The pseudo-generic pronoun “he,” that is, the usage of “man” to represent all humanity, supposes that the default and common human being is male. There are more critical issues in the inclusive space including the strife for equality along…

Research is hard enough without worrying about how to use microbial nomenclature or scientific names of bacteria correctly. Writing bacteria names in a research article can be a huge challenge for scientists, as the guidelines change to…

The format for writing scientific names of animals and plants is standardized and globally accepted. “Scientific nomenclature” refers to several names according to a particular field of study. This article is the first in a two-part series…

A layperson lacks expert technical knowledge. Sometimes, we all read as laypersons because we can't be experts in everything. Understanding this is important for clarity.

As an objective scientist, you write to convey an unbiased and unambiguous message. State it, instead of implying it; repeat it to drive it home; and vary it to hold the reader’s attention. In the following example, you can highlight…

As an academic researcher, a part of the writing process that frequently causes confusion and leads to common mistakes is word choice. While writing in English, maintaining the correct word choice is fairly difficult for both ESL…

Pronouns are usually called the understudies of English grammar as they play the role of stand-ins for nouns (that are then referred to as the antecedents of the pronouns).  Pronouns can be singular (I, me, he, she, you, it) or plural…

A sentence is in passive voice when the subject of a sentence is the object being acted on. Active voice, on the contrary, is where the subject performs the action. Through the 20th century, passive voice was the prevalent linguistic…

Each time you are asked to give the characteristics of something, it’s likely that you use an adjective (i.e., a word describing a noun). In English, traditional phrase structure rules place no limit on the number of adjectives in a…

The words “number” and “amount” are used to explain how many or how much of something is there. A research report might include information on the number of contributors in the study, the number of surveys that were completed, the amount of…