Writing and Publishing Scientific Articles Course Workbook

Navigating the Peer Review Process 11-19

How to Address Unclear Comments about Your Writing

What you can ask your colleagues and editor Have I made any grammar errors?

What to try if they say yes Reading Hodges’ Harbrace College Handbook Taking an English class Having the paper edited Using spellchecker function of your word-processing program

Comment

Poorly written The English is poor

Have I left out

articles ( the and a )?

Have I used

punctuation incorrectly? Have I made a lot of spelling errors?

Have I used words incorrectly?

Reading a lot of papers Looking up

unfamiliar words in dictionary; asking people what the words mean

Keeping a list of

words you might use and their definitions

Terminology is confusing

What terms are confusing?

Asking what the

correct terms are

Using the same

terms throughout the paper instead of varying them Making sentences an average of 15-20 words long (but not all the same length) Asking what needs to be added and adding it Applying the funnel of knowledge: stating ideas from general to specific

Choppy

Are the sentences too short? Are the sentences too long?

Wordy

Hard to follow

Have I left out ideas?

Did I express the ideas in the wrong order?

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