Checklista för engelska språket

Syfte: Hjälp att identifiera och undvika de vanligaste språkfelen i tekniska och vetenskapliga texter på engelska.

Ansvarig: Elizabeth Bjarnason (ETSF25)

Subject-verb agreement: Match nouns with the correct verb form. Singular nouns should be matched to singular verbs, and plural nouns to plural verbs. For example,

Singular: he is, the developer communicates
Plural: they are, the developer and the tester communicate

Avoid using short forms of is, are, and not in technical and academic writing. For example, write “they are”, “it is” and “are not” rather than “they’re”, “it’s” and “aren’t”.

Capitalise when referring to specific tables, figures etc. For example, “see Table 3”, “in Section 4.2”, “as described in Chapter 8”. This applies when using APA, however some style guides, e.g. CMOS, use lower case instead.

Include references within a sentence, and thus before the final full stop mark. For example, “Lean startups commonly apply prototyping to explore, validate, and communicate new product ideas [3].”, not “… product ideas. [3]”

Avoid ambiguous references, e.g. it, this, he, she, they. Watch out for these, and qualify such references by being more explicit. For example, instead of “This solved the problem” write “This method solved the problem”. Also, who does “he” refer to in this sentence: “Charles could help John since he was available”?

Which vs That: Use ‘that’ in defining clauses such as in “the software that solved the problem”, where solving the problem defines which software we are referring to. For non-defining clauses, use which. For example, “The software, which was developed on the spot, solved the problem”. Here, the clause between the commas (the non-defining clause) can be removed without destroying the meaning of the sentence.

Hyphenate two words (only) when they function together as an adjective. For example, “rock-hard cake” (with hyphen) and “the cake is rock hard” (without hyphen). Similar, “self-adaptive systems” (with hyphen) and “the systems are self adaptive” (without hyphen)

Decide if you want to use British or American English, and stick to it! Don’t mix the two! For example, colour vs color, organise vs organize, organisation vs organization. Set the correct language in your spell checker to help you be consistent!