语法
Highlights from Appendix A in <<The Craft of Scientific Writing>> by Michael Alley
Not understanding what defines a sentence leads to major grammatical errors such as a fragment and run-on sentence.
Such errors not only cause the audience to reread the passage, but also undermine the author’s credibility.
1. A sentence contains a subject and a verb, and gives a complete thought.
2. Although many grammatical errors unsettle and distract readers, others are cosmetic.
1) Beginning a sentence with “because” is not an error.
2) Conjunction to begin a sentence:
Use “And,” or “In addition,” instead of “Also”
Use “However,” or “Conversely,” instead of “But”
**pay attention to the comma**
3) Beginning a sentence with “however” is accepted by almost journals.
Note, though, that some editors argue that placing “however” a little later in the sentence is usually more graceful: “Peter, however, went home while others cleaned the room.”
4) Have modifiers point to the words that they modify. Failure to follow this rule can cause ambiguities.
5) Parallelism is often lost in conjunction pairs such as “either…or”, “neither…nor”, and “not only…but also”.
Such conjunction pairs require that what wording appears after the 1st conjunction be parallel with what appears after the 2nd.
Mistake: Our goal is either to predict or measure the speed.
Correction: Our goal is either to predict or to measure the speed.
6) Run-on sentence
When a sentence runs on, readers often lose their place in the paragraph. They also lose confidence in the author
The most common type occurs when the writer tries to use an adverb such as “however”, “otherwise”, or “therefore” to join two independent clauses
Example:
All of the dogs survived the rugged winter, however, the bitter cold and lack of food weakened many in the pack.
Correction:
(1) All … winter. However, …
(2) All … winter; however, …
(3) All … winter, but …
(4) Although all … winter, the bitter …
7) split infinitive
Both “to measure quickly” and “to quickly measure” are good, if only one word is used between the “to” and the verb.