Box 1.7A basic lexicon for scientific writing
Verbs
accumulate
adapt
affect
ask
assay
attempt
cause
cite
compare
conclude
confirm
confuse
consider
correlate
decline
decrease
deduce
demonstrate
describe
destroy
detect
deteriorate
disprove
disturb
document
evidence
explain
falsify
find
follow
illustrate
increase
indicate
induce
infer
interest
invent
investigate
judge
maintain
observe
oppose
pinpoint
point to
propose
prove
purport
quantify
quote
record
remain
repeat
reproduce
require
screen
search
shed light on
show
solve
strengthen
suggest
support
survive
test
treat
try
underline
vary
verify
work
Nouns
absence
activation
analysis
answer
appearance
application
attempt
background
blank
cause
chance
change
citation
clue
component
condition
conflict
consequence
constant
control
curve
data
decrease