Tips for writing scientific texts

Questions to ask yourself before starting:

In these cases, both options are fine, but it must be consistent throughout the text.

- will I use US or British English?

- will I capitalise the titles or not?

- what kind of units will I use?

- will I use a dash or "to" to separate numbers (e.g. "27–35 °C" or 27 to 35 °C")?

- will I use hyphens for prefixes or not (e.g. "micro-organisms" or "microorganisms", "pre-treatment" or "pretreatment")?

- which reference format will I use?

- are there guidelines for this journal, homework, etc., and have I followed them all?

- I promise that I will define all acronyms before using them

Some little reminders for German native speakers:

- I will not use capital letters unless there's a really good reason

- I will not confuse my dots and commas (10,000 and 0.45), even in diagrams/tables

- I will think about the correct use of hyphens in English (-)

- I will think about the correct use of commas in English

- I will try not to use extremely long sentences

- I will try to avoid putting the verb at the end
- I will try to use verbs instead of verb nouns where possible

- I will be careful where I put the word "also"
- I will be careful how I use the word "therefore"

- I will be very careful with the word "respectively"

- I will avoid the words "shall", "thereby" and "hereby"

- I won't talk about self-made things

- I will think about the correct use of present simple and present continuous