English for scientists

English tips for scientists who don't speak English as a mother tongue. Written by a native English speaker who used to work as a scientist in a German-speaking country.
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19 September 2024

The minus sign

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First new entry in more than 8 years!  Recently, I discovered an important difference between using a hyphen (-) and a minus sign (−) in rep...
04 April 2016

already

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In English, "already" is only used in reference to another situation. For example: "Don't forget to d...
24 June 2015

state of the art

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There is some confusion about this term. My advice is: don't use this term! Meaning 1: To an estimated 99% of native E...
11 February 2015

The en dash

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This is for the real experts! Most native English speakers don't know this. The en dash ( – ) is a symbol you can't find on mo...

Verbs

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This post is about the over-use of verb nouns. By verb nouns I mean things like:  - reduction, optimisation, calibration, etc. where t...
21 October 2014

maize

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Maize sounds like maze (labyrinth) or a maz ing. Here is an amazing maize maze!
20 October 2014

eventually

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In English, "eventually" means "in the end", "after a long wait" or "finally". Example:   ...
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