As Winston Churchill said, “Short words are best, and old words when short, are best of all.” By “old words” he meant Old English words, which he used in his writing and speaking to change the course of 20th- century history. If you want to influence your reader with your ideas, resist the temptation to use long Latin- or French- based words where shorter ones will do. Your message will be clearer and have much more impact.

From [1] 

In English, the type of language we use in different contexts can have different roots. In day-to-day, unofficial contexts where we use the informal register most of the words come from Old English a.k.a Anglo-Saxon (up to 80% according to [1]). In official, technical and scientific contexts we tend to use formal high register words, which are often based on Latin and Greek words. One reason is the Norman invasion of England in 1066 after which Anglo-Norman (a relative of French) became the language of the powerful and educated classes. Another is the anglicisation of many words from Latin, Greek and Arabic by translators during the Renaissance when there was not already an English word with the same meaning. These influences, and many others, have lead to many words in English that are similar to words in other languages.

This has one big advantage: English has an extensive and flexible vocabulary. According to some, it has the most synonyms of any modern language.

It has a disadvantage, at least from the perspective of the non-native speaker: many of the words that appear similar to non-English words can have slightly or even totally opposite meanings. These are the ‘false friends’, or cognates.

Actual & Actually ≠ Currently

An example of a false friend is ‘actually’ which is very similar to the word that means ‘currently’ or ‘at the present time’ in many languages (eg. French: actuellement). Using ‘actually’ instead of ‘currently’ in English is wrong, and a very common error.

In English, ‘actually’ is mainly used to mean something like ‘in fact’, ‘really’, ‘in reality’ ‘genuinely’ or ‘without exaggeration’.

This is an important distinction to understand for general English. In the specific context of scientific writing with technical language, my advice is to avoid using ‘actually’ at all. For the other range of meanings ‘actually’ can have in English there are more formal equivalents that I think better fit this context (‘in fact’, ‘in reality’, ‘specifically’).

Sensitive ≠ Sensible

In English, ‘sensible’ and ‘sensitive’ can cause confusion because they have different meanings than in several other European languages. Confusing these two adjectives is a common error and something to be aware of and try to avoid.

‘Sensitive’ relates to the senses or sensation, and to things that respond strongly to sensations. This can be in the sense of being particularly responsive

She has sensitive hearing

This is a sensitive microphone.

The responsiveness doesn’t have to be positive.

He has a sensitive stomach.

‘Sensitive’ can also refer to a capacity to be offended, or subjects that are likely to offend.

Politics and religion are sensitive topics.

It can also refer to subjects that should be kept secret or protected.

These are sensitive documents.

In several non-English languages, words similar to ‘sensible’ are used to convey the meaning of the sentences above. In English ‘sensible’ does have older, archaic meanings that are similar to this which you might come across in older texts or more poetic contexts. However, it’s main meaning is now to is indicate that something is appropriate, useful, practical, and shows good judgement.

Given the limitations of the method, that is a sensible approach.

Important ≠ substantial

Important, in English, refers to something that is of high value. Because of the objective voice we try to use in technical writing, ‘important’ is not appropriate most of the time. A particularly common error is to use ‘important’ when the correct word in English is ‘substantial’, when we want to talk about something that is large in size or quantity, an ample or significant amount.

The molecule produced a substantial change.

This simple idea has had a substantial effect.

Evidence(s) / to evidence/ to evince

‘Evidence’ is most familiar as a noun. It refers to facts or observation that support an assertion. It is an uncountable noun so you can correctly talk about two pieces of evidence, but it is incorrect to pluralise evidence with an ‘s’ at the end.

Evidence can also be used as a verb, to talk about the action of providing evidence for something.

The antibiotic was effective, as evidenced by the reduction of mean temperature.

This means that even though ‘evidences’ is wrong as a plural noun, it can be correct when used as a verb in the singular simple present tense:

Her reduced temperature evidences that the antibiotics are having an effect.

The use of evidence as a verb is grammatically correct, but sounds a bit strange. For me it sounds more legalistic than scientific.

There is another verb in English that seems to have a similar meaning that can cause confusion, even for native speakers (including me!). ‘To evince’ means something like ‘express clearly’, and tends to refer to emotions and subjective states while ‘to evidence’ tends to refer to the demonstration of a fact from an objective view point.

His eyes evinced sympathy.

My advice would be to avoid ‘evince’ completely. Except for the construction ‘as evidenced by’ I would also suggest that ‘to evidence’ is best avoided because there are plenty of other verbs with similar meanings that are less likely to cause confusion and sound better (to show, to demonstrate, to suggest, to indicate…).

Idiomatic phrases

Idioms are phrases that have come to mean something specific in common usage. Their meaning can quite often be very different from the literal meaning of each word. Because of this, there are no rules about how to apply idioms in general. It would be impossible to list every phrase here, but I will point out a few I’ve come across that may cause confusion.

“In light of X” is a useful phrase that is an alternative way to say ‘given that X’ or ‘considering X’.

In light of previous results, we decided to avoid using the standard method.

I have occasionally seen the error ‘in the light of X’. This is incorrect, except in the very specific use of the idiomatic phrase ‘in the light of day’ which refers to something becoming more clear after consideration, and is not appropriate in a scientific paper.

Something can ‘hold great promise’, and this phrase is appropriate to use. I’ve sometimes seen the error ‘holds great perspectives’. This phrase is incorrect, we can not replace ‘promise’ with ‘perspectives’.

Phrasal verbs / prepositions

Phrasal verbs are combinations of a verb and preposition, where the combination can have a different meaning from the individual words. The choice of preposition is often different in different languages and can cause confusion. There are too many to list, but here are a few I have come across repeatedly:

CORRECT

INCORRECT

Aims to…

Aims at…

Appears to be…

Appears as a…

Permits…

Allow(s) to…

Associated with…

Associated to…

Consisting of…

Consist(ed/ing) in / to…

Depending on…

Depending of…

Hypothesis that…

Hypothesis on..

Other Resouces:

The majority of the exercises on the excellent Scientific English as a Foreign Language website are relevant, so I will not list specific lessions this time. I encourage you to download the pdf’s, try out the exercises and see how you did by looking at the answers available on the website.

https://www.ldoceonline.com/ : A dictionary resource designed for language learners which indicates the correct prepositions to associate with a given verb or noun, suggested by my friend Mercedes Claire Gilliom who is a language teacher and translator.

This post is part of a series on Scientific English. Other posts can be found here:

Scientific English: Introduction, Articles and Acronyms

Scientific English: Tense in Abstract, Intro and Discussion sections

Scientific English: Methods and Results sections (tense, voice, and the use of articles)

Scientific English: modality, transition words and connecting ideas

References:

[1] Anne E. Greene, Writing Science in Plain English, The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London, 2013