academic-english

Identify the passive verb (a form of 'to be' plus a past participle), find the true actor in the 'by' phrase or context, make that actor the subject, and rewrite the verb actively. The passive-to-active-conversion rule walks through this drill with worked examples.

Use past tense for procedures you ran and specific prior studies, present tense for standing facts and general truths, and future tense only for stated next steps. Most of a scientific paper sits in past tense with a smaller share in present.

First person is appropriate for claiming ownership of an argument, avoiding contorted passive phrasing, and distinguishing your contribution from prior work. It is common in the humanities, increasingly accepted in sciences, and rare in technical writing.

Split the clauses with a period, join them with a semicolon, add a coordinating conjunction after the comma, or subordinate one clause with a word like because or although. Choose based on how closely the two ideas relate.

Frequent confusions include affect/effect, disinterested/uninterested, criteria/criterion, mitigate/militate, and hone/home in. The misused-words rule covers 30 pairs with correct definitions and right-versus-wrong example sentences.