Academic Writing in English

Carolyn Brimley Norris, Ph.D.

Language Services
University of Helsinki
2015

This book began to emerge in 1985, based on the wisdom of my original guru in Finland,
Jean Margaret Perttunen (1916). For decades, she offered me advice, revealing the problems that
Finnish scientists face when writing in English. I depended on Peggys book, The Words Between,
to start developing a University of Helsinki English writing course for scientists seeking
publication abroad.
My current active guru is Bjrn Gustavii, MD, PhD, of Lund, Sweden. His first book, How to Write
and Illustrate a Scientific Paper, plus our frequent emails and now his unique 2012 guide to
compilation theses have been so valuable that I cite him here very often.
The European Association of Science Editors (EASE) has, since 1997, allowed me to sit at the feet
of major international journal editors to learn and then to import their advice to Finland. EASE
publishes European Science Editing, which prints notes and articles based on our Helsinki inclassroom action research. Course participants from the University of Helsinki medical and
science faculties thus benefit from EASE and repay with their views and innovations.
To all of these, and to teaching colleagues Stephen Stalter and Vanessa Fuller, I offer for many
reasons many years worth of gratitude.
Carol Norris, 2015

Table of Contents
Advice for modern academic writing ..............................................................................................3
General advice for non-native writers... 3
Basic Methodology I: Process writing ............................................................................................4
Basic Methodology II: Passive vs. active voice ............................................................................10
Basic Methodology III: The end-focus technique ...........................................................................12
Article sections: overview, content, order of creation .....................................................................16
Case reports .....................................................................................................................................17
The article abstract ...........................................................................................................................18
Titles &authors ................................................................................................................................21
Tables and figures and their titles & legends ..................................................................................23
Recipe for an introduction ...............................................................................................................26
Methods ..........................................................................................................................................27
Results..............................................................................................................................................29
Recipe for a discussion ....................................................................................................................30
Reference list ...................................................................................................................................31
PhD thesis/dissertations ...................................................................................................................32
Acknowledgements .........................................................................................................................35
Permission lines ...............................................................................................................................39
Tense-choice ...................................................................................................................................40
Citations and layout .........................................................................................................................41
Verbs for academic scientific writing..............................................................................................43
Formality levels ...............................................................................................................................45
Words confused and misused ..........................................................................................................46
A sample of preposition problems...................................................................................................49
Participle problems ..........................................................................................................................50
A sample of article-use guidelines...................................................................................................51
Chief uses of the comma .................................................................................................................52
Punctuation terms ............................................................................................................................53
Exercise in punctuation ...................................................................................................................54
Punctuation: the only logical system in English..............................................................................55
Handling numerals, numbers, and other small items ......................................................................59
Take-home messages .......................................................................................................................63
Sample professional cover letter......................................................................................................64
Second-submission cover letter .......................................................................................................66
Layout and lines for formal letters...................................................................................................66
Email suggestions ............................................................................................................................68
Handling reviewers/referees and editors .........................................................................................69
Plagiarism ........................................................................................................................................72
Impact factors ..................................................................................................................................74
Valuable resources............................................................................................................... 75
Appendices:
I. Find more than 60 problems ................................................................................76
II. Introduction exercise ..........................................................................................77
III. Editing exercise ...................................................................................................78
IV. Methods editing.... ......................................................................................79
V. Proofreading exercise ..........................................................................................80
VI. Table exercise .....................................................................................................81
Index .................................................................................................................................. 82

Advice for Modern Academic Writing

In some fields, young scholars may imitate the often out-dated style of their professors or of journal
articles published many years ago. Nowadays, style is evolving, because of widening democracy
and internationalization, and also increased printing costs.
The KISS Rule is Keep it Short and Simple, and less politely: Keep it Simple, Stupid!
At a conference of the Association of European Science Editors (EASE), the editor of the British
Medical Journal demanded:
clarity
readability
non-ambiguity
He also wanted articles to be as short as possible. Rather than Count every word, we should
make every word count. Remove every useless or extra word.
Teacher-editor-author Ed Hull wants reader-friendly scientific writing. To achieve this, he says,
authors must realize that they are no longer in school; teachers demand performances greatly
different from texts meant to inform busy readers wanting nuggets of precious information.
Similarly, in the EASE Bulletin European Science Editing (1998, 24, 1; 7-9), Frances Luttikhuizen
had criticized exaggerated use of the passive voice and Latin-based words [that] belongs to the
formal style of the 17th century. It weakens scientific writing. The active voice is much more
forceful than the passive . . . . For linguistic as well as cultural reasons, scientists who have English
as a second language . . . tend to feel more comfortable writing in a more formal style. Her ageless
advice continues, Readers of scientific papers do not read them to assess them, they read
them to learn from them . . . . What is needed is more simplicity, not more sophistication!
Aim to inform, not to impress. (Emphasis added.)

General Advice for Non-Native Writers

Never translate. Of course you can use your own language to take notes and write outlines. But
word-for-word translation into English means that anyones mother tongue causes interference.
This will damage the grammar of your English and your vocabulary, punctuation, and everything
else. Some Finns can rapidly write letters and stories in correct, charming English, but when they
write a text first in Finnish and then translate it, the result will be awkward, unclear, and full of
errors.
Accept total responsibility for being clear. If an intelligent reader has to re-read any sentence to
understand it, the Anglo-American attitude is not to blame the reader, but to blame the writer. This
may contrast with the direction of blame in your own culture, but think: Who has the time to reread sentences? Bad idea!
The worst sin is ambiguity. Being ambiguous means accidentally expressing more than one
meaning at one time, as in: Women like chocolate more than men. Does this mean that, given
the choice between a nice Fazer chocolate bar and a man, a woman will prefer the chocolate? Or do
you mean that Women like chocolate more than men do? Lets hope, for the survival of
humanity, that its the latter!

4
Careful editing will shorten your texts, making them more publishable. One writer wisely said,
If I had had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter.
Trust your ear. English grammar rules are many, with multiple exceptions. At your language
level, in this country, depend instead on what you have heard in English, idioms especially.
Your ear will tell you when an odd-looking phrase sounds right. My long experience shows that
Finns TV- and travel-trained ears are trustworthy. Read all your written texts aloud to yourself.
English is not logical. The most logical choice of words is often not what a native speaker
would say. (Which is logical: hang up, ring off, or close the phone?How about For the
20 last years versus for the last 20 years?) In English, the most nearly logical system is
punctuation, but even punctuation differs considerably from Finnish punctuation.

Finno-ugric versus Anglo-American Style

Finns, from a homogeneous, well-educated society, may tend to view their readers as informed
colleagues who will work hard to understand a text. Good Anglo-American writers may seem to
be packaging or even marketing their texts; they are actually trying to write so clearly that a
busy, tired, easily bored reader can absorb their full meaning in only one rapid reading.
The Anglo-American writer leads the reader by the hand, but the Finnish writer often expects
readers to find their own way. In Finland, be Finnish. But Finns wishing to publish in English in
journals with Anglo-American editors and reviewers must use a reader-helpful style.
For instance, make the strategy of your text clear, not implicit. Present important points first,
rather than gradually sneaking up on them. Let your readers know immediately what is going on.
Note: This book benefits from a collection of essays gathered by Professor George M. Hall
entitled How to Write a Paper, 2nd edition, 1998 (British Medical Journal publishing
group). Hall and his other expert contributors will be cited as appearing in Hall 1998.

Basic Methodology I: Process Writing

Write the first draft

Never translate whole sentences from your mother tongue.

Avoid trying yet to organize your items. Rather, get your ideas out in front of you first.

Pour out your thoughts in English, in the language of speech.

Write in many short, simple sentences.

Refer immediately to the main items involved; use signposts.

Write long: Produce a 1,000-word text that will end as 600 words.

Allow yourself to use the passive voice (see section on passives) whenever comfortable.

Let yourself use the spoken forms there is / are / was / were.

Use simple verbs such as to be / have / get / see / find out .

5
Refer immediately and clearly to all the main items involved, ones that are your key words.
When referring to previously mentioned items with this / these / such, offer more than just the
pronoun:
Ambiguous
Specific
This
This model
becomes
These
These patterns

It
Such a program
You can often save words by adding data:This extremely effective model / program.
Make the text talk about the text itself.
English loves signposts, or connectives, because they tell readers how to receive new information.
Use not only First second third . . . , but other types of signposts:
On the other hand . . . . Considering this from another angle . . . .
Similar to the last point is . . . .

Edit to avoid series of shortand thus choppysentences:

Link some and embed others within their neighbors.
Elegant (linked and embedded)
Short and choppy
X costs a lot. You cant get
it there often.

X is expensive and is seldom available there.

or do you mean: Because X is expensive,
it is seldom available there.

Situation Result = end-focus

X, being expensive there, is seldom available.

or:
Use the shortest sentences for the strongest statements. (Every mouse died.)

Cut out every extra word that performs no task.

There is / are X.

X exists.
X occurs.
X appears.
X arises.
X emerges.

Note: All
are Active
Voice

Avoid repeating FACTS. Planned repetition of WORDS helps linkage. Confusion results
from synonym-use. Make yourself clear by choosing one term. Do not indulge in overuse of a
synonym dictionary (thesaurus). For instance, Method / methodology / procedure /
system must never mean the same thing. We will assume that they mean four different things.

6
One paper described a group of infants with these six labels: neonates / newborns / infants /
babies / patients / subjects. We would view these as six groups. Instead, choose two terms such
as neonates or infants and then use They / These and other pointing words to refer to them.

Convert most verbs from passive to active voice.

Avoid ending sentences with passive verbs. For good writing, this is the kiss of death.
Replace them with active voice. In Methods, passives can go in the middle of the sentence:
To X, Y was added.

Y was added to X.

Change some passive verbs into adjectives:

Passive verb
X could be seen.
X was always used.
All two-year-old children were
studied.

Adjective

X was evident/apparent/visible.
X always proved useful.
All children studied were age
two.
(Note end-focus in each)

Change the verb itself:

Patients were operated on.
Sixty were used as controls.
Each participant was given X.
methodwas used onrat 13.

Patients underwent surgery.

Sixty served as controls.
Each participant received X.

Omit useless passive constructions:

It has been found that X
causes Y (Aho 2001).
We found that Y was
produced by X.

Aho (2001) found that X causes Y.

X causes Y (Aho 2001).
Y results from X. X leads to Y.
X produced Y. Y was a product of X.

The citation shows who (Aho) found X. Journals tire of these useless found phrases.
Avoid for your own findings even the active-voice We found that X produced Y.
Simply writeX produced Y.That past tense shows that this is your finding. Present tense
is for others generalizations: X produces Y (16). (See the tense section.)

7
Use MAGICthe inanimate agent, a non-human / non-living thing performing an action.
Table 3 shows . . . .
Figure 5 illustrates . . . .
Our results indicate . . . .
Our hypothesis predicts X.
Opinions among us vary.

Note:
All in
Active

Upgrade most rough-draft common verbs to become more precise verbs (see verb pages):
becomes
be

see
have
get

Note how much

precision comes
with such verbs!

exist
observe
assess
measure
determine
possess
assess
confirm
characterize

For elegance and formality, specify meanings of get (receive? become? understand?).

Change colloquial (puhekieli) expressions to more formal ones (see verb pages):
Colloquial

Formal

if
like
a lot of, lots of, plenty
big

whether (or not)

such as
many, several
large, great

becomes

Never omit such with as. (Treatment as such as chemotherapy . . . .)

Beware of vagueso. So (thus?) X occurred? It was so fast. (How fast?)
Avoid too, especially at the end of a sentence.
He died,
too.

And how hot is too hot?

becomes

He, too, died.

He died, as well.
He also died.

8
Strengthen Negatives
Not is so common in speech that it frequently loses a letter, becoming a contraction
such as cant / dont / wouldnt. It is doubly contracted in dunno for I dont know.
In writing, not is always a weak word. Murder the word not in three ways:
Substitute negatives OR
Substitute negative prefixes OR
Change to negative verbs or use negative adjectives

Strong negatives

Weak

Stronger

There was not any X.

Not one patient survived.
They had not seen X
before.

no
none
never

No X existed / appeared.
None of the patients survived.
Never had they seen X before.

(Note: Beginning a sentence with a negative is powerful.)

Strong prefixes
uninimnondis-

Weak
The cause is not known.
The text was not coherent.
The task was not possible.
Results were not
significant.
This drug isnt made
anymore.

Verbs / adjectives
fail
lack
absent
insufficient
incomplete

Stronger
The cause is / remains
unknown.
The text was incoherent.
The task was impossible.
Results were non-significant.
This drug has been
discontinued.

Weak
The plan did not work.
The solution didnt have X.
X was not in the samples.
Controls didnt have enough X.
The test was not finished.

If X ismissing, call the police!

Stronger
The plan failed (to succeed).
The solution lacked X.
In the samples, X was absent.
Controls had insufficient X.
The test was incomplete.

9
Your final step in revising is to check to whether each verb agrees with its subject in number.
1. Locate every verb (Good sentences have only one or two.)
2. Scan to the left to find its subject (often located far away).

Read this too-complex and difficult practice-sentence with its five substantives in bold.
Which one is the subject of the verb?
The actual reason for these changes in policy that seem to alter the newest
reorganization plans for these hospitals is/are surprising.

_____________________________________________________
Note more sentences with widely separated subject and verb. Mark the agent; find the subject
(agent) and the verb that shows its action. Revise and reorganize these sentences so that these are
closer together, and information comes in a more logical, clear order. Note the words in italics.
Examples adapted from Duke University, (my alma mater!) Scientific Writing Resource, 2013

Eggs, nuts, shrimp, mushrooms, milk and other foods containing lactose, and
some species of tree and grass pollen are often found to act as allergens.

Mapping of open chromatin regions, post-translational histone modification,

and DNA methylation across a whole genome is now shown to be feasible, and
by RNA sequencing, new non-coding RNAs can be sensitively identified..

Finns tend to over-use words like the adjective "present" and the verb "perform." The latter
has soared in popularity in medical writing in the last 40 years. Elise Langdon-Neuner
illustrates the "fiends of academic writing: imprecision, wordiness, overuse of abstract/
nominalized nouns, and the passive voice" with this sentence:
Administration of H(2) receptor antagonists was performed in patients .

Slay these fiends "at the stroke of a pen." (European Science Editing, February 2015,).
Similarly, slay (kill)

The presence of a nucleus in each cell can be observed.

10

Basic Methodology II: Passive vs. Active Voice

Active and passivelike major (duuri) and minor (molli) keys in musicare the two types of
voice. Tenses are unrelated to voice; tense indicates time.

Note the difference between tensespresent, past, and perfectand voice. The English passive
always includes two to four verbs and allows the addition of by someone / something.

Present tense, active voice: he finds.

Passive: it is found (by X)

Past tense, active: he found.

Passive: it was found (by X)

Present perfect active: she has found.

Passive: it has been found (by X)

Past perfect active: she had found.

Passive: it had been found (by X)

And even a future passive is possiblethough horrible:The test will have been given!

As recently as 1997, Paul Leedy insisted, in his book Practical Research, Planning and Design,
that the researcher should be anonymous. The use of the first-person pronoun or reference to
the researcher in any other way is particularly taboo. All of the action within the drama of
research revolves around the data; they, and they only, speak. (Emphasis mine, throughout.)
My response: Then why not let the data speak? Here, Leedy himself elegantly states that
the action . . . revolves. IN ACTIVE VOICE! He also has data . . . speak in active voice.
These are fine inanimate agentsnon-living causes of actions. If such agents serve as
subjects, we have no need for personal pronouns like I or we.
Leedy continues, The passive voice is used to indicate [Why not the passive voice
indicates?] that no identifiable subject is performing the act. It is a kind of ghostly form of the
verb that causes events to happen without any visible cause being present. Then, Note the
passive voice construction in this sentence: A survey was made of the owners of the Rollaway
automobiles or The researcher made a survey of the owners of Rollaway automobiles.
Here we have [an] . . . intrusion of the researcher. The best research reporting does not use it.
Instead of the passive verb or the researcher made, why not A survey of the
owners . . . showed that ? All surveys producing results have already been made.
In the active, this is both shorter and stronger.
He adds that passive voice verbs can even suggest events in the future without any indication
of who will do them by using the future passive form of the verb The test will have been given
before the students are permitted to read the novel. These two passives consume eight words.
Because all tests, once finished, have been given, why not: After the test / after taking the
test, the students will / can then read / will be able to read the novel? Active voice and short.

11
Do you fear that journals may reject papers written mostly or entirely in the active voice?
Nature Medicine, years ago, published its Methods all in active voice. This is rarely possible to
maintain throughout Methods, but their authors freely used We, we, we in lines like
We processed the samples. Then we rinsed the residue in a solution of . . . .

Here are additional empirical data (Note: The word data is plural.)
Back in 2001, biologist Rupert Sheldrake queried 55 journals in the biological and physical
sciences. Only two still required use of the passive voice. Most scientific journals accept papers
in the active voice, he said, and some . . . positively encourage it. (New Scientist, 21 July 2001)

The British Medical Journal's House Style on the internet has for many years demanded that we
Write in the active and use the first person where necessary.
Even in active voice, however, I/We first-person pronouns are usually unnecessary.
(Interestingly, our seems acceptable, even when the writer avoids we.)
The valuable INANIMATE AGENT allows you to avoid these pronouns for active voice.
The mice each received / ingested 20 mg daily. (Nonhuman agent)
The reason for X remains unclear.
Results indicate that our hypothesis is correct.
The evidence suggests an alternative cause.
All data came from X. (We know they did not walk there on their own feet.)
Our laboratory provided urine samples.

Save passive verbs for times when they do, in fact, prove essential, merciful, or comical.
In one death notice, Some of us will greatly miss Professor Aho. This, however, implies that
some may be pleased at this death. Avoid sending this sentence to his/her widow/widower!
Instead, (The late) Professor Aho will be missed. (Late is a polite adjective for deceased.)
To be gentle:
Youre fired / sacked becomes Your candidacy / position is revoked /eliminated.
Similarly gentle, Your breast must be removed. Your results will arrive after tests are run.
To maintain anonymity: The suggestion was made today that nurses should go on strike.
Comedy:When my great-grandmother status is achieved, greater respect will be required.

12

Basic Methodology III: The End-focus Technique

End-focus improves logic, clarity (selkeys), flow (sujuvuus), and cohesion (koheesio).
The result may be catastrophic, as shown by our study.

Rewrite the boxed sentence twice. First, put its new informationthe what, last.
In the next draft, change to active voice: Use inanimate agent.
Only one word in this sentence is importantonly one provides new information.
Every sentence should present its basic background information first, which we can label the
who, where, when (how, why?). These data orient (British orientate) the reader.

The beginning of a sentenceregardless of what some teachis only the second most
important location. Most important is the end. Here we find what. New information.

Find the most vital word or two, the whata key adjective or substantive or a
numerical value that you have discovered. Place it at the end of its clause / sentence.

Be sure that each sentence ends with words that lead, even drag, you into what comes
next. This creates intra-sentence linkage, allowing readers to predict what the next sentence
will say.
Remember: FOCUS and LINK

A to Ds first and second sentences show end-focus with linkage (both italicized).
Choose, from among sentences 1 to 5, the best-linking third sentence for each:

A. Finland has the worlds highest incidence of type 1 diabetes. This disabling disease
and its treatment constitute a drain on national medical resources. (continue)

B. The worlds highest incidence of type 1 diabetes occurs in Finland. Finnish diabetes
researchers now discover some of the fields most interesting new data. (continue)
C. Regarding type 1 diabetes, Finlands annual incidence is the worlds highest.
Its figure for 2008 was 60/100,000. (continue)
D. Finland has the highest incidence of type 1 diabetes in the world. At least one
nations mean incidence in 2008 was under 1/100 000, which means that Finlands
was 60 times as great, though no one knows why. (continue)
1. An important area of investigation is diabetes-associated nephritis.
2. Is sugar consumption unusually high, or is this rate mainly related to genetics?
3. Finland must continue to battle this key medical problem, despite research costs.
4. The state finances medical care and financially supports those unable to work.
5. Such a figure requires funding of the countrys top researchers.

13
Observe my struggle with a rough draft totaling 28 words, with four passive-voice verbs (in italics)
and no end-focus. I assume that we have already heard about drug X, so X offers no excitement.

Nothing was known about what happens to children who are given drug X. It was
found that adults often have diarrhea if they are given / administered drug X. (3).

I first edited this by removing useless, wasted words and changing to active voice, end-focused.
Active voice required three inanimate agents:

effect, evidence, and X.

For clarity, these sentences needed however or whereas, but not in the vital first position.
(The BMJ and I both avoid wasting the first-word position on however or therefore.
These words become stronger as they move right, with maximum power when however
serves as end-focus. Remember, it travels carrying two suitcase-like commas!)

The effect of drug X in children is unknown. In adults, however, evidence

indicates that X frequently leads to diarrhea.
(20 words)

A clever student then noticed that these sentences lacked linkage; the first sentence failed to flow
into the second. I therefore sacrificed the best end-focus in the first sentence (unknown) and
instead gave focus to my second choice (children). Note good linkage with only 17 words.
The effect of drug X is unknown in children. In adults, however, X frequently leads
to diarrhea (3).

Another student then noticed that I was violating a major ruleto observe strict chronology.
Always describe events in chronological orderthe order in which they occur or the order in
which we learned about them. Now all of these data fit into one 14-word sentence.
X frequently leads to diarrhea in adults (3), whereas in children, its effect remains
unknown.
X frequently leads to diarrhea in adults (3); in children, however, its effect
remains unknown, however. (which location is better for however?)

14
Writing a first draft with end-focus as well as with sentence-to-sentence linkage is, however,
almost impossible. Instead, first get the words onto paper; then move words and phrases around.
Start all of your writing with a fast, disorganized rough draft, because such bad texts are the
easiest to improve by means of passive-to- active voice changes, end-focus, and linkage.

Find the most vital, novel word in the sentence, the one revealing the newest information.

After this word, put a period (full-stop).

Move all the words following this end-focus word back to the left.
Often the best place to insert words is after a that or which, as below:

She does fine work that may win her a Nobel Prize within a few years. WHAT TOPS A NOBEL?
She does fine work that, within a few years, may earn her a Nobel Prize.

Now carry out these steps on sentences adapted from actual medical research articles.
These have no grammar errors, just awful style.
1. In ulcerative colitis, a predisposing state for colorectal cancer, reduced TATI
expression has been seen in affected areas.

18 w

2. Although this is generally accepted, there are contradictory findings, nor has any
association between this mutation and survival been observed.

20

3. If enough protection is used during this procedure, infection is low, studies show.
13

15
Shrinking and revision of a paragraph.
This text is intentionally silly, so ignore the fake science; concentrate only on its language.

First, locate and repair four errors frequent among Finnish writers.
Then reduce its length from 114 words; aim at a third of its present length.
Replace its 10 italicized verbs in passive voice; choose all active-voice verbs.
Freely omit, alter, or rearrange words. Each of you will edit this differently.
Finally, COUNT every word (and quantity) in your version. Length record = 26 words

The effectiveness against narcolepsy of caffeine was tested on humans by our

group. It was effective, as was previously shown by Smith (Smith 2006) when mice,
that were found to be narcoleptic were given caffeine when they demonstrated
signs of narcolepsy. Therefore, an experiment was carried out by our group. We
had 100 male narcoleptics. The initial test dose of caffeine that was chosen was 300
mg two times every day. In these subjects a history of narcolepsy had been
confirmed. When they were administrated a dose of 600 mg two times every day,
the lowering of their symptoms of narcolepsy to a level that is considered in
literature to be normal was accomplished.

16

Article Sections: An Overview

Because some journals cannot afford to hire copy editors to correct manuscripts line by line, do
examine articles in the target journal, but avoid blindly trusting them as models of style.
What seems wiser is to trust the target journals own writing style.

This style is demonstrated in Instructions to Authors and in journal editorials.

Every journal has its own style, so study all instructions in the target journal.

Seek instructions also on the internet; these evolve and thus frequently change.

Follow each instruction exactly, checking and rechecking.

If you receive a rejection and submit elsewhere, follow the next target journals
instructions equally carefully. (See Handling Reviewers section.)

Vital: Notice the style required for your references: either Harvard or Vancouver.

Harvard style (from 1881) uses authors names: (Aho 2000) and an alphabetical reference list.
Vancouver uses numbered references, with each journal demanding different formats.
The usual formats are sentence end (3). Or end [3]. Or end.3 Or end3.
USA
UK
(Vancouver Uniform Requirements are available at http://www.icmje.org/index.html.)
Unlike authors in a Harvard reference list numbered alphabeticallyVancouver style requires
that the list follow the order in which citations appear in the text.
In Harvard style, date precedes article or book title; in Vancouver style, the date follows it.
The Hall book provides a clear pattern for the contents of a scientific article.
The

Introduction tells what question you will be asking,

Methods tell how it was studied,
Results tells what you found,
and
Discussion explains what the findings mean.

This produces the

acronym IMRAD or
IMRaD

In Suggestions to Authors in the journal Neurology (1966; 46:298-300), Daroff and colleagues
describe these IMRAD sections as answering the following questions:
What did you decide to do and why? INTRODUCTION (ending with what you seek)
How did you do it? METHODS
What did you find? RESULTS
How does it relate to current knowledge? DISCUSSION (Beginning with main findings)

17
A wise order in which to write these sections

1. Rough version of the abstract

5. Results

2. Rough tables and figures

6. Discussion

3. End (your aim) of Introduction

7. Rest of the Introduction

4. Methods

8. The final abstract

I cannot advise this too strongly: Make tables and figures before you write Results.

Note: Gustavii reminds us that editors of journals and your readers have the right to ask to
examine your raw dataeven 5 or 10 years after publication of results!
Therefore, never discard your raw data.

Case-Reports
A case report may formulate a testable hypothesis.
Present that single, deliciously unusual case. . . at a departmental seminar, says Gustavii.
A case report may also prove usefuland thus deserve publicationif it
reports a new diagnostic tool or a new treatment.
A case report usually occupies no more than two pages (double spaced) of running text and
contains about five references. Since it is too brief to constitute a literature review,
do not label it as one.
A case report seldom requires more than two authors, as surely only one would perform the
observation of the patient. Once, an editors query caused a surgical case-reports author-list
to shrink from seven authors to only two! (With thanks again to Bjrn Gustavii's first book.)

18

The Article Abstract

The abstract (now generally considered the same as a summary) is the first thing seen. It may
be the only part of the article that is read.
The abstract floats free, appearing in various databases and on the internet. For easier
electronic retrieval, front-focus both your title and line 1 of your abstract.
According to Professor Lilleyman (Hall, 1998) an abstract should reveal:

why what was done was done

what was done
what was found
what was concluded
And . . . the abstract must be the most highly polished part of the paper.

His rules: Include no lines that will appear again in the Introduction.
Avoid minor aspects of Methods.
Never end an abstract with the vague, useless line: the findings are discussed.

Do include confidence intervals (CI) and P-values.

I add, from other sources:

Short sentences
No repetition of data in the article title
No references or study limitations

Abstracts must stand alone and be clearly understandable without the text.
Always obey length-restrictions; 250 words? Write 600 words and shrink it by use of
Process Writing. If the journal instead provides a box to fill, prefer short words!
Abbreviations in abstracts
These must be few, and each full term plus abbreviation goes into the abstract. Write it
out again when it first appears in the Introduction or later.
Never abbreviate a short, single word. Never use ETX for endotoxin or AR for
arousal, says the American Thoracic Society (ATS), but the ATS accepts LAM for
lymphangioleiomyomatosis.
Surely no one will ever need an explanation for pH, DNA, AIDS, or UN. (Note: No dots.)
Check journal instructions; some abbreviations are so common in your specialty that they
need no explanation; one example is coronary heart disease (CHD)for a circulatory journal.
One way to avoid abbreviating is to refer to only part of the long term.
One example: For IRL, meaning inspiratory resistive load, the ATS says, that after
giving the entire term once, then simply write load.
An abbreviations list is useful, following the abstract, if you need many abbreviations.
Such a list is, however, no substitute for the required in-text explanations.

19
Structured Abstracts
Many target journals require structured abstracts with subheadings for each section. These
help the author to structure the abstract so that it maintains the most logical order and
omits nothing. I thus suggest that you write every abstract with subheadings. Which does
your target journal require? If it wants unstructured abstracts, remove subheads and make into
complete sentences the incomplete sentences that most structured abstracts allow in order to
save space. Popular subheadings include

Background Incidence of X has been rapidly rising in Nordic countries

or Hypothesis tested This study tested whether X correlateS with latitude.
or Objective / Aim Our aim was to compare X incidence above and below
60 degrees north latitude .

Study design and setting

Samples / Subjects
Methods / Interventions
Measurements, Statistics, P values, CIs, SDs . . . .
Results
Conclusions (Notice: instead of a Discussion, and no Summary; see below)
Implications (answering So what?)
Conclusions differ from summaries. Merely as a memory aid,
here is a comical SUMMARY of research into diet and health:
The Japanese eat very little fat and drink very little red wine, yet they suffer fewer
heart attacks than do the British or Americans.
The French eat much fat and drink much red wine, yet they, too, suffer fewer
heart attacks than do the British or Americans.
Its CONCLUSION (with clear IMPLICATIONS!)
Eat and drink whatever you like. It is speaking English that kills you!

Informative abstracts cover all of these categories, with sufficiently detailed results.
Indicative abstracts introduce your work and describe what you did. These are useful for
conferences, if abstracts are due many months before you have any results.
You later present orally the results lacking before the abstract-submission deadline.
Review-article abstracts include
Purpose, DataBecause journals now seek review articles to raise
identification and -extraction
their impact factor, even young researchers should
methods, Findings,
consider a reviewperhaps as a condensation of
Data synthesis,
Conclusions
their thesis Literature section.

20

Objective: To determine the influence of body weight throughout the life

course on the development of clinical hand osteoarthritis (OA).
(Again, journals want either Background or Aim / Objective, not both.)

Methods: A British national survey was used to perform a prospective

cohort study of 1,467 men and 1,519 women born in 1946. Weight was
measured at birth and at subsequent follow-up visits through childhood and
adulthood. The main outcome measure was the odds ratio for the presence
of hand OA at the age of 53.
Results: OA was present in at least one hand joint in 280 men (19%) and in
458 women (30%). Hand OA was significantly associated with increased
weight at ages 26, 43, and 53 years and with decreased weight at birth in
men. Birth weight and adult weight showed independent effects, such that
men at highest risk for OA represented those who had been heaviest at age
53 and lightest at birth. These findings were not explained by grip strength.
No significant relationship appeared between weight and hand OA for
women.
Conclusion: Our results show that increased adult weight is associated with,
and may precede, development of hand OA, but only in men. This
relationship between hand OA and lower birth weight is a new finding
concerning adult joint structure and function that may reflect the persisting
influence of prenatal environmental factors.
(This is a more concise, end-focused version of a 2003 abstract in Arthritis &
Rheumatism. Its citation is in Appendix II, along with a version of its Introduction.)

Repeating abstract lines in the rest of the article. One writer created an excellent abstract and
then copied it piecemeal throughout his article: Two lines from his abstract began the
Introduction, more lines from his abstract began Methods, some lines appeared in Results. The
Discussion ended with exactly the same lines as in the Abstract. I call this not plagiarism, just
laziness. Some members of the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) disagree.
You write a good line, said one, so why not use it again? But the abstract is unique, comes
first, and who enjoys reading repetition? We learn nothing more on the second reading.
Key words go here, below the abstract. Remember each journal has its own limit on
number of key words. Usually separate them with commas and use no capitalization.
Some journals want you to avoid choosing as key words any words already in the title.
Key words in Vancouver style must be alphabetical and should come from any index of
subject headings in your field that the journal recommends.
No one can say this often enough:

Always study each journals

instructions extremely carefully.
Obey all of the instructions.

21

Titles & Authors

Professor Lilleyman (Hall, 1998) reminds us that even before reading the abstract, we read
the title. A poor title may result in immediate prejudice against the author. He prefers that the
title be descriptive and tell only what the article is aboutneither why you wrote it, what
you found, nor the conclusions you reached. He might prefer the very first title on this page.
Bjrn Gustavii would disagree; rather than a descriptive title, he prefers to give a suggestion of
the outcome with a declarative title.

Titles ARE ALWAYS in present tense

Not too general:

Trends in living alone among elderly Finns

nor too detailed:

Figures for living alone among 3000 men and women aged over 65
years in southern Finland from 1950 to 2000 rise from 17 to 37%

(Improper in a title, this is end-focused on rise from 17 to 37%, with specific figures from the
Results. Front-focus all titles and never give specific numbers.)
Verb or no verb? I dislike a full-sentence title with a temporal (tense-showing) verb. Check
the reference list for each article or for the thesis that you are writing. Do you find many wholesentence titles like X causes Y versus X as a cause for Y? These mean the same thing.
Descriptive: Influence of aspirin on human megakaryocyte prostaglandin synthesis
Compare this to the declarative title of the classic article by Nobelist John Vane (Nature, 1971):
Inhibition of prostaglandin synthesis as a mechanism of action of aspirin-like drugs

(Notice that this title needs no verb, because again, a powerful as here means is.)
Showing front-focus, the versions below are even better:
Living alone among those over 65 in southern Finland: a comparative
demographic population-based study of trends, 1950-2000 (descriptive)

OR

Increased solitary living among the elderly of southern Finland, 1950-2000: A

population-based study (more declarative, based on its first word)

This is professional, and the colon (:) is popular. We have reduced this from 25 to 14 words and
moved the focus forward. To be very concise, we could reduce it to 12 or even to 8 words.
Living alone among Finlands elderly: Trends toward an increase, 1950 to 2000 OR
The elderly in Finland: solitary living, 1950-2000

Avoid articles in titles, except the for unique items (the only, usual, best elderly).
Capitalization? Titles here are downwith only their first word capitalized (more British).
All of this books section-titles are up and down their main words capitalized (more USA).

22
To avoid sentence-titles, change temporal verbs into participles, or even into infinitives.
Temporal verb
X leads to

Participle
becomes

Infinitive

X, leading to

or

X, found to lead to

Bad error: Past tense in a title in English. (Captions in some languages, like Finnish, may
use the logical past tense: Man killed friend. In English, we write Man kills friend.)
Unlike Finnish newspaper practice, all verbs that do appear in titles must be in present
tense, although choice of tense in the text itself is difficult. See page 40.
Title or subtitle: Surgery saved saves leg. X treatment succeeded succeeds in Y disease.
No abbreviations in titles. Unless it is pH, DNA, or AIDS, write out each term in the title.
When it again occurs, probably in the abstract, write it in full and give the abbreviation.
Do this again, once, in the body of the text.
Our use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) began in . . . .

Authors
Editors often now require a declaration of participation stating each authors contribution. You
must thus be able to justify the actual contribution of every author listed: Original idea?
Planning? Data collection? Statistics? Journals often now print, with the article itself, a list of
their roles. This serves to discourage an authors list numbering 50, even 100!
Often each author must sign a statement agreeing to be an author and accepting responsibility
for all article content. This discourages the vice of listing some authors who may never have read
the text and accept no responsibility, especially not for scientific fraud or plagiarism.
Contributors at the end of the articleif the journal prints thiscan include those who
provided aid, but insufficient aid to be called authors. Thank other individuals in
Acknowledgements.
Closely follow journal style for authors and for degrees, if included:

In English, degrees never precede names:

MD A. Aho
A. Aho, MD

Aho, A.
A. Aho
Aho, Antti
Antti Aho, MD, PhD

Note the commas around degrees.

How does your target journal link authors names with their institutions? With superscripts (a, b,
c, 1, 2, 3, or *)? These guide the reader to footnotes giving their institutions.

23

Tables & Figures and their Titles &Legends

Use telegraphic title style
without verbs or articles:
(These are descriptive titles)

Levels of enzyme X in melanoma

Influence of European Union rules on Finnish medical services

Avoid repeating the table title or figure legend in the text.

Example: In a text, such a sentence:Table 6 shows the condition of molars assessed by
the Wibble Method should never appear immediately before a table that is entitled

Table 6. Condition of molars assessed by the Wibble Method.

Instead, describe some Wibble results and add the table / figure number in parentheses:
This particular method predicted 78% of third-molar caries (Table 6).
OR These data suggest a trend toward a 2% annual rise (Figure 3).

One table per 1000 words is appropriate, laid out tall & narrow--not wide & flat.

JJournals avoid printing a wide table across two pages; rows may fail to line up exactly.

Number all tables/ figures in the order of their appearance in the text. Mention each
one, preferably only in parentheses (Table / table 6), (Figure 3 / fig. 3), (Figs. 3-4 ).

Avoid tables containing fewer than six or eight figures. In the text itself you can write:
Of the ten patients, one lived for 6 years, one for 8, three lived for 10, five for 11.
These few data (eight figures) need no table. Note alternating word-vs.-number style.

Similarly, avoid telling us in the text more than three or four findings from a table. Just
generalize as to what is most important, is the highest or lowest or is significant.

(My absolute rule: Always create tables and figures before writing Results!)

Most readers study tables and figures first, so save them from any need to search
through the text to understand any term or any abbreviation.
To do this, explain each term or abbreviation in a footnote. Alternatively, give the
abbreviation in parentheses in the title / legend (Figure 1. Three Populations of obese
(OA) and lean adults (LA) in Finland, 2005)or give abbreviations in column headings.

Omit from the table title, however, any words appearing (so nearby),word-for-word,
as headings for that tables columns. Remember, each word costs publishers money.
Avoid heavy repetition in tables of any words, phrases, abbreviations, or numbers.

24

If your table includes columns of many (more than five) identical words or figures, rethink its layout.
No column should contain a stack of identical words or numbers.
Omit repetitious items entirely.
Stage 1
Omit identical words where possible.
Stage 2
Stage 3
Indent subordinate items with a tab and single-space them.
Gustavii says that the only single-spaced
lines in an article manuscript should be these
indented second-line subheadings.

Obesity
in children
in adults

In a table, each column must be justifiable. Replace some data by footnotes or by words in
the title? As for layout, Gustavii feels that numbers being compared are easier to read if they
follow down the columns, not across. (Columns are vertical, rows horizontal.)

State the number of items or subjects in every title / legend or in a column heading.
Replace any column of identical figures withperhaps in the title(n = 20).
Use a small n for a portion of the total, and call only the grand total N.

Columns containing mostly identical P-values are unnecessary.

Insert footnote symbols into other columns for any significant P-values, and below
the table give P-values and mention the statistical tests providing those values.
Example: * All P < 0.001 (Mann-Whitney U-test)

Two horizontal lines at the top of each table that separate levels of specificity are usual,
with one line across the foot of the table. Separate items by spacing, not by lines.
Never use vertical lines in a table or as a figure background. Journals dislike grids.

Into each blank space in a table add a space-filler () to guide our eyes across columns.

Ensure that multiple-part figures or tables have clear numbers or letters nearby (1,
2, 3; A, B, C), with letters consistent in case, upper (A, B, C) or lower case (a, b, c).

In figure legends, show your actual symbols or print them on the figure itself.
Write The men () numbered 16 in the legend or putMen on the figure itself.
The latter is now preferable. Otherwise, is this symbol a filled, black, or solid
square? Is o unfilled, white, or open? Editors despair of multiple symbolsynonyms.

If you give names instead of examples for lines on a graph, write broken or
dashed (- - -), unbroken or solid ( ), or dotted ( . . . ) lines.

Never vary both lines & points except in the rare cases of their close overlapping.
For overlapping curves, you might lengthen the intervals on the vertical axis.
Gray areas are shaded. Dotted areas are stippled.\.\.\ .

25

Write hatched for /////// or cross-hatched for XXXXX. Or just show them.
As footnote superscripts
Vancouver style prescribes *, , , , II, .
When you need more, you start doubling them, as in: **, .
Avoid odd symbols such as dollar ($) or pound ()! Check target-journal style!

Many now prefer as superscripts a, b, c, d. P-values usually have * and ** and ***.
If the journal uses superscript Vancouver citation form, never confuse us by choosing
superscripts for anything elselike footnotes, numbers (1, 2, 3, 4 . . . .)

Statisticians complain that whiskers alone mean nothing. If a figure includes

this, the figure legend must state what the whiskers represent. Do they mean
Maximum and minimum? SD? CI?

Histograms show frequency distribution.

Avoid using more than five or six vertical (sometimes horizontal) bars. Label them clearly below
the axis, above them, or on them, or add a key showing each pattern / color of a bar.
Choose clearly contrasting colors or shading, hatching, or stippling.
The bars should be 2-dimensional: Be clear, not decorative; no city skyscraper cubes.
Which corner of each of these cubes would show its value on either axis?
Bad
Limit such 3-dimensional bars to figures demonstrating three variables:
vertical () plus horizontal ( ), plus values running front-to-back.

Pie-charts show percentage distribution. They require strong contrast in colors or patterns.
Gustaviis books (see Resources) cover tables and graphs well, describing a pie chart thus:
(1) the largest segment begins at 12 oclock;
(2) it continues with proportionally smaller portions in the clockwise direction;
(3) the number of segments does not exceed five; [in these models, six!] and
(4) labels are placed outside the circle.
For emphasis, one sector can be separated slightly.
I myself find it easier to read a pie in 3 dimensions, set at a slight tilt.

26

Recipe for an Introduction

A good Introduction, according to John Swales, usually contains four moves (or strategies):
MOVE I

Establish the field: Assert briefly how significant, relevant, and

important is your chosen topic. This usually requires no citation.
Those smart enough to read this publication would not demand evidence.
The worlds highest incidence of type-1 diabetes occurs in Finland.

MOVE II

Summarize your predecessors more general research:

On this question, Sotos 1993 report was the earliest.

MOVE III

Focus in on your own research project. In this however move,

indicate a gap in knowledge to be filled, a question to answer.
Seldom has this issue arisen. Data on this are few.

MOVE IV

Introduce your own research by stating the question you wish to

answer, what you hope to discover, what hypothesis you will test.
Novel methods can earn a brief mention, but rarely will an
Introduction include any results. Check your target journal on this.
This study tests the hypothesis that X is Y.
To discover whether X correlates with Y, we examined . . .
[perhaps adding] . . . by use of a new method for . . . .

The answer to this question, your discovery or confirmation--yes/nowill begin the

Discussion, where the citations closely related to your own work (arguments pro and con)
also belong. I dislike meeting low-numbered citations AGAIN in the Discussion.
An Introduction mentions (in Move II) general works relevant to yours, showing that you
know what has been done in this area. You need not start with the Romans. Omit facts
known to every scientist. Never march over us with a long parade of facts.
Introductions are shrinking; abstracts seem to be lengthening.
Richard Smith (BMJ) in Hall, concludes thus: Know your audience, keep it short, tell readers
why you have done the study and explain why its important, convince them that it is better
than what has gone before, and try as hard as you can to hook them in the first line.
(Emphasis added.)

27

Methods
Referees seem to focus half their criticism here. Although they demand sufficient data to
allow others to replicate your work for confirmation of its findings, this section must be brief.
Some journals use reduced font size for Methods. Some write their methods in lengthy table
titles and figure legends. Some want your specific Methods details only on the net.

Observe strict chronology:

Report each step / event in a clear time-order, in the order in which each occurred.
Never We did X after Y or Before we did X, we did Y. Write We did Y, then X.

Stay in the past tense. Write long, and then cut, cut, cut out all useless, wasted words.

Methods will be list-like. If you refuse to use we, Methods may require some passivevoice verbs, but not at sentence-end, where they lead nowhere (For X, the value of Y
was used vs. Y was used as the value for X. Active: Y served as the X value.)

From sentence end (focus position!), move passive verbs back; hide them in the middle
of the sentence, or substitute adjectives or nouns. (See Process Writing.) Revise thus:
With adjectives: X was used for Y. X was useful for Y / the best for Y.
With nouns: X was the choice for Y. For Y, our selection of X proved best.

Attempt end-focus, but linkage in this list-like section is often impossible.

Present all that the reader needs to know: Study target-journal Methods sections

Conventions for describing suppliers are on page 61, at #25.

Say who did what to whom. When, and precisely how? Define all terms:
For high X, delayed X, or prolonged X say how high, long, or prolonged.
Avoid numbers or letters for groups. Groups A and B gain descriptive labels:
Milk versus No-Milk children; Term versus Pre-term infants
In abbreviating authors names in the text, use dots between letters. The reason?
Miika Raimo Ilves or Ilpo Virta is no technique, Carol H. Doe is no disease.

An experienced radiologist (M.R.I.) and cardiologist (C.H.D.) performed cardiac MRI.

Observe standard (see journal instructions) rules concerning animal treatment and approval by
an ethics committee. This means a committee ON ethics. Though some journals may still
print it, ethical would mean that all your committee members are angelic. All other uses, as in
ethical standards / principles / review are, however, correct.

28
If subjects gave their signed informed consent, was this before or after enrollment?

Explain in detail all randomization procedures. Sealed envelopes? Computer program?

How many were screened and how many excluded?

How many dropped out and why? How many were lost to follow-up and why?

Define any blinding (of whom and how?).

Describe controls or control samples as thoroughly as you describe your studyor

testpopulation.
This is essential to justify your claims to randomization. How did you find / select / match
controls? Incredibly, the only information provided may be
Controls were from the general population. Who? Strangers walking past your laboratory?

Bjrn Gustavii provided these points and stresses the need to calculate sample size needed to
demonstrate a difference, if it exists. He wants this calculation reported in the paper and
warns that the number needed is never the number of those originally enrolled, but the number
completing the trial. (So subtract the drop-outs.)
If you have complex populations or results with complicated numbers, try to illustrate them
with a flow-chart or Venn diagram. Like genealogical charts, these are clear at a glance with
their so-visible boxes or circles. Be creative. Reviewers often prefer flow-charts for data hard to
comprehend in a text, and for large quantities of data. Study flow charts in prestigious journals.
End Methods with statistics. In the statistics description, state what you consider to be your
(statistically) significant P-value. Significance was set at 0.05 or is at >0.05 sufficient?
Avoid repeating X was statistically significant, unless this is versus clinical significance.
Avoid repeating quantities. For adults, omit yearsit is the default age-unit.
Respondents were (age / aged) 40 to 60. Omit years old or years of age.
Ages were 40 to 60. Adults 40 to 60 took part. Men over 50 / under 50 died sooner.
But note:

Children enrolled were from 14 months to 5 years old / of age.

Follow-up times ranged from 6 months to 2 years.

In English, we expect readers to recognize figures and words meaning years or

months. We thus write merely in 1999or even in 1066. And just in June.
Such (ok English) phrases as Finns In the year 1999 / until the month of June sound
like lawyer-language, too dramatic. (Note required use of the preceding the unit.)
The goes, however, before any superlative or unique word: The third of May / the last
day (see page 51). For further relevant tips, see "Handling numerals--" section.

29

Results
If you have table(s), figure(s), or both, avoid Double DocumentationNever repeat in the text
much that appears in tables and figures, because most readers examine these first of all.
According to Professor John Norman (Hall 1998), with emphasis added:
What you must avoid is what any reader, editor, or assessor
dreads: The results are presented in Tables I to V and in the
figures. This does not guide the readers into discovering what you
want them to find but actively encourages them to find things you
do not think important.
You must lead your readers into following your thoughts.
He adds that in the Results you show the statistical significance of your findings, and in the
Discussion, their practical significance. He warns that if your findings do not support your
original hypothesisand even if they refute ityou must report all findings.
What is the answer to the question you asked? Or did you disprove the null hypothesis with
a P-value less than 0.05? What is the power of the study? How likely is a false negative?
It is always wise to seek aid from a statistician.
The Results statein the past tenseselected data, the most interesting results, the highest,
lowest, or not shown. (Why are they not shown, in fact?) Avoid passive voice; let
inanimate agents (study / work / results) do the showing and producing. Or use we, or at
least our. Babies were tested / We tested babies / Our babies tested positive.
Do not evaluate here. No remarkably (a strong emotional term for greatly / considerably /
markedly) or This method's efficiency was greater than expected. No Surprisingly so.
End Results without a summary, because in Anglo-American journals, the discussion now
almost always begins with a statement of your main findings. Some journals now force authors
to do this by dividing their Discussion section into two sub-sections labeled Findings and
Comment. A structured Discussion is even emerging. See the next section.
Perhaps the journal publishing your work even combines Results with Discussion: lucky you!
Sample lines to distinguish Results style from Discussion (referral) style:
Results

Discussion

Of the 366 staff responding, those

approving the plan numbered 89 (24%).

That only a quarter of the staff approved

the plan seems surprising.

The Whammo Method performed well for

our patients less than one-third of the time.

The Whammo Methods ineffectiveness

may stem from its untested premises.

Absenteeism among the nursing staff of

small hospitals from 2000 to 2005
compared to 1990 was four-fold. Older
nurses, over age 50, were absent for fewer
days annually (10 days) than were younger
nurses (18 days).

Such a large increase in absenteeism

involving so many younger nurses in small
hospitals supports the suggestion of Piik
(2005) that hospitals of this size may
benefit more from our innovations than
would larger hospitals.

30

Recipe for a Discussion

These suggestions come from How to Write and Illustrate a Scientific Paper, 2008, from
Cambridge U. Press, by Professor Bjrn Gustavii (See Resources), editor of Acta Obstetricia et
Gynecologica Scandinavica from 1986 to 1994 and teaching scientific writing since 1980 at
Lund University, Sweden. His book on Nordic compilation theses appeared in 2012.
After the Swales recipe for an introduction we have waited a long time for a similarly convincing
scientific discussion recipe. Quotations indicated are from Gustavii, with emphasis added.
1. Main message. This, says Gustavii, answers the question posed in the Introduction
[in Swaless Move IV] and includes the main supporting evidence.
Example:

These findings show that / support the hypothesis that X contributes to

Y; its mode of action may be Z.

Be careful with present / past tense throughout any Discussion. See Tense section.
Next, critique your own study. (Or move this critique to later in Discussion.)
2. Critical assessment will discuss any shortcomings in study design, limitations in
methods, flaws in analysis, or validity of assumptions.
My own term for this is the Unfortunately part.
Now readers will want to know whether others agree.
3. Comparison with other studies may be organized as:
Your main finding
Other studies findings

in agreement with it, differing from it, contradicting it.

Your secondary findings (if your project is complex)

Other studies results agreeing or differing with or contradicting these, and so on.
Next comes my own So what? stage. Conclusions means that here you state your
results implications and suggest further research. You need no summary of findings here.
They are in the abstract, implied in Results, and they start the Discussion.
Here you reveal the value or consequences of your findings.
Avoid priority claims such as This is the first report of X or We are the first to do
this, because others may publish similar findings before your findings appear, 6 to 12
months after their first submission. Your editor will then receive the blame!
Gustavii wisely comments that most studies could be designated the first, because
most of them have a design of their own. In my own personal view, to modify a claim
thus: To (the best of) our knowledge, this may be / seems to be the first report
of Y seems safe. The two modifiers even make this sound rather modest.

31
One opponent at a thesis defense asked why a researcher would want to claim priority. Could it
even be the case that no one else was stupid enough to carry out such research? Let the findings
speak for themselves, or merely say they represent interesting and unusual findings.
Avoid promising to publish more; you may go under a tram before you publish the findings!
In close agreement with Gustaviis Discussion pattern, the Scandinavian Journal of Primary
Health Care offers Instructions for Authors, providing a structure for a Discussion section
with these subheads:
1. Statement of principal findings;
2. Strengths and weaknesses of the study;
3. Strength and weakness in relation to other studies, discussing
particularly any differences in results;
4. Meaning of the study: possible mechanisms and implications for
clinicians or policymakers;
5. Unanswered questions and future research.

Reference List

Prefer reviews and the earliest and best articles. Omit poor, weak papers.

Check and recheck all references and keep a copy of each reference cited.
Errors in references (incorrect or inconsistent order of items, punctuation, upper- versus
lower-case letters, abbreviations) are signs of carelessness. Errors often occur in half a
works citations. Nor is the net reliable; it too makes mistakes in spelling, dates, or pages.
Such errors disillusion editors and reviewers andpubliclyirritate your opponent!

Study the style of your target journal or the style recommended for university
theses. Language revisers tasks rarely include editing references, so you are on your
own! (See page 16 for an overview of Harvard and Vancouver styles.)

Each reference mentioned must appear in the list, and you should have read them all.
Opponentsand reviewers/referees (often unfairly) may expect to see their work cited,
but one wise opponent, at the defense, praised a Finnish candidates honesty when her
thesis cited no article of his; nothing of his was, in fact, closely relevant to her thesis.

For personal communication data, obtain the permission of the communicator.

Provide in the text full details concerning the source, stating whether it was oral or
written. No personal communications go into your reference list. List anyones
submitted and accepted work as in press.

In citing material from the web, give in parentheses the date when you accessed it.
Gustavii reminds us that data appearing on each site evolve and change. His example:
Cited Dec.4, 2002; available from: www.nlm.hih.gov/pubs/formats/internet.pdf.

Submit manuscripts with their reference lists double-spaced to allow space for editorial
revision; obey limits on maximum number of references (30?). Finns are often too inclusive.

32

PhD Theses / Dissertations

All nations and universities differ, so here are only a few tips on the summary /overview /
yhteenveto for a compilation Ph.D. thesis. (Caution: In the UK, dissertation means MA / MSc
thesis, so a safer term for both is thesis.) Note: see Bjrn Gustaviis new book, listed on p. 75.
Title page: See title section. For your big day, write 12 noon, not 12 oclock noon.
Table of Contents: As in titles, avoid full sentences and most articles. Avoid five-place
numbering (3.1.2.5.1); even three places seems odd to us non-Finns. Finally, you or your
computer must ensure that all subtitles in your table of contents and in the text itself match.
Your original publications: You must request and receive permission from the publishers to
reprint these at the end of your yhteenveto. If they are Accepted, they are not printed yet, so
say printed by permission of . . . . If Submitted only, do not mention the journal; you need
no permission. Any letter or short report should appear here, says Gustavii, if vital to your
thesis; he reminds us that the double-helix Watson & Crick 1953 was just a short report!
I call these articles or papers Study I or Study IV, capitalized, because study is such a
common word. Then use (I) or (IV). In a general context, study is uncapitalized:
For the first study, we . . . All five studies showed invasion, Study II showing the least.

Reproducing parts of anyones workeven your own articles--in your yhteenveto /

summary / overview, for instance, tables or figures, whether in full or as adapted or
modified, requires publishers permission. If you relinquished copyright, you no longer
own your own words; the publisher does (page 39; Plagiarism section). A permission line
contributed by the copyright holder must appear, word for word, on each table / figure.
Rules on this become stricter every year. Ethics was central for two EASE conferences (and
will feature in EASE2016). Almost half the presentations and workshops involved plagiarism.
Journals are not publishers. Publishers include Elsevier, Springer, Wileyreachable via the net.
Reproduced by permission of the Lancet requires article title, authors, page numbers. A
required permission line may thus be longer than the table title or the figure legend. If you retain
copyright, however, you need no permission line. You must, however, inform readers of its
source: . . . appearing originally in [journal name, issue, page, and date].
Artwork from your own lab requires a credit line to the artist, even if the artist is you.
Figure drawn by Anu Mki , Figure / Photo by the author.
From the net, if public domain, say so. Or from Wikipedia Commons.
Tables created specifically for the thesis itselfnever publishedseem to need no credit line.
Referring readers to your original articles with (See Study III, Table 6, p. 888) saves effort
and space, but e-theses omit the original articles. Unless they are easily accessible, tables and
figures should thus probably be reproduced in the yhteenveto itself but with permission!

33
Rules for permissions change rapidly. One student in 2010 wrote for me this adventure story:
1.) One article had a link to the Rightslink service where you click permissions/copyright on
the webpage. You need to register for the rightslink service, but you can do that from the
same link. Apparently some things they charge for, but I got permission to use my articles in
my thesis using this link, just by filling out the information (that I am an author and that the
manuscript would be reprinted in my thesis).
I looked up the article that I used a figure from by using the same link, signed in, and clicked on
the relevant boxes. (One figure, thesis, and so on). They charged me nothing, and gave immediate
consent. I just have to acknowledge in the manuscript using a specific sentence (Adapted from ).
2.) One journal automatically (when you go to the article and click on permissions/request)
grants you permission to use their manuscripts freely for non-commercial use.
3.) One of the journals was discontinued, but luckily (thank you, google!) I found the volume of
this journal (in which the article that I used a figure from appears) on Google Scholarly. On
the first pages of this volume (not in the article itself), they stated that all material is public
and can be used freely (for non-commercial use). I wasnt able to print this directly, but I
copied the screens of these first pages of this volume into paint and then printed them.
Yugh. This wont prevent me from getting a Ph.D., but I sure wish Id done this ages ago.
For more on permissions, see pages 70 to 73.
She still had to get or create permission lines when permission was required, and if not
required, to state the source, even Creative Commons on line.
One journal has refused permission to reprint a candidates article in his thesis. He could reprint
only a photocopy of the first page of its reprint, showing journal name, dates, and his articles
abstract. For more details see page 39 and the Plagiarism section.
Literature section:
This may be the most difficult part to write. Never plagiarize lines from others or your own
published articles (see above, and Plagiarism section). Close the book / journal and create fresh
wording (a paraphrase) or put irreplaceably elegant lines between quotation marks. For an example,
see how carefully I quote and paraphrase to avoid plagiarizing from Bjrn Gustavii in Recipe for a
Discussion.
No cutting & pasting. Italics? Expensive and difficult to use consistently. I avoid them.
Aims: Avoid repetition: End the introductory line (The aims of this project / study / work are the
following:) with enough words so that each aim in the list contains only new information. Your
aim is not to investigate a topic but to discover truth. Avoid synonyms like to investigate / to
explore / to determine / to assess, or you sound like a thesaurus. You are writing science, here,
not writing poetry. In all manuscripts, synonyms are a curse. (See pages 5 and 6.)
Use blank spaces, numbers, or black bullets () an old printers term) beside each aim, or
number them. No French lines (). We do not recognize what they are; do the French?!.
Make all AIMS grammatically parallel, for instance, choose all infinitives, all participles, or all
nouns.

34
As a Model Aims:
The main aim was to discover the effects of drug X on Y disease.
Specific aims were to discover the

effect of long-term X treatment of Y-affected patients on their cell-mediated immunity (I)

long-term efficacy and safety of X in Y-affected patients (II, V)

pharmacokinetics and long-term safety of X for infants under age 2 (III, IV).

Methods and Results:

In Methods, try to avoid much cutting and pasting of Methods from your original articles.
Paraphrasing biochemical methods is, however, so difficult that some techniques can usually be
carried over from your articles with little alteration. See page 61, #25, for suppliers addresses.
In Results, definitely avoid plagiarizing passages. Any identical phrasing should appear between
quotation marks. State the facts in your own fresh words. Years have probably passed since you
wrote your articles. You have matured, and your thinking and language mature, as well. Re-state
what you found. Paraphrase yourself as you paraphrased others lines.
Now, in the Helsinki medical faculty, cut and paste is illegal. Do not imitate theses from years
ago which lack permissions and do plagiarize. Constantly picture your thesis as an ethesis, flying
by net around the world. Its most eager readers will be those from whom you face the temptation to
plagiarize. Beware. Sanctions and academic blacklisting are becoming more frequent.
Try to create new tables and figures synthesizing or consolidating study data from several or all
of your studies. Opponents seem delighted with such syntheses. Opponents, reviewers, and editors
appreciate flow charts and Venn diagrams. A picture is worth thousands of words.
One opponent happily praised a thesis because, after reading the original articles,he did not meet the
same lines again, cut and pasted into the yhteenveto! Its language, he said, was fresh.
A students tip: Conclude sections or subsections with lines providing a take-home message.
Discussion:
In a thesis summary or a thesis monograph, you may start the discussion with background. You
need not state your findings first, as in an article.
Beware, however, of repeating the Literature. The Literature section will be more general or
historical. Try to avoid citing many or even any of the same works in your Discussion that have
appeared in your Literature section. (I give this advice also for articles: avoid having Introduction
citations appear again in the Discussion.)
As in an article, discuss your results / findings, rather than repeating each in much detail.
Remember that yours and others theorizing is in present tense. (See Tense Choice, page 40.)

35

Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements, essential in theses and also appearing at the end of some articles, may be left
until too late and thus receive zero editing. Everyone, however, reads these pages attentively,
particularly while sitting in the hall, awaiting the start of your defense. This reality means . . .
Be exquisitely polite. Failing in politeness can be risky; some errors can even be hilarious.
A native English-speaker can most accurately judge the between-line connotations of words or
phases. Unedited text may include startling phrases that you innocently considered okay.
Beware: I acknowledge NN. This is merely a cool nod of the head: it means that NN exists.
Similarly, the adjective competent describes minimal ability; it is almost negative.
Never call yourself kind, as in I kindly thank her. Very bad! Others kindly aid YOU.
Suppose that A did far more for you than did B, but B is of higher rank. Or you must praise
G, whom you dislike. One solution is to praise that persons skillsNN has great expertise in X
and Y. Here, you avoid stating that NN used any of these great skills for your benefit!
Actual examples that required rescue:
NN serviced / satisfied all my needs sounds like master to servantor worse!
Thanks for all those educational experiences during nights in the lab. What fun! (Omit-s.)
I appreciate all their excellent implications. Whatever did they imply (hint at)?
I thank Professor Blit for her relentless aid that made the topic truly pellucid.
Relentlessness is harsh and merciless; pellucid is rare, a fancy term for translucent.
My little sun brightened my days . Presumably son? Our son, unless traumatically divorced?
I want to/wish to thank N, is an expression that I dislike, because it seems to mean
But I cannot, because . . . N ran off with my wife / husband! Write only I thank N.
Avoid the task of creating a dozen splendid phrases like:
Heartfelt thanks go to / My deepest appreciation / I am deeply indebted to /
I warmly thank / my sincere gratitude goes to / X deserves thanks /
X earns my thanks / my gratitude overflows

Instead, collect helpful individuals into cohesive groups.

Use one gratitude phrase at the beginning of each groups paragraph.
One phrase or line per person then shows why you are grateful to each:
My warmest appreciation goes to A for his constant wise guidance, to C for her
humor and cheery encouragement, to D for his aid with statistics, to E, G, and K for
their faithful support, and to L and M for excellent laboratory assistance.

36
Avoid giving both title and degree(s): Professor Timo Koponen, Ph.D Omit one of these, unless
forced (as on page one of the thesis) to use both. My preference is for thanking Professor
Koponen and Docent Vehkalahti, with no degrees, because those ranks require a PhD.
In English, degrees never precede names. Never write MD Antti Aho or PhD Carol Norris.
I prefer omitting all degrees like MS / MSc, MD (lk. lic.), or PhD (tohtori, doctorate).
Gustavii is of the same opinion, saying bluntly that no degrees belong in
article acknowledgements. I would extend his advice to theses, as well.
For those without professorships or docentships, organize the names so you can write
My deep gratitude goes to the young doctors in our group: Antti, Tero, Esko, and Lisa.
To my co-authors not elsewhere mentioned, I offer my sincere thanks, to Pasi Aho . . . .
For technicians, We all depended on the expert staff of the lab, especially Timo Ui and Vivi Poo.
Adding Mr. and Ms or Mrs. seems rather insulting. You seem to be trying to conceal the fact that
some people hold no degrees.
Notice, however, that no one ever provides the academic degrees of parents, siblings, or spouses.
That never implies that your family members have earned no academic degrees.
Usually acceptable to alldegree-holders or notwith or without their family names, is
I could not have succeeded without my invaluable / precious / irreplaceable neighbors Asi, Celia,
Jyrki, Johanna, and Mari; nor without Sari, Harri, and Jenni of the running gang.
The usual order of persons honored is department head, director(s), special mentors, co-authors,
reviewers, language reviser, colleagues, technicians, close friends, less-close friends.
Then build backwards, from distant relatives, closer ones, child(ren), spouse / partner, and DOG!
No one regrets giving generous thanks, but you might regret being too stingy.
Should you include your siblings? Of course. Avoid, however, thanking someone for nursing
your baby (means with breast milk). Write cared for my [poor neglected] baby!
Thank in-laws? (Yes.) Very young children? Yes! Children grow up to examine their parents
theses. Treat all of your offspring equally. Infants cause joy as well as exhaustion.
Please vary the so-frequent Little Aksel reminds me of what is truly real / important in life.
Yes, how about thanking your faithful dog or cat? Think how much time with you they lost!
Why fear emotion? Why avoid humor or even personal, private allusions? This event occurs
once in your lifetime, and even big, tough men have written four A4 pages of Acknowledgements
full of grateful affection and humor.
Thank all funding agencies and remember the in front of almost all of them. Read these aloud to
check them by ear. The Finnish Medical Society, the Generosity Foundation, but Kuopio
University, Helsinki University FundS /FundING.

37

Model Acknowledgements
This is a disguised actual Acknowledgements in one University of Helsinki medical thesis, adapted
and slightly shortened for this book with the authors permission.
Start with something like My warmest gratitude goes continuing:
. . . to Professor NN for her positive and encouraging approach regarding this research.
to my supervisors Professor NN and Docent NN. Professor NN suggested the topic of this study and
had trust in my capability to complete the work even at times when I myself had none. As head of
the Department of X, he has been my supervisor in clinical work as well. Docent Ns supportive
attitude and quick responses to any questions concerning this study have been invaluable [note that
this deceptive adjective means almost too wonderfully valuable to describe].
to the official reviewers DocentS / ProfessorS NN and NN for constructive critiques [note plural in
titles for >1].
to Professors NN and NN, my clinical supervisors, for their collaboration. Professor NN has always
provided me with prompt information when needed. NNs help, especially in the very start of the
study but also later, has been irreplaceable. NN is also my coworker at the X Department and an
admirable person and expert to work and have discussions with.
to NN for reviewing the language of my thesis and NN for her author-editing and her useful English
courses.
to all the participants in this study.
to all of my colleagues and present and former fellow workers at the Department of N. Twelve
years ago I knew nothing about X, specific or otherwise, but from the very beginning I felt
appreciated and accepted as I was and received so much support and friendliness that it still carries
me along. You have all taught me so much. In contact with each person, adult or child, new things
evolve, and we along with it.
to my wonderful parents-in-law, N and N. We have had many great times together and will
hopefully have many more.
to my loving parents N and N, my adorable big brothers and my dear little sister and best friend N
and their spouses and children. We live in close contact, especially during summer, in the lands of
our ancestors in our leisure time paradise in X, which has been the root of my being and well-being
since childhood. I am very fortunate; I realize that.
to my N [husband] and our lovely children N, N, N, and N, I am ultimately grateful for our love and
companionship. Both being medical doctors has turned out positive in our relationship, and Ns
hard work has enabled me to work part-time, be available to the children, and do some research
somewhere in between. Our best creations ever are our children, who have loyally put up with my
recurrent absentmindedness and bursts of bad temper, and helped me place things in the right order
of importance by their mere existence. I will also have to mention our little dog N who has
numerous times during this process healed my wounded pride and self-worth with her ever-ending
affection and approval.
This work has been financially supported by N, N, N . . . to whom I am sincerely grateful.

38
Thesis dedications
These appear on the first free page and have ranged over my decades in Finland from
Dedicated to my Saviour Jesus Christ

down to

In memory of my beloved cocker spaniel who led me into veterinary medicine .

Gustavii, in his book on compilation theses, warns against printing Great Thinker quotations at the
beginning of the thesis,. At least avoid lines that have become clichs, or lines that could apply to
any thesis. He says, I have only found one citation that illustrated the essence of the actual
findings. And that line was formulated by the graduate student himself.
So choose, if you must, some words very relevant . . . maybe those of a noted scholar in your field .
. . or from your beloved mom, dad, or child. Or quote yourself, from your conclusions.

Acknowledgements in articles
Remember to ask permission to acknowledge. Anyone disagreeing with your findings
may prefer that his / her name be omitted; otherwise you are indicating the persons
endorsement of your study and its findings.
Example: We thank Ilpo Aho of Oulu University for the X samples, Sara Kohn for
statistical analyses, and the Tivoli Company of Copenhagen for the reagents.

(Note to Finns: Neither the reagents used nor dirty old used reagents!)
No degrees included, but writing Professor Blim of Oxford University is okay if she donated
essential specimens or provided learned advice.
New journal rules may ask you to specify the contribution of each co-author. Because of the huge
proliferation of authors (up into the hundreds for some papers!), those who aid you, but not
sufficiently to earn co-authorship, can receive acknowledgement at the articles end,
Some journals now refuse to publish any personal acknowledgements, particularly for aid in the
laboratory or language revision, sometimes even for assistance with statistics.
To repeat: If you gave up copyright to the publisher, you need copyright-holders permission
to reprint your or others material in your thesis summary. You cannot reprint your own table
or figure without permission and including a permission line. If not, you are plagiarizing.
Even reprinting your own lines without quotation marks around them is self-plagiarism. Some
very complex methods may, however, be carried over from attached articles. (See your facultys
current rules and see, here, the plagiarism section.)

39

Permission lines, in theses and articles, on the actual page

NEVER cite a source for a table / figure
on its page in this manner:
BAD

Table 3. Enzyme X in pancreatitis (Smith 2010)

OR
Enzyme X in pancreatitis (14)

If you base a new table / figure on data

in another persons workdata not in a table or figure, then say Based on data from . . . .

If the publisher holds the copyright for the source from which you wish to reprint a table / figure,
you must request permission to reprint and ask for a permission line.
Your title stands alone at the top; usually
Table 3. / Figure 3. Enzyme X in pancreatitis
your legend sits at the bottom, looking thus:
And at the bottom of a table / figure:
Reprinted / Reproduced (here) with the publishers permission.
with the permission of [Name of Publisher], from
Smith, JC, Pancreatitis can be fun, in Medical Comedy 2010; 73(1): 13.

If the publisher does not supply a detailed line, note these thesis examples:
Reprinted with permission from the website owner. From Creative Commons.
Permission to reproduce granted under BioMed Centrals general terms.
Photos reprinted with the kind permission of the authors /artist.
Photograph by the author. Image: Mary Maro.
Table with kind permission from Springer . . . .
2011 Japan Pediatric Society . . . . the authors

Some think that a small alteration in a figure or table allows them to reprint it without permission.
No! You must add Adapted from . . . . or Modified from . . . . and still have permission
granted. (Perhaps the publisher must first see the adapted / modified version.) One opponent
repeatedly asked a candidate during the defense why highly modified figures had no mention of
their being modified. Academic fraud increases; rules grow stricter; editors grow more suspicious.
ith no adaptation / modification, reprint all items exactly as copyrighted, with no revisions.
If you wish to create a new figure based on two or more published figures, request permission
from the publisher(s), and if possible, from authors and artists. For instance . . .
You admire a complicated arrow showing physiological process X, and in another publication a
stair-step illustration of that same process X. You want to show X as an arrow climbing a
staircase. You must ask permission from the two original publishers, perhaps attaching your
proposed combined figure. Cite them both completely.

My best metaphor: You visit a friend overnight. You use the guest room, bed, towels,
soap. But if you forget your toothbrush, you would never, never use your host's own
toothbrush. An author's own copyrighted tables, figures, and LINES are personal
property, like his / her toothbrush.

40

Tense Choice
Present tense
1. Established knowledge: Finland has the world's highest rate of X infection.

2. Others' general findings: Aho found that no evidence for X exists.

This verb can be in the present tense as well, if it sounds logical (found finds,)
but usually for a living author: Aho suggests / states that X is Y.
3. Your own goal in the introduction or abstract: This study attempts /
will attempt / attempted to discover whether X falls when Y rises.
4. Yours or anyones theorizing: We hypothesize that X is Results may
depend on population size. It seems that mice very seldom die from over-eating.
5. Contents of tables or figures: Table 2 includes further details.
Past tense
1. Specific details in yours or others published work (be alert to mention of quantities)
We / Aho found that the two years with the highest rates were 2002 and 2004.
Only six of the mice survived (Aho 1999). (past tense) But generalize to:
showing that, under these conditions, very few survive. (present tense)
2. Others general findings if logic demands, often in a list of findings: At this temperature,
most mice died (8), but after immediate air-cooling, those that died were few (9), and
when immersed briefly in cold water, all survived (10). (Note end-focus x 3!)
3. All of your own current work: Subjects stated their ages. X formed a Y.
None of them arrived, except for things truly permanent: The city is in Savo; its trees
were mainly birches. (Cities do not move, but trees die.)
4. What others have said: Aho (1999) predicted that this test will become the gold standard.
Present tense predicts is also acceptable here; see under present tense, #2.
When I see present tense for your own methods or results, I assume that you cannot be
discussing your own work. I thus seek a citation, but no citation, of course, appears.
Perfect forms are fine for data most similar to yours in topic or findings: We found that mice
died at -20 degrees, and in Smiths work (2006), mice have died at a similar temperature.
The present perfect tense is useful: X has never survived where Y is a common virus (6).
The perfect brings events up to the present, No one has shown [and still havent] X to be true.
If I cannot decide between past and present tense, I choose non-temporal forms (ones indicating
no time)such as participles and infinitives (see page 22 in Titles for examples).

41

Citations and Layout

Avoid repeating the same citation several times with no intervening citations, even if it is given
only as 3 or (3) or a superscript.3
Do this by using pronouns to link findings back to their source article:
Brown et al (1998) found X. They continued with Z. In their study, A was B; their findings also
showed that Y was Z, although Smith et al (2000) have disagreed with their conclusions.

Never repeat parenthetically citation data you havein Harvard stylealready given:
Aho found that X is Y (Aho 1991). Use X is Y (Aho 1991).
Choices:

Brown (1991) suggests that X is Y or X is Y (Brown 1991 / Brown, 1991).

Sentence-final citations in parentheses save words with no effect on end-focus. Devoting

the second most vital position in a sentence to a name is wasteful; instead, place there an
important word. You could, for instance, begin the sentence with powerful Never or Only.
I like Harvard names in chronological order, starting with the earliest date. For ones in the same
year, alphabetize them: (Laos 2000, Kerkel 2007, Laane 2009, Mare 2009, Bo, 2010 )
And for multiple works: (Aho et al 1991, 1993, 2006).
If, however, you agree closely with Brown, you know Brown personally, or if Brown is your
professor, reviewer, or opponent, then the name as the subject of the sentence might be wise!
For names outside parentheses, journal editors now seem to favor, rather than et al., writing
. . . Smith and co-workers (1991) succeeded. Brown and colleagues (2000) found X.
If you choose one of these, use it throughout. Synonyms always confuse or irritate readers.
Collaborators? Maybe okay, but it sounds to us like those who are aiding a criminal!
Avoid the too-common Nordic use of e.g. in citations: (e.g., Aho 1980).
Because Vancouver style never allows It ended.eg 6, or ended [e.g. 6], or ended (e.g. 6),
bravely select the best work to cite. We know that other sources exist. Only occasionally will you
need something like:
(As best shown by Aho 1999) or (Reviewed in / by Aho, 2000).
Saving words:
This is true of measles (Pop 1991), smallpox (Pip 1994), and typhoid (Pup 1999).
(In present tense, because these three papers are published, and this sounds like a generalization.)

Or . . . of diphtheria (5), smallpox (7), and influenza (8).Or Oho [3] and Ton [7],
like Iho [9], found these diseases to be widespread. (Note my infinitive).

42
Font issue: italics or not
Obey your target-journal style when deciding whether to use italics. Use them for Latin (not only
for in vivo but also for e.g., i.e., AND for every et al.)? Then you must also use italics for every
foreign term, like laissez faire, or any Finnish or Swedish word.. I find italics to be decreasing in
popularity. I suspect that they are expensive. For your thesis, the choice is all yours.
You do need italics to distinguish genes from other abbreviations. Here is an authoritative quote
provided by a student as to italics for genes and proteins:
"Non-human oncogenes are usually written as uncapitalized three-letter words in italics (e.g. myc italics) while their protein products are written in roman font with an initial capital (e.g. Myc). . . . .
. To make matters more confusing, human genes follow a different nomenclature, so that the human
myc [italics] gene is denoted as MYC [italics] and its protein product is written as MYC."
Cited from the book "The biology of cancer" by Robert A. Weinberg, 2007.
I note that he does not italicize e.g.

Layout
Do not copy your target-journals layout. Gustavii recommends using for submitted articles:
a. Times New Roman font 12
b. Headings with three levels:
1. bold UPPERCASE
2. bold lower case
3. italics
c. No split words. Computer programs split the same word at different points., and opinion even
differs as to where syllable-breaks occur, even among scholars who are all
native English-speakers. Dictionaries also differ regarding syllable-breaks.
As I recall, democratization can be divided into syllables in about ten different ways,
a few begin with: de / mo; dem / o, and cra / tiz; crat / iz. So do not try this (at home)!
To avoid splitting words, never justify the right margin. Justify left side, only.
Leave the right side ragged, as in this book, for article manuscripts.
Full, both-side justification necessitates splitting words, which slows our
reading pace and also produces illogical horizontal spacing and gaps in lines.

43

Verbs for Academic Scientific Writing

Your own research field supplies enough substantives. Most need a greater stock of verbs.
For first drafts, use boring common verbs (to be / have / get / find out); then be more specific.
Verbs are muscular; they move ideas along. Always, however, check connotations in an English-toEnglish dictionary. Avoid pompous or rare words. Be specific, not fancy. Below, UPPER case
indicates the stressed syllable; + means that this verb, spelled thus, can also serve as a substantive.

to look at
obSERVE
view + / reVIEW +
perCEIVE
reGARD +
appROACH +
be aWARE of
STUDy +
o compare
conTRAST +
match +
CHARacterize
probe +
reLATE
CORrelate +
asSOciate +
differENtiate
disTINguish

to be finding out
learn
see
search +
surVEY, (SURvey +)
inSPECT
inQUIRE
QUEry +
ascerTAIN (= check)
exPLORE
inVEStigate
iDENtify
aGREE
check +
deTECT
unCOVer
deTERmine
asSESS
ANalyze (vs. anALysis!)
CALculate

to balance
eVALuate
conSIDer
SPECulate
deCIDE
conCLUDE
acKNOWledge
ADvocate +
deFEND
conCEDE
to test
disCERN
inFORM
conFIRM
FALsify
enSURE
esTABlish
subSTANtiate
VERify

to causefrom outside,
something to decrease

to causefrom outside,
something to increase

reDUCE
curTAIL
cut +
deGRADE
dePRESS
diMINish
drop +
imPAIR
LESsen
LImit +
MINimize
MODerate
resTRICT
WEAKen

raise +
adVANCE +
AGgravate
AMplify
aROUSE
ELevate
enHANCE
enLARGE
enRICH
exCITE
FOSter
HEIGHTen
imPROVE
inFLATE

to show
INdicate
sugGEST
DEMonstrate
point out
exHIBit +
reVEAL
disCLOSE
disPLAY +
ILLustrate
exEMplify
make EVident
conTRAST+
apPROXimate
COMment on
afFIRM
asSERT
TEStify (to)
inTERpret
deFINE

inTENsify
lift +
MAGnify
proMOTE
proVOKE
STRENGTHen

I consider the verb deTERiorate to be always

intransitive, so that nothing can deteriorate X.
X can, however, itself deteriorate or decrease.
Note: things cannot reduce themselves, nor can a
thing increase / decrease anything transitively.
(See the Words Confused and Misused section.)

44

Groups of useful or problematic verbs

ImPLY and
impliCAtion are
common & safe,
but IMplicate
always shows
blame or guilt.

Beware!

To prove anything is
For naive amateurs;
it means proven forever, everywhere,
thanks to brilliant you!
Failure to prove is okay,
as is DISprove, meaning FALsify.

To end-focus
on a digit, use
number as a verb or
figureas a noun:
Girls NUMbered 71;
the FIGure for boys
was 11.

X clearly shows / undoubtedly is

This proved / has proven effective.
This prove means shown with some
evidence,

Answerreply /resPOND (respondents);

give proVIDE / supPLY / FURnish.

ConSIST is for ingredients (cake) and conTAIN for contents (of a pill).
InCLUDE implies less than 100%. It comPRISED 80 men means 100%.
It was comprised of 80 men is correct but uselessly wordy.

Upgrade spoken-English

There is / was / were X

to X exISTS / ocCURS /
apPEARED / aROSE / eMERGED.

These verbs do differ.

Things EXIST permanently,
OCCUR regularly,
APPEAR suddenly,
ARISE theoretically,
EMERGE from something.
These can also help you
in replacing passives.

Handy words
if all else fails:
reGARD/ inVOLVE / conCERN.
Regarding this item . . . .

She regarded it as complete.

In regard(s) to this issue . . .

Involving her was wise.
It involved effort.
Concerning this danger ...
The problem concerns
funding.

45

Formality Levels
Colloquial spoken, first-draft words with some synonyms, in order of increasing formality
Avoid these

Choose among these

a bit

a little, slightly, somewhat

a couple

two, a pair, a duo (for people, couple implies man and woman)

a lot, a lot of, lots of several, many, multiple (see plenty of)
anyhow

in any case, in any event, nevertheless, nonetheless

anyway

although, thus, however

besides; too

also, in addition, likewise; furthermore, moreover

enough

sufficient (insufficient is also useful)

fix (verb)

arrange, manage, handle OR repair, renovate, recondition

give (verb)

supply, furnish, offer, provide, yield

gone; none

lacking, absent; missing (think cops)

hard

difficult, demanding, laborious, time-consuming, taxing

let (v)

allow, permit, give permission for

little (= few)

few, insufficient, lacking, rare, scarce, sparse

look for (v)

try to find, seek (sought), search for

make

produce, construct, form, compose, build, create, originate, constitute

plenty of

abundant, ample (vs. sparse), numerous, frequent (occurring over time)

pretty; quite

somewhat, almost, moderately, not uncommon, not infrequent

quite X

very (a weak word), rather, considerably, noticeably, notably, markedly,

greatly

(I would avoid remarkably as too emotional.)

so

therefore, thus, hence

start (v)

begin, initiate, undertake

take (v)

adopt (100%), adapt (with changes), transfer, possess

think X is

consider X to be, judge X to be, deem X to be

though

even though, although, notwithstanding

too

also, in addition, as well as, likewise

try (to)

attempt to / endeavor to

turn out (v)

prove/proven to be X (show by evidence; It proved to be a wise choice.)

way

means, approach, method, procedure, manner

work out (v)

solve, resolve, determine, devise, OR clarify, elucidate

(Sources include The Words Between, JM Perttunen, 2000, and many author-editors.)

46

Words Confused and Misused

amount and number: Number goes with countables, as does fewer: Fewer cells.
Less sugar (uncountable). Each and any often prove useful to maintain the
singular: Of the 10, each patient received 3 g of the drug.
any:

This is handy to allow you to use the singular and to include zero. Any = 0
We sought correlations between age and enzyme X levels. (They surely existed.)
We sought any correlation between age and enzyme X level . (Maybe nonexistent.)

chance vs. change: Their first chance to change X will be in 2009. Careful; they sound alike.
chapter: Finns use this for almost everything! Wrong choices are extremely confusing.
1. paragraph = an often-indented unit usually covering one major point.
2. section = such as Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion.
3. chapter = a long portion of a book, comprising many pages. (Moby Dick!)
contrary to: Overused. On the contrary (French influence, au contraire?) is argumentative!
Instead, write Contrary to X is Y. In contrast, X seems preferable.
Conversely, our mice survived X. We chose the opposite. The reverse is true.
control: (st ohjata) Use monitor / check / follow(-up) (valvoa, tarkistaa, seurata).
ConTROL (stress 2nd syllable) goes with hand-cuffs, ropes, dog-leashes, tempers.
Doctors monitor patients, follow them in a follow-up study, check them.
different: Avoid over-use; all things differ. Why Six different men shared a ward?
Perhaps to stress wide differences, Six widely differing viral species thrived.
Differ is a good, strong verb: These patient populations differed in ethnicity.
economical: Economic has to do with the economy. Economical is rare and suggests a
saving of money (sstvinen). An ecoNOMical person eCONomizes.
effect and affect: EfFECT is almost always a noun and afFECT,a verb.
Learn:
We affect its effects.
The rare noun Affect (capitalized) refers to emotions. He is lacking in Affect.
The rare verb efFECT means to establish. We hope to effect changes here!
gold standard: Never golden standard, as this is monetary, $$. It is a metaphor
contrasting a nations gold reserves with silver reserves.)
More usual in medicine is X of choice usually Treatment of choice.
health vs. healthy: She is healthy (adjective). She is in good health (noun).

47
increase, decrease: These apply only during a specified time-period. They may occur from
inside, on their own, as in a lesion healing, versusfrom outsidebeing cured.
Occurring within: His pain increased.Values increased / rose / soared.
Levels decreased / fell / dropped / deteriorated. (See Verbs section.)
By outside forces: Aspirin reduced/raised / elevated / enhanced / promoted / X.
Or it reduced / lowered / diminished/ X. Or Y caused a decrease in X.

Or is X merely higher / lower or larger/ smaller than is Y?

As the length of the neonates decreases, their relative heart weight grows.(Babies shrink?)
Accurate: The shorter the baby at birth, the greater (is) its relative heart weight.
Never write

When mountains increase in size, their number of species rises.

Write The larger the mountain, the greater (is) its number of species.

incidence (vs. prevalence): Gustavii calls these the total number of cases of a disease or
condition existing at a specific time vs. the number of new
cases that develop over a specific time,
Prevalence = how many now have X disease. Prevalence is 213 / 100 000.
Incidence = how many develop it annually. 16.3 /100 000 develop it annually.
in print, in press: In print means being sold; out of print means sold out, unavailable.
In pressmore useful to authorsmeans now being printed, soon to appear,
Or (mainly non-academically) forthcoming. No phrase out of press exists.
keep vs. give: I will keep a talk. No! You will do the opposite: I will give a talk.
But we do hold a meeting / a conference; we giveor throwa party.
lend vs. borrow: Lend goes outfrom you; borrow comes to you. Finns generously lainavat.
next:

Near a day, we say, See you this coming Monday. Next Monday? In 10 days?

other: On the one hand, and on the other hand, doubles contrast strength and is okay, but
never use 2x other to refer to two related items. Dangerously confusing.
Never On the other hand, X . . . but on the other hand, Y . . . . or, without hands,
The other patient lost weight, and the other gained weight . NO. A Finnish error!
Write One patient lost weight, and the other gained (weight).
She was blind in the other eye =totally blind! Other always means second of two.
own:

Always preceded by a genitive: her / his / Oulu's / their own X.

48
parameter: This is overused and mispronounced! Say paRAmeter (not pair of meters) and
reserve it for mathematically derived values like means, CIs, SDs, or constants.
Instead, use characteristics / variables / measurements.
Similarly, avoid paradigm, sounding like pair of dimes. Model? Pattern? Ideal?
range:

From smallest to largest figure, use range / ranging. His temperature ranged from
36 to 40 C. Prevalence, ranging from 20 to 30/100 000, is sure to rise.
(See vary, below.)

risk:

Most academics seem to prefer at risk for X (X is something not inevitable), rather
than risk of, which seems lay-persons language. We can then write The risk of
over-eating for obesity. But always risk of death, a thing inevitable.

significant: Unless you have no P-values in your manuscript, use only for a statistical difference
(P-value), not for achievements or for human relationships. Many drop statistically
after using it once, unless clinically significant is relevant.
Avoid almost / highly significant. Instead, give the P-value. (See Handling Numerals)
similar, same, identical: These words are not interchangeable. Same and identical are more
similar than is similar. Brothers and sisters are similar, but only identical twins,
being monozygotic, are genetically exactly the same.
since, as, while: Beware! Each of these can also have a time-sense.
Since / As he came to live here, he has been studying Finnish. (Because, or in 2001?)
Since / As / While I am busy in surgery, you look after our family. (Huh?)
(For since and for as, we therefore often substitute because.)

X accumulated in the nucleus, while tabulin was cytoplasmic means whereas or when?
(For any while not meaning at the same time as please substitute but or whereas.)
vary: Less often appropriate than range, discussed above. Vary means to go up and down.
The patients temperature varied hour by hour. Often it includes no figures.
weigh vs. weight: We weighed (verb) the neonate. Because her weight (noun) was only
1000 g, her mother felt weighted (participle) down with fear. The Mafia gang
weighted (verb) the corpse with rocks before throwing it overboard.

worth x; worthy of x: Finns may write: That is worth of X. The correct alternatives are:
That is worth studying, or, more formally, That is worthY of study.
Confusing plurals: Unusually, the longer form is the singular: criterion / criteria;
phenomenon / phenomena. Two words, species and series, serve either as
singular or plural: Ahos two series are larger than is our first series.
One species occurs here, but five species occur in Sweden.

Words never plural: equipmentS, adviceS, informationS. I dislike researches.

49

A Sample of Preposition Problems

absent from
added to, not into; an addition of sodium
apply for (money), but apply ointment; apply to the university for money
approve/ disapprove of
agree/disagree with
ask him, never ask from him (Ask him for information.)
associate with (and correlate/consistent with, but relate to, characteristic of)
at this level (Use AT for precise stopping-points: point, age, temperature, stage, level,
dose, dosage.) I prefer AT risk FOR.
Finns have problems with at and with by (authorship).

on average
(On average, earthquakes there occur every 12 years.)
call (phone) her, never call to her (British: "ring her, and when finished, ring off.")
compare with = seek likenesses and differences; often in the USA, compare to.
Use compared to / wit h early in the sentence, with no comparative degree:
Compared to rats, mice thrived. Finland, compared to the USA, is safer.
But with comparative degree, with an -er modifier; use than: X is longER
than Y, less than Z. So avoid: longer compared with / to Z.

correlate with, associate with, connect with (unless electrically!) but relate to
introduce to the audience a speaker. Wrong: I introduce you Dr. Ilo. (We say that to Ilo.)
different from (always!) US error: different than; UK error: different to.
dissolved in, but extracted from
the effect/influence of statins on cholesterol / of nurses on doctors
essential to
Double-check each to, perhaps
exclusive of
influenced by Finnish lle forms
fill in (USA also fill out) a form; complete a form
foreign to
grateful to her for the gift
an increase in (not of) X (size?) a reduction in cost
independent of, dependent on
isolate from
at a mean height / weight / level
participate in (always in, except when final: Glad you could participate.)
prefer X to Y
PLEASE ACCEPT MY APOLOGIES
prior to
FOR THE TOTAL ILLOGICALITY OF
(in) pursuit of
ENGLISH!
in the range of
similar to
substitution of x for y (where y is what leaves)
representative of (. . . this syndrome, this class of drugs)
varies with (. . .weight, age)

Academics work at the university, in the department of X, in Helsinki.

Patients in a hospital have doctors who work on their floor, or in a clinic of / at that hospital.
Students, once accepted by a university, then study at that school. When in school, they study.

50

Participle Problems
Using often dangles: Using lasers, the patients' eyes were studied. (Eyes use lasers?)
The disease was identified using the latest technology. (A clever disease!)
The children were studied using MRI.

(Technically advanced children!)

Change using to with or by: With an instrument, or a substance (As the instrument gets
more complex and more automatic, however, one can use by: by a method or technique, or a
complex instrument (even by means of or by use of something).
The patients were warmed with blankets. By this method, we succeeded.
Results were calculated not by computer, but with a slide rule.
Using is okay with an agent: Aho, using X, did Y, even These cells, using sodium as a
Using can also serve as a substantive, called a gerund, as in Swimming is good exercise.
Use of / Using soap is wise.
Used is one of my enemy words, like not, so, get. All of these are vague and weak,
especially when used is the passive verb at sentence-end. (See Process Writing section.)
An often-ignored rule in English is the genitive before a participle. HER arriving early was
considerate, Not SHE arriving. This drugs being expensive is unfortunate.
(I will forgive those who forget this rule, however.)
Be careful with all participles ending in -ing.
These may become dangling modifiers. Native English-speakers joke with them. Visualize.
Lying across the colon, the surgeon saw the lost dressing.
Hanging from the ceiling, the elderly nurse suddenly noticed an electrical cable.

Repair both by flipping them so that the modifying phrase comes last, next to what it modifies.
The surgeon saw the suture lying . . . . and The nurse noticed a cable hanging . . . .

As with subject and its verb

(See page 9 for examples.)

Put things that go together close together.

51

A Sample of Article-Use Guidelines

A / An / no article
Use with an unspecified, singular, countable noun.
A man arrived (not specified; any man).
Use lemon juice in water to remove rust (none is a countable).
Note: AN precedes a vowel sound (an uncommon, an FBI man, a unique, a European).
The

1. When an item has already been specified: The study means one already mentioned.
For good linkage backward: This study / These studies. Such studies.
2. When an item is about to be specified:
We carried out three experiments; the experiment involving mice . . . .
3. When an item is otherwise known to the reader:
The teeth were intact. (You mentioned skulls, and all know that skulls have teeth.)
4. When a countable is unique:
The best / opposite / normal / chief / first / following / present / same,
or unmodified: the sun / horizon / sea / water / menopause
And The Greek president . . . but never The Nature (but the environment).

English allows you to avoid repetition by using THE:

We captured mice in Lapland. The/These animals were healthy. You can avoid writing
The animals used were healthy, or an error such as the used needles, old needles from which
you can become HIV-positive! Used before a noun means not new; think of a used car.
Special cases: Body organsthe heart, the liver, the brain, the arm, the kidneys, the bones
Institutions and organizationsthe Finnish Academy, the FCS, but Oulu University,
and words unmodified: the sick, the old, and the former, the latter ; the elderly, the blind.
No articles for: both, noon, midnight, winter, childhood, pregnancy, birth, youth, death,
biology, history, malaria, oxygen, Ireland, Monday, June, fifteen, Table 1, Figure 3.
Note verb: commit suicide / murder, always without the. Murder is a verb; suicide is not.

None in addresses: Department of Art, University of Texas; Joan Aho, Editor

None for above sea level, below zero, by accident, at once, at present, in case, by chance,
in addition, in brief, in contrast, in detail, in effect, in full, in fact, on time, on purpose,
within reach, beyond reach, without doubt, without warning

Many singular nouns need no article. Judge them by ear by creating a simple sentence:
Incidence is rising. Nature can heal a patient. Treatment cured her.
But THE study / patient / dose was Can you hear whether an article is usual?
RULE OF THUMB: Usually the means 1 of 1; a / an means 1 of >1.

52

Chief Uses of the Comma

TYPE OF COMMA

PROBLEM

EXAMPLES

1. List-commas

Final comma before and.

Often comma before or.

a, b, c, and d
a, b, c, or d

2. Fetal parentheses

A commenting or a

Doctors __who constantly

overwork__ need higher pay.

(always paired)

defining unit?

The timer__which broke__ will

never work.

(Test these two, with and without commas.)

3. Subject + verb
and, or, but

Clarity

subject + verb

Loss of signal correlates with

concentration of contrast agent and
relative blood volume is calculated
by the X method.
(Why must we read this sentence twice?)

4. Introductory word

Does an oral pause follow?

First, tell me . . . .
Finally, finished reports arrived.

or phrase

In May, is the test complete?

5. Dependent clause

Is the clause dependent?

Whereas 251 cooperated, 17

withdrew.

(always use if initial)

If you wish, the doctor will call.

6. Adjective series

A comma goes where

It is a tall, broad, dark oak tree.

and

The fit, lean Arab patients survived.

could appear.

7. Apposition (paired)

Identical, not defining

Paula, our director, arrived.

But: Our director Paula arrived.

53

Punctuation Terms
(US / British form)

period / full stop

piste

comma

pilkku

semicolon

puolipiste

colon

kaksoispiste

hyphen

vliviiva between linked words

n dash / "m" dash

between words, units / ajatusviiva (p. 57)

dot (for the net)

www.helsinki.fi Use also for initials in names, C.B.N.

decimal point

2.5

parentheses / brackets

()

sulut

brackets / square brackets

[]

hakasulkeet

braces / curly brackets

{}

aaltosulkeet

exclamation mark

question mark

slash, slant line, diagonal,

kauttaviiva

kenoviiva

stroke, virgule
backslash
apostrophe

heittomerkki its = it is, a contraction; genitive: its lung

one rats heart; six rats hearts

quotation marks
ellipsis dots
asterisk (not comic Asterix!)
superscript
subscript

US ; UK
...
*
soon15
H2O

When final, add final mark: . . . /?/!/.

54

Exercise in Punctuation
All punctuation in this passage is absent, except for two full-stops (periods) after the two
paragraphs. Punctuate it. In some locations, three or four options will each be suitable.

Non-native English speakers find that rules governing the use of articles are
particularly tough to negotiate in technical contexts a common error that an
editor may encounter in medical papers is omission of articles before the names
of body parts the rule is simple and easy to follow the definite article the should
precede the names of body parts such as the heart or the lungs when the names
of body parts are provided in a list however an article is necessary only after the
first name such as in the heart lungs and brain.
Appropriate capitalization for terms that have been derived from proper nouns
is a controversial topic editors are unsure whether to capitalize Petri dish and
Gram stain the popular rationale is that terms derived from proper nouns
should be in lower case the adjectival form whereas terms should be capitalized
for the proper noun itself thus Gram stain vs. gram positive bacteria and
parkinsonian gait graafian follicle and luciferase we do capitalize Southern
blotting the technique discovered by Edward Southern who was born ironically
in northwest England northern and western blots are in lower case being based
merely on the naming of the Southern blot.

Heavily adapted from Common errors to look out for in medical papers,

Nikhil Pinto, European Science Editing, Vol. 39, No. 3, August 2013, p. 69.

55

On Punctuation: the only logical system in English

Commas cause the most difficulty for everyonenative and non-native.
Commas mark speech pauses (By winter, her symptoms may disappear), but not always.
Although speakers do generally pause before each verb, no comma belongs in this sentence: The
population near this river flowing across the continent are in danger from a rare disease.
Although you had to breathe before are, we are limited by this rule:
Never place one commaa single comma (,)between a subject and its own verb.
I categorize commas as either single or pairedcalling them wed or unwed commas.

Singleor unwedcommas
The final list / serial comma before and and sometimes before oralways popular in
Americais now a requirement of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and Lancet, even in this era
of expensive printing when other punctuation symbols (such as my beloved hyphen) are threatened.
Beware,
a mess!

Mothers recognize that prevention of dental caries requires check-ups

and restriction of sugary snack food, soft drinks and toothbrushing.

In the picture is a two-legged clause. Each such clause can stand alone. Unwed
commas should always separate independent clauses joined by and, or, or but.
This prevents confusion: A comma warns you that a new subject and verb are
coming, rather than more of the first clause such as an additional object. Study this sentence:
Joe has three cats and seven dogs of many breeds, large and small, live next door to him.
Does Joe have three pets or ten? Note the shock of unexpectedly meeting that second verb, live.
He has three, so help readers by placing a comma after cats.
Unwed commas also set off introductory words & phrases. In time, children learn.
Surprisingly, it worked. Now, test the reagent. First, tilt the flask.
I call a dependent clause one-legged. It never forms a complete sentence.
A two-legged clause can support, with a comma, a one-legged clause,
and generally does so when the one-legged (dependent) clause comes first.
If it rains, you'll be wet. (But Youll be wet if it rains is okay.)
While the sun shines, rest. (But Rest while the sun shines is okay.)
Any whereas clause is dependent, needing a comma: Fish swim, whereas birds fly.
To distinguish an independent from a dependent clause, say it aloud. If a puzzled listener says,
So? Go on! or Are you crazy? then it was a dependent (one-legged) clause.
Unwed commas also separate adjectives in series (New, well-educated, enthusiastic nurses ).
But they go only in a space that could contain an and (A well-educated Filipino nurse).
Put single commas after all places and dates.
The conference begins on 20 July, 2004,
Note the two pairs of commas
in Beijing, China, and lasts for one week .

56

Pairedor marriedcommas
These go around comment clauses and phrasesones that are nonessential, meaning
just side remarks that do not alter or limit the sentence meaning.
They never go around definition clauses / phrases essential to identify what comes before.
This rule causes difficulty for Finns, because a comma is required before joka/ ett.
One safe rule is that no comma ever goes before that, but a comma does go before which.
Scientists seem, however, to favor which, either with or without a comma.
(That seems to me, also, to be uncomfortable, to tie words too tightly together.)
My name for commas that surround comments is fetal parentheses.
The commas required around a tough field could grow up to be parentheses or dashes:
Neuroradiology (a tough field) is her choice. Neuroradiologya tough fieldis her choice.
Scientific papers require many parentheses (for citations, quantities, p-values), so use parentheses
sparingly; limit, also, the number of dramatic pairs of dashes.
How does one recognize a parenthetical comment? Say the sentence aloud, whispering the
words which may be either comment or definition. If the sentence fails to make sense without the
whispered words, you have a definition. If it still makes sense, the words were a comment.
After a comment, a singular verb will not even change: Juha, in addition to Outi, has come.
Test yourself: One sentence shows she has one sister, but the other shows more than one.
Which is a comment, and which is a definition?
Her sister, who is her identical twin, arrived. Her sister who is her identical twin arrived.
Special
case

If a parenthetical comment stands by itself (two-legged) as a complete sentence,

then, instead of putting commas around it, use two dashes or parentheses:

These cells (see Figure 1) divide rapidly. Many topicsHIV-AIDS was oneled to debate.
No punctuation goes before parentheses unless the parentheses contain a complete sentence.
Paired commas also set off appositives, acting like words following i.e. Ted, my uncle, left.
But My Uncle Ted left. Mari Storpellinen, a UK college graduate, visited.

Semicolons (;) are too seldom used by Finns, though they offer an extra choice of pause. They
link closely related but independent clauses, allowing a dramatic pause (Many treatments
followed; none succeeded.) They solve the problem of deciding between one long or two shorter
sentences.
They also indicate stronger breaks in a series of items that also need commas, such as (mean, 60
years; range, 42-71). Below, instead of nine commas, find five commas + three semicolons:
The dietician provided apples, tasty, soft ones; sweet, ripe naval oranges from Spain;
big, firm bananas; and red, seedless grapes.

57

Colons (:) mean viz or thus and introduce a list ( are the following:) or announce an
explanation (The wreck was terrible: injured people, glass all over the road. It was terrible: No
one survived.).
Avoid use of a colon between a verb and its object. Write The three best cities in the world were
Zurich, Vancouver, and Helsinki, or . . . those top cities: Zurich, Vancouver, and Helsinki

Dashes The em-dashlike the ones around these seven wordsis the width of an m. Dashes
create a gasp-like sudden break. In formal writing, I would avoid using more than one or two pairs
of dashes per article. We prescribed Marevan, Emconcorboth low in priceand two expensive
antibiotics. A dash can be single: Her drug is inexpensivewarfarin.
An intermediate-length dash, the en-dash, is the width of an n, and often connects pairs or
ranges such as The calciumsodium combination or time such as the period MayJuly.
Note the three lengths: hyphen, n-dash, and m-dash.

Hyphens (-) link words, when several words stack up as pre-modifiers of a head word.
Carefully built, long-lasting, color-coordinated ward furniture has furniture as head word,
and shows that -ly itself serves as a hyphen. Never add a hyphen after any-ly adverb.
What a hyphen can do: Beer containing lemonade vs.beer-containing lemonade. Different?
Head words here are bolded; do you want one or two hyphens?
Every level of toxin neutralizing IgG antibodies in the X serum samples was / were high.
That disease causing mutation in . . . .

Note: Pre-modifying paired words need a hyphen only if they precede their head word.
A well-known method is well known takes one hyphen.
Or
Each was 3 ml. vs. 3-ml aliquots.
Note two hyphens in waist-to-hip ratio.
No hyphen in: Group x A comprised 111 mice; a hyphen in Group-A mice were thinner.
Guess my hyphenation rule for numbers above one: Six-yeaR-old boys arrivedvs. Boys
ten years old can act like six-yeaR-olds.
(Tip: Consider the plurals and singulars.)
A 6-meteR rod vs. a rod 6 meterS long,3-daY tests vs. tests lasting 3 dayS.
All these hyphens act like crutches for s-less plurals. Note that even with many toxins involved,
We still write a toxiN-detection test.
Remember the required anticipatory hyphens in 6- to 8-yeaR-old boys, and fire- and waterresistant fabric.
Notice the reverse position: drug-independent and -dependent patients.

58
The BMJ discourages most hyphen-use, but this 2009 quote in the European Medical Writers
journal The Write Stuff (vol. 18, no. 3, p. 177) originated in a BMJ office: You are being invited
to take part in a non-invasive and ionizing radiation free arteriovenous fistulae surveillance
study. Is the sole hyphen here even useful? Dont we desperately need two or three word-to-word
hyphens in this sentence? (Where? And can the hyphenated word instead become one word?)

Slashes (/), also called slant lines / diagonals / strokes / virgules), can mean per, and or or,
as in 10 mg/day, 11 meters/second. Avoid slashes for ratios; write X to Y or X:Y.

Avoid Many (231/536; 43%) died. Write Of 536, 231 (43%) died. Or (231 of 536).
No spaces go around slashes. My breaking this rule in this book is for better visibility!

Apostrophes () indicate the English genitive or indicate contractions.

Singular genitive: Smith's research, Joness ideas. Finlands health service.
Plural genitive: All the doctors pay, but childrens cups and Mens stress levels.
With joint ownership, use only one apostrophe: Stephen and Marias children.
Use no contractions (dont, couldnt, were, Ive, times up!) in medical articles and theses.
Use no apostrophes in plurals (The Smiths Smiths are coming), except for numbers and
symbols. MRIs, 5s, and UFOs are, however, evolving into MRIs, 5s, and UFOs.
Decades have grown shorter: the 1930ies the 1930s the 1930s the Thirties.
(Be sure to make clear in what century!)

Parentheses / Brackets (( )) always go inside final punctuation marks: ended (5).

Never place any punctuation in front of any parenthesis.
Never: Tests were thorough, (6) and they were also frequent.
Instead, Tests were thorough (6), and they were also frequent. (Note end-focus x 2.)

Brackets / Square brackets ( [ ] ) allow insertion of words into quotations to add data
or clarify, or with [sic], meaning thus, to point out errors:
The Winter War of 1949 [sic] occurred on the [Finnish] border.
Quotation marks ( / ) go around all borrowed words / phrases, and around words
themselves: Moi is also French in the USA; most Britons write Moi is also French.
Notice their single quotes outside, double inside. Order of punctuation also varies: For Britons, all
marks go outside if not part of the quotation. (Did he say Never? but They shouted Help!) In
the USA, commas and periods always go inside, and location of semicolons, colons, exclamation
marks, and question marks dependas with the Britishon sentence meaning.
(See Lynne Trusss best-selling and hilarious punctuation guide, Eats, Shoots and Leaves.)

59

Handling Numerals, Numbers, and Other Small Items

1.

Numbers: Check your target publication for its preferred style. Generally, write numbers
as words for items with no units (patients, treatments) up to 11. Use number figures
from one / 1, and thereafter for items with standard units (ml, mg, km).

2.

For numbers with unit symbols (kg, m, or C, or the percentage sign, %), if you write out a
number under 11, usually write out the unit, as well (6 kg, six kilograms).
Note British: six per cent, but USA: six percent. (But always per day, per week.)

3.

Avoid mixing words and numerals for the same item in the same sentence.
Of the 81 countries, only eight 8 sent athletes .
Two boys and 11 girls attended --> Of the 13 attending, 2 were boys, and 11, girls, with
a comma replacing the second "were." Or give only the larger number: ". . .13, 11, girls."

4.

Use ordinals up through ten (first . . . to tenth, then 11th. . . 160th, 161st, 163rd).

5.

Never add a space between number and percentage sign: 6%,never6 %.

Do insert a space before any amount: 3 mg; 10 K. One okay oddity is 120 mmHg.

6.

Use numerals for figures and tables and never add an article or a period / full stop.
Figure 3 is attached, not the Figure 3. is attached.
In the actual caption: Fig. 3. Costs for Health Care, 2000-2008 in Finland.
Some journals use Roman numerals (I, II, III) for article figures

7.

As dates, 14 May 1998 or 14/5/98 is generally preferable. I meet 14.05.98 only in

Finland. Internationally, this is recommended: 1998-05-14, but rare.
In the USA, nonscientists use May 2, 1998, which is confusing when abbreviated in US
style as 5/2/98, because this could mean either February 5 or May 2.

8.

Sentences never begin with numerals A short word (Six / Ten studies) is acceptable.
Otherwise, rearrange the sentence:
Start with the magic preposition Of. Change 32 of the 76 men attended
Of the 76 men, 32 attended.) Or link
related sentences with a semicolon :A few are gone; 158 are left. If desperate, write
A total of 21 men (I dislike Altogether) or The year 1939 saw the start of war.

9.

The decimal in Anglo-US texts is a point (5.75). This point may be raised in some British
texts (5.75). Other European countries, like Finland, accept the comma (5,75).

10. Zero before decimal point: A zero here is easier to see (0.21), although some journals use
no zero here in text / figures. Or they drop zero only in P-valuesbeing always less than 1.
11. A decimal rule: Show values under 0.01 to only two decimal places. From 0.01 to 0.001
show values to only three decimal places.

60
12.

Large numbers: Group your digits into trios (12 345 000), with spaces and no periods.
Or, in the older style, insert commas (12,345,000) between trios.
We usually insert no space into four figures, unless they appear in a column or are in
comparison with larger figures: We sent 1511. But We sent 1 511, not 15 110.
Can your 1999 be mistaken for a year? Do we know whether the 1999 cows
were that many, were in that years project, or were born then?

13.

P-values: Gustavii says that because P > 0.05 means unpublishable, give exact P-values
(P = rather than P< ) for values above 0.001, using P < only for 0.001 or less.
Check each journals preference for the symbol P / p or P / p and for spacing inserted.

14.

We have no plural word for percent, never percents; use percentages,

Usually days, weeks, and months should be written out as words.

15.

Ratios can be written as 10:1, to mean per or 10 to 1. We can separate items as per with
a slant line or slash, as in cases/year, but some advise never placing more than one slash
in a series (not cases/year/country, but cases/year per country). (See under Slash).
In text, though maybe not in tables, 6/18 may confuse; write 6 of 18.

16.

Cite sources according to target-journal style. Check how the journal, in Vancouver
style, spaces citation numbers either on the line or as superscripts (6, 8-11 or 6,8-11).
In Harvard style, check for comma (Aho, 1999) or no comma (Aho 1999).

17.

Superscript figures go outside the punctuation in US style: . . . ended.6,8,9

The British (not the BMJ) often use the reverse order: . . . ended7,11,14,16,21,28.

18.

For readability, some prefer spaces around =, -, +, , < , >, and P. Check journal.

19.

Always state (vital for credibility) the total number of items in your data, N, then n for
subgroups. Put any % into parentheses:
The 63 (17%) who died To write merely 17% died would mean little.
Was that 17% of 10, of 100, or of 1000?

20.

Remember: The shorter item goes into parentheses. Never separate a percentage from
its figure: not 45 of the 60 (75%) died. Change to Of the 60, 45 (75%) died.

21.

Prepositions before numbers require and or prepositions between figures:

Between two and ten men"; "from 16 to 18 days . . . .

In text, I prefer aged 40 to 50, but you can omit to in parentheses or in tables / figures.
Men were older (40-50). Or in a table, Men, 21-65.
I can live with Patients enrolled (in) 2000-2010 were older, but only with in or nothing.

61
22.

Gustavii suggests that for numbers under 25, offer no percentages at all.
At 25 to 100, no decimal (7%)
At 100 to 100 000, one decimal place (7.2%).
Above that, two places (7.21%).
Hall (1998) feels that for numbers under 100, percentages are never relevant.

23.

For numerals or words and their units of measure, hyphenate: a 6-ml sample
or six-part sessions. A confusing 4 4-mg doses is clarified as four 4-mg doses.
Use a singular verb for a quantity considered one unit: 3 ml was best.

24.

Avoid French lines ( ) for items in a list or to indicate speech; non-Finns may be
confused. In lists, use numbers (1, 2, 3), letters (A, B, C), or black ballsbullets ().
Quoted oral or written words in English take quotation marks: Help! or Help!

25.

Suppliers of materials: Use the manufacturers name and address at first mention, then
only the name. Include company, then city + country, or city + state + country or city +
province + country.
Examples: (Smart System Oy, Turku, Finland), then only (Smart System).
(Sigma Chemicals, Inc., St. Louis, MO, USA), then only (Sigma).

But omit USA in articles for US journals.

26.

Now banned as unclear: Pain and/or fatigue. Write Pain or fatigue or both.

27.

Strongly discouraged: respectively. Now avoid Levels in the heart, brain, and liver
were 11, 21, and 28%, respectively or . . . were a respective 11%, 21%, and 28%.
Instead, write a version two or three words longer, but far easier to read.
Note how the number of words per item decreaseshere, from five to four to three.
The level in the heart was 11%, in the brain, 21%, and the liver, 28% .
But if you must use several sets of the same pattern A, B, and C were 1, 2, and 3,
use respective / respectively only oncefor the first set. Readers grasp the pattern!

28.

Remember: Italics for book and journal titles; quotation marks are for titles of shorter
works, meaning articles, chapters, sections, stories, plays, poems.
Italics also, always, indicate Latin genera and species: Helicobacter pylorus.

29.

Italics are, however, expensive and difficult to use consistently. If you use any, you must
use them for all Latin terms and all foreign words: i.e. / e.g. / et al. / in vivo /
laissez-faire (see page 42). Check whether your target-journal uses any italics.

62
30.

Latin abbreviations: Finns, I notice, use i.e. (id est; that is; Finnish eli) well:
Our leader, i.e., the director of the study, arrived early.
Finns greatly overuse e.g. (exempli gratia; for example / for instance; Finnish esim),
It is correct only for an example following the name of the group it belongs to.
Large countries, e.g., France and Germany

Commas normally go before, often after e.g. and i.e., just as in X, for example, won.
Never, therefore, begin a sentence with e.g. (E.g., malaria was common).
Nor begin a citation with e.g.(e.g., Smith 2005).
Substitute for example / for instance / such as . Or
create an OPEN SERIES: Symptoms of concussion (headache, nausea, dizziness)
may occur. The absence of and or or shows that these do not make up 100%.
31.

Etcetera / etc. (jne.) is too informal for articles or theses. End with among others?

32.

Avoid sexism. Instead of Everyone took his dose (or the ungrammatical Everyone took
their dose) or took his / her dose, try the plural: All took their doses.
Avoid the genitive entirely? Everyone took the required dose. Each took the dose.
Rather than found in Man / man, write found in human beings.
Female is fine as an ADJECTIVE. Avoid it as a NOUN. Female patients is fine,
but if over age 17, females are women. The same goes for males vs. male subjects.
And if more than genitals or hormone status is relevant, use gender, not sex.

33.

Avoid long noun clusters as pre-modifiers.

The American Thoracic Society Publications says that because the goal is clarity, not
brevity, instead of cultured sheep pulmonary artery endothelial cells,
write cultures of endothelial cells from the pulmonary artery of sheep .

34.

Comparisons with times than / times as:

Assuming that patients recovery-time was 6 days; then notice what you are saying:
A. Controls took three times longer to recover= Controls took 24 days.
(Patients recovery time is the bottom book. You added 3 times that value.)

B. Controls took three times as long to recover.= Controls took 18 days.

With times, always use . . . as.

I recommend fold, to go both up and down. A five-fold increase began.

63

Take-home messages
Avoid
synonyms.

Every event
comes in
chronological
order.

Ask a research
question and
answer it.
Avoid long
sentences.

Write junk and

edit it gradually.

Every wasted
word goes out.

Follow every journal's

instructions EXACTLY.

Ask a friend to
read your texts.

Read your lines

aloud.

Avoid
identical lines
in one text.

Trust this book

more than
computer
grammarcheckers.

Never translate
into English.

Trust your
ear,
not rules.

Use mainly
active voice.

Use of we
no longer illegal.

End sentences
with vital words.

Link all sentences

in a paragraph.

Spell as journals prefer US OR UK style, never a mixture.

64

Sample Professional Cover Letter

Be careful. Avoid begging, boasting, or pressuring the editor.

Keep cover letters brief and cool, because journals need manuscripts.
On-line submission may, however, require no cover letter.

Dear Dr. Shaw, NOT Dear Dr. James Shaw.

(We like our names, but give only family name, sukunimi, here, unless gender
is unclear (Kim, Lee). No Ms Jane Shaw.(If unsure of degree, use Dr.)
Thank You for Your kind aid should be Thank you for your kind aid .
Never capitalize you / your unless you write to God!
Please find enclosed a manuscript entitled X in Y, reporting my / our / research into Y,
for consideration by Nature. Its findings indicate that A may be a cause of B.
(Your title goes in quotation marks; a journal title deserves honor = italics.)
The words publish or for publication in seem to me too intimate and too
obvious. The editor can certainly guess what you are seeking!
The material presented is based on the original research of the author[s] and is not
being offered for publication elsewhere. This is the third of five articles based on the
same series and methods; I enclose copies of the others, one already published, one in
manuscript.

Correspondence regarding this article should be directed to NN. [Perhaps adding] We /

I look forward to your reply / We look forward to your / We await your response.

(And pregnant women are expectant, not waiting.)

We are waiting for X is rude. Remember, never confuse wait with expect!
Always add the journal's own disclaimers, lines in lawyers precise language, usually
provided in the journals Instructions to Authors. Copy them exactly. Some may be:
All authors contributed substantially to this work.
This manuscript is not submitted elsewhere.
It duplicates no portions of other texts by the author(s). (If it does,
be sure to enclose reprints or manuscripts of those texts.)
No financial support was received from anyone benefiting from these
results.(Meaning no conflict of interest).
This project followed accepted humane and ethical practices.
Which ones? From which (Helsinki, of course!!) declaration?

Journals also usually advise that you list all financial sources on the title page.

65
Enclose manuscript copies of all unpublished sources that you cite.
Enclose permission letters for material you reprint, such as figures or tables.
See PhD thesis pages, 32 to 33, 39. and plagiarism and permissions, pages 71 to 73.

Describe any revision / author-editing by a native

English-speaker, in order to neutralize any prejudice
against your English that your
foreign name and address may inspire.

News flash:
Some important journals like the BMJ now require the author of a submitted article to reveal
whether this article has already been rejected by another journal. The recipient editor may
demand to read the comments made by the reviewers / referees of the rejecting journal(s), and also
to read the responses of the author(s).
This requirement may discourage many from submitting to these major journals and may make
them submit their work first to the most prestigious journal that would conceivably accept it.
This requirement aids the journal. It saves time and funds. But this rule prevents you, upon a second
or third submission, from concealing the fact that your manuscript has already been rejected.
Warning: Never risk disobeying this rule!
Therefore, submit initially to the highest-quality journal that might accept your work.
One of my students, facing this rule, created an excellent statement to the editor who next received
his manuscriptat the BMJ:
The work was originally offered to the NEJM. After respectful and positive comments from two
external reviewers, this work was rejected due to editorial policies, however. We have attached to
this submission the letter from that editor and the reviewers comments, have revised our
manuscript significantly now, and we sincerely hope that you appreciate the value of this study.
(If you borrow this, alter it considerably if you, too, send it to the BMJ!)

66

Second-Submission Cover Letter after Review

Sample lines useful for the body of this letter
Thank you for considering / taking into consideration our paper / article, entitled X in Y.
The reviewers / referees suggestions will much improve our text / article / presentation.
We have made [ Add: to the best of our ability?] all of the revisions suggested, and these are
explained point by point in / on the following pages / in the accompanying file.

You can also compliment the reviewers / referees by calling them helpful / wise / thorough,
But never direct your comments to the reviewers; your response goes to the editors desk.
If a reviewer criticizes your English, you must seek native-speaker language aid (again?!).
Repeat what you said in any revised first submission, writing something like this:
This version has been revised by a native English speaker . . . .
(Give the name? Add, if true, . . . trained / experienced in the field of [say what].)

As well as revision of the re-submitted manuscript, have an expert revise your crucialand very
respectfulresponses to the referees.
End the letter with something like We hope that you will find this version more acceptable.
See the Handling Reviewers section, 69 and 70.

Layout and Lines for Formal Letters on Paper

On stationery with a pre-printed letterhead (logopaperi), appearing at top center in the design
below, center the date just below the letterhead.
Otherwise, type your own 2- to 3-line address in the upper right corner, then the date below it.
Your address may even sit at the left margin, if every line of the letter begins at the left.
Phone and fax numbers and email address go below your name at the bottom, not at the top.
The recipients address is a list at the left margin, with locations stacked as shown here:
Professor Joan White, Editor
The Journal of Applied Cleverness
Department of Brains
University of South Cerebrum
1600 Pons Lane
Bedford, XY3 LM7, UK

More lines to borrow

Dr. Mark Phoey, Director

Department of Biogenetics
Super Genes Company
1616 23rd Street N.E.
Oleander, Florida, 26731
USA

67
Because I am interested in participating in the X Conference held 12 to 15 August in Vienna,
I am requesting an application form and data concerning submitting an abstract for a poster / talk.
Please send the relevant information at Your your earliest convenience
[Never say Send it soon] to the address above / below.
I would like to apply for a position at the X laboratory. ( This means a job.)
Would it be possible for me to obtain a sample of Y / advice on Z / information
on accommodation(s)?

Accommodation(s)2 cs + 2 ms, means a place to stay.

Room & board means bed & food.
I am planning to visit Rome this summer. Because my current research project is in
many respects similar to Yours yours, I would find it extremely rewarding to visit your
institute to consult with You you.

As underlined above, compare yourself (up) to expertsnever experts (down) to you:

Ahos 2007 findings agree with ours. Our findings agree with those of Aho (2007).
Excuse my late submission of this abstract; I have been ill.
Belatedly [= I am late], I send payment for X / send reimbursement [pay-back]
of your expenses.
I trust that the check enclosed / amount enclosed is sufficient /funds are proper.
(We avoid saying or writing MONEY.Alternatives: funding / support / expense(s) / grant.)
Please accept our sincere regrets for our inability to attend X / do X.
We send our heartfelt sympathy for your loss/ our hearts go out to you (death).
Thank you for your time / effort / concern / interest / support / aid.
Thanking you in advance (for your kindness in doing / sending X).

Never call yourself kindly, as in I kindly send you Compliment the other person.
Will you kindly aid us?Dr. Stephens kindly provided the cells.
Sincerely yours, / Sincerely, / Yours, / With best regards. (Only first word capitalized.)

Repeat nothing here that is in the letterhead (logopaperi). Below this complimentary close go
Your signature(s)
your typed name, title, department, work-place and address
phone, fax, email address

68

Email Suggestions
Choose a subject line that clearly informs the recipient of the topic. Vast numbers of emails are
in self-defensedeleted unread. Yours is not spam, so make sure your message is identifiable.
Reading long sentences on screen is almost as difficult as understanding long sentences in an oral
presentation. Keep sentences shortand simpler than in a letter on paper.
Use active voice.
Email is less formal than posted letters, Though I often omit a greeting, Kate Kellaway of The
Observer in England has recommended this practice. British people are polite. A compromisein
Finlandmay be just a simple Hi! But for editors, Dear Dr. Brown, . . . .
Unless your email is going to a total stranger or to someone you greatly respect, use a style close to
that of first-draft writing, meaning almost spoken English. Kellaway describes email as
Like writing on water; email style is halfway between written and telephone language
Elegant phrases (I await your answer, at your earliest convenience, pardon my belated
submission) seem inappropriate in email. Contractions (I'll, don't, couldn't) seem fine.
As to font, avoid showing emphasis by CAPITAL LETTERS. This looks like SHOUTING.
using all lower case, however, fails to show how humble you are or i am!
Reserve pictograms like ;- ) for close friends. End with a brief closing such as Regards, your
name, and contact data.
Re-read your message carefully before sending it. If you are angry or upset, cool down before
striking the Send key.
Double-check before you copy or forward anything. Some copying and forwarding requires
permission.
Beware! Email can go to the wrong person. Criticism of a boss may go to your boss.
Some employers monitor email. And now that we have national governments reading emails, it
seems quite old-fashioned and nave to say avoid writing in email anything you would not write
on a picture postcard.
.

As to faxing, much email advice also applies:

Probably omit any greeting, stay informal, choose active voice.
Provide fax-contact information. Give your fax number, which may be missing from the top edges
of the pages or may be illegible.
In addition, on the cover page put the date, including year, the recipients fax number, and the
number of pages sent. (Say whether this includes the cover page.)

69

Handling Reviewers / Referees and Editors

Before its submission, three people should read your manuscript (ms): one naive person who
does not know your field, one who is your scientific equal (peer), and one expert.
All co-authors should examine the ms carefully and sign the cover letter and all disclaimers. Never
rush to submit.
After submission, your manuscript surely will come back with criticism from the editor and from
reviewers / referees. Almost never is any manuscript accepted without changes.
Resist any rage or despair; have faith and say to yourself: We are all on the same team.
In 99% of all cases, everyone at / with the journal is struggling to improve your manuscript.

The most valuable thing you can receive is fair and honest criticism.
Invite such criticism, welcome it, utilize it. Karl Popper, philosopher of science

If after a rejection you submit elsewhere, follow the next target journals instructions equally
carefully. As Hall says, It is a grave [as in burying yourself alive] mistake to submit a paper in
the style of another journal; this suggests that it has been rejected recently. (But see p. 65.)
Rarely will reviewers ask you to cite their own or the journals articles just to enhance their
reputations or raise that journals impact factor. Even more rarely will a reviewer hold an ms. for
an extraordinarily long time, orhorrible to contemplatewill steal data from it.
All authors experience shock and shame over criticism. Non-native English-speakers must also
decipher referees language. Often even native English-speaker referees / reviewers make grammar
(between you and I) and spelling errors (Febuary, libary). Your overburdened, unpaid
reviewer may be writing the report at three oclock in the morning after a day of surgery.
Reply directly to the editor and quote each criticism in full or almost completely.
Don't expect an editor to search through papers or net files for reviewers comments in order to
understand your responses to each of the comments.
Never attack a reviewer! Take all blame upon yourself. Always be polite to the editor and polite
regarding your reviewers. (On the same team, remember?) Use correct, formal English.
Obey, or fully explain why you cannot:
Procedure X is not an option / not according to general policy, here.
I must have been unclear: Because we used no X, we can provide no photo of X.

Reviewers often disagree. Politely explain to the editor why you prefer one opinion to the other.
Explain why a reviewers request is unclear to you.
The editor may then send your manuscript to an extra reviewer. Uninformed, prejudiced, or
careless reviewers may receive no more manuscripts (mms.) to review.

70
Sample phrases to use: As advised / suggested / pointed out, I have reworded / added /
deleted / corrected X. Altered lines are highlighted / italicized in the text itself.
(Avoid underlining / underscoring unless upon editor's demand, to avoid hiding punctuation.)
A common journal instruction is to write fullyinside your responsesall added lines.
And also highlight these new lines in the text. And make them match identically.
Again, I stress: A native English-speaker should also edit, if possible, each revised
manuscript and edit replies to reviewers and editorial correspondence such as cover letters.
Only for extreme reviewer error would one dare say, Perhaps this is not his special subject.
Famous authors can argue; young authors must be cautious.
Perhaps your choice of journal was unwise?
If the silence is very long, write a brief note asking whether the manuscript arrived.
If the editor confirms its receipt, be very careful. Wait six months? Ask your professor for advice,
or someone who knows or is in contact with the editor?

Pay close attention if a journal invites you to suggest one or more referees.
Evidence indicates that journal editors tend to choose at least one of the referees suggested.
For anyone you suggest, be sure to provide full contact information.
Editors may invite you to name any individual undesirable as a referee of your work.
In this case, politely explain why that person is inappropriate.
Journals tend to honor authors requests to avoid a certain person as a referee, less often to use
a suggested reviewer. Fraud increases, with fake reviewers--including even the AUTHOR.

Words to the Wise

Nature (2013;497;433-434) published CG Begleys Six red flags for suspect work. As
summarized in European Science Editing (2013;39,3:82) by Anna Maria Rossi, these are
Were experiments performed blinded?
Were basic experiments repeated?
Were all the results presented?
Were there positive and negative controls?
Were reagents validated?
Were statistical tests appropriate?
Ask these questions of your papers. And add, Are all lines my own, if not in quotation marks?

71

Permissions and notification

Before you reprintexactly, or as an adapted / modified table or a figure, or a major portion
of onein your own publication, you must request and receive the publishers permission. You
must print in your article or thesis, below the borrowed material, the exact line that the
publisher supplies, such as Used with the permission of Journal X. (See the thesis section for
more on this.)
Cutting very thin the data from one project to produce a maximum number of articles is called
redundant, prior, or fragmented publication. This salami publishing means that articles
resemble very thinlytoo thinlysliced meat cut from a large chunk. Students and even professorcandidates may salami publish to earn degrees or to pad (fatten) their c.vs.
To avoid this, one author sent to her editor a list of all published articles presenting data from her
groups single large project. This showed that her own paper was freshhad minimal overlap.
Journals usually now require that each article submitted be accompanied by reprints or the
manuscripts of any of your other articles that overlap with that one, especially texts with data
based on material, methodology, or controls identical to those of your current submission.
The journal Radiology defines redundant publication as one or more authors in common for a
work which also has populations, methods, and results the same or similar. A report is redundant if
already published in another language; ask permission for its publication in English.
Possible redundancy requires an accompanying letter informing the editor of any potential
overlap with other already published material or material being otherwise evaluated for publication
. . . also . . . [stating] how the manuscript . . . differs substantially from this other material. The
provision of copies of such material is required. (Emphasis mine.)
The British Journal of Surgery net instructions similarly explain: Please submit with your
manuscript copies of any other papers (including abstracts)published, in press, or submitted
to consideration elsewherethat relate in whole or in part to the same data set; this is essential
to allow [our] assessment of any potential overlap. (Emphasis mine.)
Every journal wants fresh, unique data only. Receiving redundant (repeated) data, some journals
threaten not only to reject the manuscript but also to inform your institution. If you fool the
journal into printing your redundant data, the editor may announce your sin in their next issue and
refuse to consider future articles of yours or even of your group or institute. This blacklisting is
serious censure. Ensure, therefore, that each manuscript is fresh and worthwhile on its own.
Another crime usually leading to blacklisting is multiple submissionsubmitting the same
article to more than one publication simultaneously. Because much effort and cost go into
assessing an article, no author can survive withdrawal of a submittedor even accepted!ms.
Cancer Cell: If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included in your manuscript, you
must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the sources in the article. .
. . . If you have adapted a figure from a published figure, please check with the copyright owners
to see if permission is required and include a complete citation/reference for the original article.
Obtaining permissions can take up to several weeks. . . lack of appropriate permissions can
delay publication. (Emphasis mine.) Editors hate all this!

72

Plagiarism
Customs vary, but in Anglo-American cultures, using other scholars exact published lines
even with citations but with no quotation marksis stealing. The term is plagiarism.
The style of a text must not bounce back and forth between the authors own writing level and
splendid Oxbridge language. That screams Plagiarism!
Although we all describe the views and findings of others, merely citing the source (Smith
1995), gives you no right to present Smiths lines as if they are of your own creation.
The original author struggled to create those lines and must not meet them in your pages,
masquerading as yours. To quote a few lines (between quotation marks, ) and with a citation is,
however, sophisticated practice and is a compliment to the author.
You no longer own published lines that you yourself have written, if the publisher holds the
copyright. Editors thus generally consider self-plagiarism as illegalagainst copyright law.
Stuart Handysides, MD, of the European Assoc. of Science Editors (EASE) says Elsewhere
[than in Methods] simple cutting and pasting from earlier work might suggest that the writers have
stopped thinking about their subject, as the new data should be the prime focus of the
discussion and change the context at least somewhat. If not, what was the work for?
The most frequent plagiarizers are non-native English speakers writing in English.
Paraphrasing (putting ideas in your words) is truly difficult, even for native speakers.
Beware plagiarismincluding self-plagiarismin a thesis ; e-theses travel worldwide. The
Helsinki medical faculty now forbids use of your own lines, tables, or figures in theses.

Place quotation marks around all borrowed phrases or lines (quoting).

Close the book and put the facts into your own words (paraphrasing).
Give source and write says/states/reports, then quote a bit without .
This might, for instance, be a vital, difficult definition of some object or process.

This anonymous news item is adapted slightly from Nature, number 422, 13 March, 2003.
Emphysema is a lung disease that is predicted to become one of the top five
causes of death and disability worldwide by 2020. Cigarette smoking is the
greatest risk factor for this disease. Despite this correlation, however, only
about 15 to 20% of cigarette smokers develop emphysema. The fact that these
susceptible individuals are generally clustered into families hints that there
may be certain genes that predispose people to smoking-induced emphysema.

Unlike asthma, in which the flow of air through the lungs is temporarily
obstructed, emphysema is characterized by a progressive airflow restriction
that results from permanent enlargement of the lungs peripheral air spaces
and loss of lung elasticity.

73

Exercise in Plagiarism Hunting

I have attributed this anonymous news story to an author with the invented name Thoraksman.
These five passages make use of the Nature news item on page 72. Where is plagiarism, and where
are the data presented well? Fix the illegal passages so that they will become legal.
1.

Our patient was diagnosed with emphysema, a progressive airflow restriction

that results from permanent enlargement of the lungs peripheral air spaces
and loss of lung elasticity (Thoraksman2003).

2.

Thoraksman in 2003 considered rather low the 15 to 20% incidence rate for
emphysema among cigarette smokers. He warns, however, that emphysema
may, by 2020, become one major worldwide cause of disability and death.

3. The figure of 15-20% for the incidence of emphysema among cigarette

smokers seems low to Thoraksman (2003), who continues: there may be
certain genes [perhaps the X gene?] that predispose people to smoking-induced
emphysema (Thoraksman 2003).
4. Concerning cigarette smokers with emphysema, the fact that these susceptible
individuals are generally clustered into families suggests that there may be
certain genes that predispose folks to smoking-induced emphysema
(Thoraksman 2003).
5. Although pulmonary emphysema, as we read in Nature, may become one of the
top five causes of death and disability worldwide by 2020 (Thoraksman 2003),
not everyone believes that heavy cigarette smoking offers a serious risk for
emphysema.

If your director, or language revisers aid you in writing up your work and know that you will
submit their phrases or lines under your own name, this is ethical. Lines they write with or for
you are unpublished. But another person's writing your entire paper is unethical ghostwriting.
Plagiarism can no longer escape detection. Programs now allow reviewers and editors to check
whether your words are actually yours. These sites search billions of documents in minutes,
highlighting matching passages. More and more journals now run every manuscript submitted
through a plagiarism checker. Check your own manuscript before submission?
Medics are not alone in their sins. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers says that
plagiarism in its journals soared from 14 cases in 2004 to 26 in 2005, and in 2006 to 47, thus,
annually doubling. The IEEE initiated a tutorial for author-education and crime prevention!

74

Impact Factors
In The European Association of Science Editors (EASE) Science Editors Handbook section
Journal impact factor, Jane Moody, in November 2005, discussed impact factors, developed by
the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in the 1960s. The impact factor (IF) of a journal is
calculated by dividing the number of citations in a year by the articles (source items) published in
that journal during the previous two years. Some of the problems that Moody notes:

Multiple authors all citing their own articles will affect the impact factor.

Impact factor differences are not credible unless differences reach about 22%.

Frequent citation may occur because of negative responses to an article, and criticism of it,
because it is simply quantity that is being measured, not quality.

Review articles are often cited; therefore, the more review articles a journal publishes, the
higher its impact factor. (See page 19, bottom.)

The earlier in the year something is published, the longer the time it receives citations.

Artificial manipulation of the impact factor can be unethical according to the Committee on
Publication Ethics (COPE), at www.publicationethics.org.uk , an organization established to
provide aid regarding authors and editors ethics questions and problems.
For example, one editor arranged for that journals own referees to insert citations of that
journals articles into submitted papers. Authors were afraid to refuse. The COPE declared that this
manipulation had been wicked practice [an extremely strong term], and the editor was
reprimanded [severely scolded]. In other cases, editors have agreed to cite each others journals,
gaming the system to raise IF. Mention this to senior staff who still consider IF to be holy & sacred.
Universities or employers who hire, rate, pay, and fund authors based on IF, they are being nave.
The journal earnshonestly or otherwiseits IF.
As Bjrn Gustavii states, The impact factor ranks journals; it does not evaluate individual papers.
regardless of journal. Other ranking systems exist. Look for them.

---------------------------------Update, 2014
European Association of Science Editors (EASE) members have been debating issues around
impact factors, including their manipulation and their over-use in academic hiring- and promotion
decisions. Impact factors ratemore or less accuratelythe status of a journal, but not of one
particular paper in that journal. Many papers are accepted and even praised in the media, despite
errors that reviewers miss, and even despite fraudulent practices. They may attract citations, making
a journals impact factor misleading.
One hoax recently demonstrated that a totally imaginary project and its resultant fake report could
fool experienced reviewers and fool a good journal into publishing it.
When academic crime-rates rise, academics must fight back. Honest Finns, beware!

75

Valuable Resources, in order of relevance

Gustavii Bjrn. 2008. How to Write and Illustrate a Scientific Paper.2nd ed.Cambridge, New York:
Cambridge University Press, CUP.
Gustavii, Bjrn, 2012. How to Prepare a Scientific Doctoral Dissertation Based on Research
Articles. CUP
(Gustavii, a physician/journal editor/professor at Lund. University, Sweden, is clear,
witty, brief, and especially excellent on tables and figures).
Goodman Neville and Edwards Martin, 1999. Medical Writing: a Prescription for Clarity.
Cambridge: CUP. (Doctor-authors battle passive voice, pomposity, misuse of words)
Perttunen J. M. 2000. The Words Between. 4th ed. Helsinki: Medical Society Duodecim.
(For Finns in biology/medicine, much about Finnish) Out of print; seek it in a library.
O'Connor Maeve. 1999. Writing Successfully in Science.London: Chapman and Hall.
(Former Bulletin editor for the European Association of Science Editors)
Hall George M, ed. 1998. How to Write a Paper, 2nd ed. London: BMJ Books (by doctors)
Day Robert A and Gastel Barbara. 2006 How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper.6th ed.
Cambridge, CUP. (Or any Robert Day edition; thorough, famous, and humorous)

Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (the Vancouver

Document) is at <http://www.icmje.org/index.html
The Cobuild Dictionary (for learners), any edition (Large, cheap, essential for natives and nonnatives, with idioms, verb + preposition pairs, US versus British usage. Explanations are simple;
actual examples are numerous and authentic). Check for what is on the net and on CD-ROM.
Suomi/Englanti/Suomi Sanakirja,Ilkka Rekiaro and Douglas Robinson, Gummerus,
Jyvskyl/Helsinki
(Brit + US; modern, idiomatic)
The Collins Thesaurus in A-Z Form, 1990, Collins, UK.
Useful addresses :
http://www.helsinki.fi/kksc/language.services/AcadWrit.pdf This book, updated annually
www.ease.org.uk/esecont.htm

Assoc. of European Science Editors (EASE) journal

www.wordiq.com/definition/American and British English differences

US-British styleswriting & pronunciation
www.howjsay.com Includes medical terms galore in UK and US pronunciation

76

Appendices with Exercises*

Appendix I Find more than 60 problems here (many from Finnish interference).
1. 35 females and 11 men of age over 90 years old were studied. It was shown by this study,
that elderly can, despite of their old age, get improvements by participating a weight
training program, etc.

2. Based on one criteria, informations indicate their equipments are the finest ones.

3. The aims include e.g.: 1) to control the patients for 1 year, 2) discovering noncompliance, 3) a search for ways to monitor patients compliance with doctors orders.

4. In 1994, in a survey in X province it was reported that the prevalence of diabetes was 3
% in the 30-60 years old age group (See the Table 7.). The prevalence rose up to 6 %
in the age 30-60 population in 1997, as shown by the present study.

5. Eighty-seven per cent (131/150) of the patients, who had lymphoma diagnosed
improved with this treatment after a period of sixteen weeks had past. The majority of
them was male.

6. Also Ahos 2007 results are more impressive compared to Bixs findings (Bix 2001).
Bixs results are different to/than our study.
7. Her income was 70.000 at a tax-rate of 48,5 % a rate she wieved as far too high.
8. On other hand, these two series contain remarkably interesting phenomenon, but on
other hand resemble those of Smith, et al.s whose so-called QRX series was published
in 2009.
9. John Jones discusses about this data shortly in her third articles' result's chapter.

10. Other article soon will appear in the "Nature," It is now in print.

11. However, during the recession as much as every ninth nurse was remaining
unemployed; studied hospital districts comprised of Helsinki, Lahti and Tampere.
* Those living outside Finland can receive answer keys to these exercises from [email protected]

77

Appendix II Introduction exercise

First, glance through Recipe for an Introduction.
Below is an excellent Introduction from a good journal. I split sentences and rearranged clauses to
give you practice in recognizing good introduction organization. Consider this a rough draft that
you might write, pouring your thoughts onto page or screen. Locate in it, in pieces, the actual four
Swales Introduction moves (page 26). Improve some end-focus? Where did citations appear?

1. In the mechanism underlying the association between increased body weight

2. and OA, mechanical loading across joints is probably involved. However,
3. evidence is inconsistent from cross-sectional surveys for a link between
4. obesity and hand osteoarthritis (OA). In the longitudinal Tecumseh
5. Community Health Study, adult obesity associated with incident hand OA
6. in men and women ages 50-74 years was suggested. Therefore, the
7. relationship between birth weight, childhood growth, adult weight and hand
8. OA should be examined. Obesity is the strongest risk factor for knee
9. osteoarthritis (OA), and the relationship is not known between OA and body
10. weight in early life. Prospectively collected data from a large population11. based birth cohort was used to explore this issue in our study. However, the
12. force across hand joints is not necessarily greater in persons who are
13. overweight, and metabolic factors associated with obesity have been
14. implicated; some of these factors, e.g. impaired glucose tolerance, are also
15. linked to low weight at birth.
Modified for teaching from Weight from Birth to 53 Years: A Longitudinal Study of the Influence
on Clinical Hand Osteoarthritis, A. Aihie Sayer, et al., Arthritis & Rheumatism, Vol. 48, No. 4,
April 2003, p.1030.

78

Appendix III Editing exercises

1. For this exercise from Gustavii, 2005 (adapted from Kelsing, 1958), shrink these four sentences,
making their 53 words into one short sentence. Omit no vital information.
Our research, designed to test the fatal effects of PGF on dogs, was carried out by
intravenously introducing the drug. In the experiments, a relatively small quantity,
30 mg, was administered to each animal. In each case, PGF proved fatal. All 10
dogs expired before a lapse of 5 minutes after the injection.

2. It is shown in this randomized double blind case control study that intravenous X
has no renal protective effects in patients operated for coronary heart disease .
(Find the vital what. Move the who, when, & where to precede the end-focused what.)

3. Discuss these three okay variants. Note differing end-focus. What would follow?

For disease Z, X may become the treatment of choice, because X is well

tested and causes few side-effects. (continue)

Drug X, because it is well tested and has few side-effects, may become the
treatment of choice for disease Z. (continue)

For disease Z, drug X, well tested and with few side-effects, may become the
treatment of choice. (continue)

4. This kind of Results paragraph appears too often. The English is fine, but is it clear? Can one
present all these data instead in a figure? Attempt one? Write a citation for the figure.
To study these Vantaa residents over age 85 in 1991, we recruited 601
individuals. Examinations were clinical and covered 92% of them, of whom
61% were non-demented. Before being examined, however, 36 died. Those
refusing the examination numbered 11, and one could not be contacted. The
demented and non-demented became two groups. Of the 203 demented
individuals who died by 2001, 60% had an autopsy. Of the non-demented
61%, one moved away. Of the other 337, 231 remained non-demented. The
others showed incident dementia. Of the former, 211 died by 2001, and of the
latter, 92. Autopsies for these groups numbered 99 (47%) and 60 (65%),
respectively. The overall total of autopsies for the 506 who died by 2001 was
281 (51%). The results shown by the autopsies were the following: cortical
Lewy bodies in 42, severe amyloid pathology in 178, severe NFT pathology in
128, and both of the latter in 110.

79

Appendix IV

Passive to active in Methods

Improve this Methods section by changing its 15 passive-voice verbs active.

Cut its length in half! Remember the vital exclusions.
Do you also have the skill to avoid manyor any?we pronouns?
A retrospective review of all breast cancer patients treated for local
recurrence in our hospital was performed. Cases with other cancers present
or unknown primary were excluded. The information was gathered from
the patient database of the Department of XXX, Turku University Central
Hospital (TUCH), consisting of 5859 breast cancer patients. All the patient
records in the database were reviewed, and those patients with local
recurrence of breast cancer were selected to be included in this study. A
total of 506 patients were found. They had been treated between 2005 and
2009 for local recurrence in the excision scar or for in-transit metastasis.
Factors predicting outcome after local recurrence were analyzed. Patient
records were analyzed for patient, tumor, and treatment characteristics.
Details on tumor characteristics were obtained from pathology reports, and
all pathology reports were re-examined by a specialist in pathology to
obtain all information on the primary tumor. Surgical and radiological
reports were analyzed for follow-up data on patterns and timing of local
recurrence. Furthermore, possible development of lymph node or distant
metastases was recorded. The ABCD staging system from 2003 was used for
grouping patients according to their stage of the primary disease.
(15 passive verbs in 195 words)

80

AppendixV

Proofreading exercise and course review

This sample lacks any authenticity, so ignore the medical data. The grammar is fairly acceptable.
Here, repair the extremely common style errors overlooked by most young Finnish authors.
This imaginary author has also obviously failed totally in obeying target-journal style.

139 men and 125 females were in the study. The XYZ procedure was performed in

44.7% (118/264) cases. 1/3rd (90/264) of these cases were under 60-years-old, and 66%

(174/264) were over the age of 60-years and under 80 years in age. Their disease was

considered acute in 62,5 % (165/264) and chronic in 31,4% (83/264). In statistical

analysis, PLI was associated with poor prognosis (p=0.002). In addition, tumor stage

(p<0.0001), prevalence of GHI (p < 0.0001), distant metastasis (P<.001), tumor size

(P<0.0001), tumour site (p = 0.0001), patient age (P = 0.004) and noncurative operation

(p < 0.0001) were associated with poor prognosis. Consensus between two oncologists,

HIV and IMR, determined which patients were candidates for experimental drug LPE.

10

LPE treatment was organized by the county hospital district where the ethical

11

committee gave consent to the study procedures because they were the golden standard

12

of care.

81

Appendix VI

Table exercise

First, in the article Results section in which this table would appear, suppose that readers
meet these lines:
Table 1 shows the responses found in mice in haemoglobin and in enzyme X after
feeding them with the HSF diet and the LC diet and the respective figures for control
mice on a normal diet.
Why is this useless and stupid to write in your article or thesis text?

Hint: on the same article page, comes this table: Find errors throughout this terrible table,
ranging from macro to almost invisible. Revise its title.

Table 1. The responses found before and after the feeding of mice with the HSF diet, the
LC diet and a normal diet for 15 and 30 days.
Diet Group Type Time of
blood
sample
HSF diet
Before diet
LC diet
Before diet
Normal diet
Before diet
HSF diet
After diet
LC diet
After diet
Normal diet
After diet
HSF diet
Before diet
LC diet
Before diet
Normal diet
Before diet
HSF diet
After diet
LC diet
After diet
Normal diet
After diet

Length Numbers of
of the studied mice
diet
15 days
18
15 days
18
15 days
18
15 days
18
15 days
18
15 days
18
30 days
18
30 days
18
30 days
18
30 days
18
30 days
18
30 days
18

Male
mice
11/18
12/18
10/18
11/18
12/18
10/18
9/18
10/18
12/18
9/18
10/18
12/18

Age

2.0
1.9
2.2
2.0
1.9
2.2
1.5
2.1
1.8
1.5
2.1
1.8

Hemoglobi p
Enzyme X Pn
values
value
8.6
8.5
8.50
8.70
8.9
10.10
8.3
8.50
8.4
9.1
9.3
14.1

NS

NS

NS

< 0.03

0.41 g
.37 g
0.39 g
0.43 g
0.42 g
0.41 g
0.41 g
.38 g
0.41 g
.44 g
0.42 g
0.41 g

NS

NS

NS

NS

82

Index
abbreviations 18, 22-24, 31, 59, 62
abstract 18-22, 30, 54, 67, 71, 74
acknowledgements 22, 35, 36, 37
active voice 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 14, 68
adapt / modify 35
adjectives 6, 8, 11, 27, 35, 46, 52, 55
affect/Affect 46
aims 20, 33, 34, 76
ambiguous / -guity 3, 5, 57
and / or 61
any 46
as 48
authors instructions 16, 20, 63, 64, 69
await 64, 68
background 12, 19, 20, 24, 34
belated 67, 68
black balls, bullets 34, 61
black-listing 34, 71
borrow / lend 47
capitals/-talization 32, 46, 57, 64, 67, 68
case study, 17
chance, change 46
chapter 46, 61, 76
chronological/chronology 13, 27
citation 6, 16, 25, 26, 31, 34, 39, 41, 56, 60, 62,
72, 74
clarity 12, 14, 52, 62, 75
clear (being) 3-5, 64, 68-70, 79
clinically significant 48
cohesion 12
colloquial 7, 45
colon / semicolon 21, 50, 53, 56, 57, 58, 59
columns 23, 24, 60
comma 22, 52, 53, 55, 56, 58-60, 62
comment (vs. definition) 29, 43, 52, 56
compare 19, 24, 29, 34, 43, 49, 67, 76
comparative degree 49
comparison 30, 60, 62
comprise 33, 44, 57, 76
concern, concerning 20, 27, 32, 44, 67, 73
conclusion 19, 20, 21, 30, 41
confidence intervals (CI) 18
conflict of interest 64
connectives 5
contractions 8, 53, 58, 68
contrary 46
contributors 22, 37
control 6, 8, 28, 46, 62, 71, 76
convenience (at earliest) 67, 68
countable, uncountable 46, 51
cover letter 64, 66, 69-71
criterion / criteria 48
cut and paste 34
data 11

dates 16, 31-33, 55, 59, 66, 68

decades 58
decimals, decimal point 52, 59, 61
decrease 43, 47
defining or commenting commas 52
degrees 22, 36, 38, 64
despite 76
deteriorate 43, 47
dictionary 6, 43, 75
differ, different 3, 6, 46, 48, 49, 76
disclaimer 64, 69
dots 18, 27, 56, 61
double documentation 29
double-spacing 32
e.g. 41, 61, 62, 76
economic / -ical 46
effect, affect14, 46, 49, 51
email 66, 67, 68
embed/-ding) 5
end-focus 5, 6, 12 , 13-15, 20, 27, 40, 41, 44, 58,
77, 78
et al 61
etcetera, etc. 62
etheses 3, 7
ethics 27, 32, 64, 74
equipments 48, 76
expect 64
fax 66, 67, 68
female(s) 62
Finnish 3, 4, 15, 22, 31, 34, 62, 75, 76
first draft 4, 12, 43
first person 11
flow 112-14
flow chart 28, 34, 54
-fold, 62
font 27, 33, 42, 60, 68
footnote 22-25
formal(ity) 7, 45
French lines 34, 45, 61
front focus 18, 21
genes, italicized 42
gender 62, 64
genitive 47, 53, 58, 62
get 4, 7, 50
ghostwriting 73
gold standard 40, 46
grammar 3, 4, 14
grid 24
hand, on the other 47, 76
Harvard style 16, 60
head word, 57
health / healthy 46
histograms 25
hyphen 53, 55, 57, 58, 61

83
hypothesis 19, 26, 29, 30
i.e. 49, 62
idioms 4, 75, 79
impact factor 74
implicate 44, 77
implication 19, 30, 31, 35
in press 32, 47, 71
inanimate agent 7, 10, 11, 12-13, 29
incidence 12, 19, 47, 74
increase 43, 47, 49
indent 24, 46
infinitive 22, 34, 40, 41
informations, 48, 76
introduction 16, 18, 20, 26, 30, 46, 54, 77
invaluable 37
involve, involving 4, 51, 57, 73
italics 14, 15, 33, 42, 61, 64, 70
journal 4, 6, 11, 16-20, 22-29, 31-33, 37, 41, 42,
59, 60, 61, 64, 69, 70-74, 74
keep vs. give 3, 47
key words 5, 20
kindly 35, 67
late (dead) 11
layout 24, 41, 42, 66
legends 23, 24, 25, 27, 32
lend / borrow 47
literature 34
male(s) 62
margins (justification) 42
money 23, 46, 49, 67
monograph 34
multiple submission 71
N / n 24, 47, 60
negative(s) 8
next 47
non-temporal verbs 41
nouns 27, 34, 46, 51, 62
number (as verb) / numbering 22, 24, 32, 46, 59
numerals 59, 61
open series 62
other 47
own 47
P - / p-values 60
paragraph 46
parallel(ism) 34
parameter, paradigm 48
parentheses 23, 32, 41, 52, 53, 56, 58, 60
participle 34, 40, 48, 50
passive voice 3, 4, 10, 11, 15, 29, 75
past tense 6, 22, 27, 29, 40
percent/-age 25, 59-61
perfect tense 40
perform 9
permissions 32, 33, 37, 39, 45, 65, 68, 71, 74
phenomenon / phenomena 48
pie charts 25
plagiarism/-ize 20, 32-34, 39, 71-73, 72

plural(s) 11, 48, 57, 58, 60, 62

politeness 3, 11, 33, 35, 68, 69
prefixes 8
prepositions 49, 59, 60, 75
present (adjective) 9
present tense 6, 22, 34, 40
press, in, see in press
prevalence 47, 48, 51
print, in 47
prior (publication) / priority 30, 31, 49, 71
process writing 4, 18, 54
pronouns 5, 10, 11, 41
proofreading 79
publish (verb) 64
p-values 18, 24, 25, 48, 56, 59, 60, 80
quotation marks, quotes 33, 34, 53, 58, 61, 64, 72
range 48, 49, 56, 57
ranging vs. varying 24, 48
ratios 50, 57, 58
redundant publication 71
referee(s) 27, 31, 65, 66, 69, 70, 74
references 16, 17, 18, 21, 31, 32,
regard, regarding 12, 43, 44, 64, 67, 68
rejection 16, 69, 70
remarkably 29, 45, 76
repetition 5, 18, 20, 24, 33, 51
reprint/-ing 32, 33, 64, 65, 71
respective, respectively 61, 79, 80
reviewer(s) 4, 28, 31, 41, 66, 69, 70
reviser, revising, revision 9, 15, 27, 31, 32, 37, 66,
70, 74
risk 48, 49, 72, 73, 77
rough draft 13, 77
salami publishing 71
semicolon, see colon
sentence titles 21
series 48
sexism 62
significant/significance 8, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, 48
signposts 4, 5
since 48
single-spacing 24
slash 53, 58, 60
space (area), space-fillers 24, 55, 57, 59, 60
species 48
speech, spoken forms 44, 45, 68
statistic(s)/-ically 19, 22, 24, 25, 28, 29, 37, 48
study 32
structured abstract or discussion 19, 29, 31
subheadings 19, 24
subjects (people) 10, 19, 24, 28
subjects (grammar) 9, 41, 52, 55
submit/submission 16, 19, 30, 32, 42, 64, 65, 66,
67-70, 71, 74, 73, 75
substantive 9, 12, 43, 50
such as 7, 62
summary 18, 29, 30, 32-34, 72

84
superscripts 22, 25, 41, 53, 60
supplier(s) 61
syllable-break 42
symbols 58, 59, 60
synonyms / synonymy 5, 6, 24, 33, 41, 45, 63
table(s) 17, 23, 24, 25, 27, 29, 32-34, 51, 59, 60,
65, 71, 75, 76, 80
target journal, see journal
tense 10, 22, 27, 29, 40
the vs. a / an 51
thesis 21, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 62, 71, 72
times (+ -er) 62
title / degree (for a person) 22, 36, 64
title (of text) 16, 18, 20-22, 23, 24, 32, 61, 64, 65
translate, translation 3, 4
unit 28, 46, 52, 59, 61
use / used / using 38, 50-51
Vancouver style 16, 20, 25, 31, 60, 75
variable 25, 48
varying vs. ranging 24, 48
voice (see active/passive voice)
wait (for) 64
weigh vs. weight 48
while 48
whiskers 25
worth 48

85
Notes