I haven’t updated in a while, because frankly, I stare at a computer all day at work typing and am trying to do less of it at home.
The new job is going well. I’m learning a lot of nifty little editing tricks, useful phrases, and whatnot. Here are some of the things that I’ve picked up or that maybe I knew, but have had beaten into my brain since starting full time.
1) useful phrases:
“in regards to” — great for when you can’t chose the right preposistion or the relationship between something is vague.
“as a result” — Great for smoothing over akward transitions or to spice it up when the author has used “thus” and “therefore” fifty times.
“as well as” — sometimes “and” just doesn’t cut it. Especially for lists of multiple items (We had “peanut butter and jelly as well as cheese and crackers.”
“in the present work” — If they are talking about an old paper and then start discussing to the current one, “this paper” is ambiguous.
2) Consistency. There are many small details that authors will be inconsistent on. For most of these, there are more than one acceptable way to do things, but you have to pick one and do it uniformly.
“Figure” or “Fig.” / “Equation” or “Eq.”
References before or after punctuation — Sometimes they do it before the period (1). Sometimes they do it after. (2)
Spelling out numbers. We tested thirteen subjects. Of these subjects, 11 experienced side effects of the medication
Serial commas. A, B, and C. or D, E and F
Capitalization of headings and subheadings “2. Material and Methods 3.1 Synthesis of the polymer” vs. “3. Results and discussion 3.1 Physical Characteristics of the Polymer”
3) Verb tense is a bitch. This varies a bit by field. Physics and medicine use some pretty unnatural present tenses sometimes, whereas chemistry and biology are more likely to use the past tense for experimental actions, but results and physical properties are often still present. Authors usually mix the tenses up good and crazy, and it can be a headache to sort out.
“In this study, we examined the insects and thus concluded that this species only ate leaves.”
“In this study, we examined the insects and thus concluded that this species only eats leaves.”
“In this study, we examined the animal and thus conclude that this species only eats leaves.”
“In this study, we examine the insects and thus conclude that this species only eats leaves.”
sneaky
