1. Publishing English Lesson 8
USTC School of Management
Spring 2018
Teacher: Dr. Murray Sherk
Course Website:
(Click on the “Publishing English” link.)

2. Lesson 8 Outline Review of Lesson 7 Principles for Good Writing
Cover the ones not mentioned in class yet
Review all
Final Exam Preview
Look at 2017 final exam
Differences for 2018

3. Lesson 7 Review PE7: Avoid cultural bias
Personal pronouns in academic writing
British English vs. American English
PE8 & BCG7:
Sentence structure and ideas
Resumptive, summative, and free modifiers
PE9&10: Transitions and conjunctions
Example: Text analysis and correction

4. [PE7] Look for cultural bias and subjective terms
Do not assume your international readers know the “obvious” things that are known by “everyone” in your own culture

5. Lesson 7 Review PE7: Avoid cultural bias
Personal pronouns in academic writing
British English vs. American English
PE8 & BCG7:
Sentence structure and ideas
Resumptive, summative, and free modifiers
PE9&10: Transitions and conjunctions
Example: Text analysis and correction

6. Personal Pronouns: I, my, me, we, our, us
Use “we”=authors only a bit in Abstract/Intro/Conclusion to emphasize contributions.
Avoid “we”=authors in other places or for other purposes.
Usually can use reword to avoid this
Feel free to use “we”=“reader and writer together” in the analysis.
“We see in Fig. 2 that…”

7. Lesson 7 Review PE7: Avoid cultural bias
Personal pronouns in academic writing
British English vs. American English
PE8 & BCG7:
Sentence structure and ideas
Resumptive, summative, and free modifiers
PE9&10: Transitions and conjunctions
Example: Text analysis and correction

8. Main differences: British vs. American
“..ise” vs.“..ize” for verbs like “analyze”
“..our” vs. “..or” in words like “color”, “neighbor”
“centre” vs. “center”
Quotation marks:
Amer. “ then ‘ E.g. “He said ‘no’.”
Brit. (usually) ‘ then “. E.g. ‘He said “no”.’
Brit. sometimes like American – check journal
Americans tend to put sentence period inside quotations. E.g. He is an “outlier.”
British style uses more logical grouping. E.g. He is an “outlier”.

9. Lesson 7 Review PE7: Avoid cultural bias
Personal pronouns in academic writing
British English vs. American English
PE8 & BCG7:
Sentence structure and ideas
Resumptive, summative, and free modifiers
PE9&10: Transitions and conjunctions
Example: Text analysis and correction

10. Principle PE8: Sensibility and Value
To check for logic in a sentence, express the main idea of [parts of] the sentence in a few words.
Is it clear what the sentence focuses on?
Does the main idea actually make sense?
Is the idea so obvious that it does not need to be stated?
Are you being wimpy? (Do you fear disagreement?) Beware of “may possibly”.
Are the ideas logically connected?
Is the argument circular? (Check your definitions.)

11. Overly simple structure (SVO, SVO, …) is weak writing – Longer sentences sound more “scholarly” and are more concise compared to multiple short sentences.
John owns a car.
The car is a two-door model.
The car was made in Germany.
Mary is John’s wife.
Mary hates John’s car.
How can we combine these simple sentences into one longer, more elegant sentence?

12. https://www.thoughtco.com/resu mptive-modifier-grammar- 1692049
Resumptive Modifiers
mptive-modifier-grammar
John owns a car, a two-door German car.
Note the repeated word: “resumptive”  “to resume”  to repeat

13. https://www.thoughtco.com/sum mative-modifier-grammar- 1692161
Summative Modifiers
mative-modifier-grammar
John’s owns a two-door German car, a fact which often causes arguments between him and his wife Mary.
The word “fact” summarizes the first part and the rest adds info

14. Free Modifiers
resources/tutors-accessibility/writing- center/files/free-modifiers-short-list.pdf
John owns a German car, a two-door model, but Mary, John’s wife, hates that vehicle and they often argue about it.

15. Lesson 7 Review PE7: Avoid cultural bias
Personal pronouns in academic writing
British English vs. American English
PE8 & BCG7:
Sentence structure and ideas
Resumptive, summative, and free modifiers
PE9&10: Transitions and conjunctions
Example: Text analysis and correction

16. PE9: Transitions and Conjunctions
Transitions between sentences and conjunctions between clauses: Good ideas but…
Know subtleties of meaning!
Many imply a difference or similarity with what went before.
“whereas”, “nevertheless”, “although”, “because”, “so”
Be careful with “as”: it means both “when” and “because”.
“As I went to the store, I got warm.”
Do not overuse transitions; Many sentences do not need a transition at the start!

17. PE10: And, But, So, = common conjunctions to connect ideas
Use freely to connect clauses within sentences but avoid starting sentences with them! [That is newspaper technique.]
(Once or twice in an entire article is OK for “shocking” connections. Think of hitting the table.)

18. PE10: And, But, So, Instead of starting sentences with And/But/So:
For “So”: Use “Thus,” or “Therefore,”
For “But”: Use “In contrast,” or “However,”
For variety, put “however” further in the sentence: “The next step, however, can introduce larger errors.”

19. PE10: And, But, So, Instead of starting sentences with And/But/So:
For “So”: Use “Thus,” or “Therefore,”
For “But”: Use “In contrast,” or “However,”
For “And”: Use “Moreover,” or “In addition,”
or just combine the sentences:
“…enjoy sports. And they also…”
becomes
“…enjoy sports and they also…”.

20. PE10: And, But, So,
Use “and”, “but”, and “so” freely within a sentence,
even 2 or 3 of them in one sentence
Avoid run-on sentences!
Do not use so many conjunctions in a sentence that the main thrust of the sentence is obscured.
Bad: “The survey was sent in September and responses started to arrive immediately but responses were accepted for the next six weeks so that more than 200 were received and the sample set would be large so the analysis would have sufficient validity.”

21. Lesson 7 Review PE7: Avoid cultural bias
Personal pronouns in academic writing
British English vs. American English
PE8 & BCG7:
Sentence structure and ideas
Resumptive, summative, and free modifiers
PE9&10: Transitions and conjunctions
Example: Text analysis and correction

22. Text Analysis and Correction
1. Introduction Since China’s reform and opening up, China’s annual economic growth rate reached more than 9%, but at the same time, the amount of many environmental pollutants, such as SO2, CO2, in China increase. Because of the environmental problems, some mass disturbances occurred in China, such as Fujian Tingjiang Pollution Event and Guangxi Longjiang Cadmium Pollution Event. International society also began to criticize China about this and make more and more Carbon tariffs on Chinese exports. But whether the increase of Chinese economy blocked the control of pollution or not? And how about the coordination relationship between these two factors? For solving this problem, we need a systematic and scientific measure method (Müller-Fürstenberger and Wagner, 2007). Many measurement results show that economic growth and environmental pollution have the inverted “U” shaped relationship, which is commonly called Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). Recently, more and more scholars had studied whether this phenomenon exists in China or not. EKC hypothesis has many important economic meanings. For example, pollution of the environment increases in the process of economic growth, which indicates economic growth quality is harmful to the environment

23. Lesson 8 Outline Review of Lesson 7 Principles for Good Writing
Cover the ones not mentioned in class yet
Review all
Final Exam Preview
Look at 2017 final exam
Differences for 2018

24. Active voice and passive voice
[PE11] The passive voice is bad when it hides relevant or explanatory information, but fine if the agent does not matter or the sentence reads well with “by” to specify the agent.
See info from Purdue University writing lab
ource/539/01/

25. Good points? Bad points?
“We distributed the survey in June 2017.”
“The survey was distributed in June 2017.”
“The survey was distributed in June 2017 by us.”

26. Good points? Bad points?
“We distributed the survey in June 2017.”
“The survey was distributed in June 2017.”
“The survey was distributed in June 2017 by us.”
“The survey was administered orally to respondents in June by four survey assistants trained by the authors.”
“A team of four survey assistants, trained by the authors, administered the survey orally to respondents in June ”
“In June 2017, a team of four survey assistants, trained by the authors, administered the survey orally to respondents.”
“Four survey assistants were trained and they administered the survey orally to respondents in June 2017.”
“Four survey assistants were trained to administer the survey orally to respondents in June 2017.”

27. Multiple negatives are confusing
[PE12] (Related to BCG6) Beware of double/triple negatives like: “The survey failed to prove that Hypothesis 1 was not false.” Look for positive ways to express the same ideas.
“This phenomenon is not unprecedented.”
OK, even stylish!
It means the phenomenon has been observed before (i.e. is precedented) but it is rarely seen.
“Not using this method will never fail to avoid giving an unsatisfactory answer.”
BAD!

28. Multiple negatives are confusing
[PE12] (Related to BCG6) Beware of double/triple negatives like: “The survey failed to prove that Hypothesis 1 was not false.” Look for positive ways to express the same ideas.
“This phenomenon is not unprecedented.”
OK, even stylish!
“Not using this method will never fail to avoid giving an unsatisfactory answer”
BAD! 5 negatives

29. Compared to what?
[PE13] When using comparison terms like “larger” or “more profit”, make sure that your readers will know which things are being compared. It may be clear to you but not to them.
Faster/better than what?
All previous things in history?
All previous things you mentioned in your paper?
The things of the previous sentence?
The things you were thinking of when you wrote the sentence? (and you hope the reader can read your mind?)

30. Journal style should be formal but not pretentious
[PE14] Avoid informal terms like “a lot of”, “nowadays”, “more and more”, and “lab”. Do not use contractions: “don’t”, “it’s”, “they’ll”, etc. Do not try too hard to use fancy formal terms like “hereafter” and “heretofore”.
Before you use a term, think carefully: Have you seen that term used in published article in your target journal?
If not, it might be too informal.
Do not try to impress by using overly formal wording.
“Whilst it might accentuate the propensity of the authors toward multisyllabic utterances, this practice is inadvisable.”
What does “overly” mean? That’s tricky!
Don’t “try too hard” to impress. Don’t “show off”. Don’t use the thesaurus to substitute obscure, rarely used terms for perfectly good, reasonably formal, common terms.

31. Use Machine Checking, but don’t trust it completely
[PE15] Always, always, always run the final version of your paper through Grammarly (or some similar grammar/spelling checker). Grammarly gives a nice, free second opinion to supplement the functions built into MS Word. Do not, however, completely trust Grammarly. It does miss some errors and some of the things it thinks are errors are actually good writing.
Make sure Grammarly is set to British or American style, according to your wishes.
Word’s spelling/grammar checker is OK but may be disabled by a flag.
Other style/spelling checkers may also be useful but Grammarly is reputable and easy to use.

32. Lesson 8 Outline Review of Lesson 7 Principles for Good Writing
Cover the ones not mentioned in class yet
Review all
Final Exam Preview
Look at 2017 final exam
Differences for 2018

33. Review: Principles for Good Writing
See handout.
Boldface numbers for SSW and BCG principles = noteworthy
All PE principles are noteworthy
Express to your partner the main idea of the principle in your own words.

34. Lesson 8 Outline Review of Lesson 7 Principles for Good Writing
Cover the ones not mentioned in class yet
Review all
Final Exam Preview
Look at 2017 final exam
Differences for 2018

35. Final Exam last year See handout. Open notes, open book, open computer
It must be your own work though, written during the exam!
E.g. You may use the Internet to look up information for the essay question but you cannot copy text from any related article you find. (Not even quotations! I want to see only YOUR writing.)
Using Grammarly is fine.

36. Final Exam 2018 Same format Different texts Different questions
Some problems in the text passages will be the same or similar to those in the 2017 exam and some will be different.

37. Lesson 7 Homework due soon
Write a 10-item checklist specifically for your writing.
These should reflect the 10 most common and most important weaknesses in your writing!
Consider this course’s Principles for Good Writing (on website) but some of your 10 items may not be listed there.
Express each item as words (1-2 sentences) and be specific.
Use imperative sentences (commands to yourself) such as “Look for… and change them to…”.
“Check <this>, particularly <that>.”,
“Use Word’s global search to look for <this> and make sure…”
this checklist to Murray before the exam.
This homework can be week 7’s writing project work.
Your list will be graded and count in your homework mark.

38. Best Wishes for a Successful…
…exam
…career as an academic writer