The Craft of Scientific Writing (course ID: 20072071)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q: What are Hebrew equivalents for some of the English grammatical terms you use?
A: Here is a (probably incomplete) table, roughly grouped by category. To avoid having to edit HTML in Hebrew, I am rendering the Hebrew in Library of Congress romanization (ti`tuq). As a personal indulgence, I am adding my native Dutch as well :-)
NEW: Wikified version with proper Hebrew
noun shem-etzem substantief, zelfstandig naamwoord
verb po`al werkwoord
adjective shem to'ar adjectief, bijvoeglijk naamwoord
adverb to'ar hapo`al bijwoord, adverbium
participle beinoni deelwoord
preposition milat yachas voorzetsel
article tavvit lidwoord
indef. art. (a/an) tavvit mesatemet onbepaald lidwoord ("een")
def. art. (the) he-hayedi`a bepaald lidwoord ("de/het")
pronoun kinui guf voornaamwoord
relative pronoun kinui ziqa betrekkelijk voornaamwoord
possessive pronoun kinui kinyan bezittelijk voornaamwoord
person (grammar) guf (diqduq) persoon
subject nose' onderwerp
verb po`al werkwoord
object musa' (sin, lo samekh), "et-XXXXXXXX" object
infinitive shem hapo`el infinitief, noemvorm
gerund shem hape`ula gerundum
active pa`il actieve wijs
passive savil passieve wijs, ondergaande wijs
tense zman (diqduq) tijd (grammatica)
present hove [onvoltooid] tegenwoordige tijd
"I cooked"
present continuous [no difference with "hove" in Hebrew] [geen verschil met voorgaande in het Nederlands]
"I am cooking"
present perfect [no difference with "`avar" in Hebrew] voltooid tegenwoordige tijd
"I have cooked"
preterite/imperfect `avar onvoltooid verleden tijd
"I cooked"
pluperfect [no difference with "`avar" in Hebrew] voltooid verleden tijd
"I had cooked"
simple future `atid onvoltooid toekomstige tijd
"I will cook"
future perfect [no difference with "`atid" in Hebrew] voltooid toekomstige tijd
"I will have cooked"
mood (grammar) derekh (diqduq) wijs
indicative derekh chivui indicatief, aantonende wijs
"He works, you are driving"
imperative tzivui imperatief, gebiedende wijs
"Work! Please drive."
subjunctive derekh hatna'i/derekh ha mish'ala/
derekh ha'ivvui conjunctief, aanvoegende wijs
"I command that it be done"
case (grammar) yachasa (diqduq) naamval
nominative yachasat hanose' nominatief
accusative yachasat hamusa' accusatief
genitive yachasat hakinyan genitief
[construct state] smikhut [soort Hebreeuwse genitief]
dative yachasat "le-/la-", musa' `aqif datief
ablative yachasa ablativit ablatief
vocative yachasat hapniya vocatief
Q: What is the subjunctive mood used for in English?
A: In modern English, it is only distinguishable from the indicative mood in three situations:
(1) 3rd person singular, present tense. (Examples: "If it
please the court/G-d/,...", "Heaven/G-d
forbid!",...) [Cf.: "Im " followed by the future tense in Hebrew.]
(2) 1st and 3rd person singular, past tense ("If that
were true, I'd know about it."/"If I were twenty years younger,...") [Cf.: "Lu " followed by the past tense in Hebrew.]
(3) with the verb "to be" in the present tense. ("I demanded that it
be done.") [Cf.: "she-" followed by the future tense in Hebrew].
More examples of the subjunctive mood in English can be found here.
Biblical Hebrew did have a subjunctive mood. In modern Hebrew, it survives in expressions like:
Yechi ha-melekh! (Long live the king!) or: Yehi zikhram barukh (May their memory be blessed.)
Q: How do I know whether to use an adjective or its corresponding adverb?
A: Simple rule: adjectives modify/qualify/quantify nouns. Adverbs do the same with anything other than a noun.
Example: "A beautiful song" (adjective, since "beautiful" qualifies the noun "song"), but: "A beautifully played song" (adverb, since "beautifully" qualifies "played", which is not a noun), and "He plays beautifully" (adverb, since "beautifully" qualifies "plays", which is not a noun but a verb).
Most adverbs in English are regular (formed by adding the suffix "-ly" to an adjective). Examples: "publicly", "religiously", "extremely",...
If the final letter of the adjective is an "l", the "l" is doubled: "orally", "verbally", "naturally",... ...
Note also "kinetically" and "thermodynamically" (not "kineticly", nor "thermodynamicly")
Some adverbs are irregular. Most important one: adjective "good" has adverb "well". "She is a good flutist", but "she plays the flute well" and "a well-played sonata".
Note for speakers of other languages: in Dutch and German, adjective and adverbial forms look the same. In Romance languages, most adverbs are formed by adding the suffixes "-ment" (French) or "-mente" (Spanish, Italian, Portuguese).
Q: How do I know whether to write "its" or "it's"?
A: If you can write "it is" instead without changing the meaning of the sentence, write "it's". In all other cases, write "its". Review your lecture notes about the English possessive for more details.
Q: What is the difference between the [simple] present and the present continuous?
A: In English, "I travel" or "I speak Hebrew" (simple present) are used in senses like "I habitually travel" or "I am able to speak Hebrew".
The present continuous describes something you are/one is in the process of doing: "I am writing a FAQ", "I am recompiling the program", "If you're going to San Francisco",...
Q: What about the preterite/imperfect past/simple past/past historic vs. the present perfect?
A: The present perfect is normally used to relate something you did in the past and is now finished. Hence it is commonly used in scientific writing: "We have synthesized somethingic acid", "Exemplamine was obtained in 95% yield", etc.
The preterite/imperfect past/simple past/past simple/past historic indeed has all these names in English. The term "historic" is perhaps the most descriptive to a non-native speaker: "She went to the cinema", "Caesar crossed the Rubicon", "David slew Goliath",...
Note to French-speakers: the English preterite is generally used in contexts where in literary French one would employ the "passé simple", and in common French the "passé composé". The "imparfait" is closest to the "past continuous" ("I was going"/"He was driving"), but also covers the habitual past ("I used to know Latin").
What about the preterite vs. the pluperfect and the past continuous?
A: "Pluperfect" is actually a contraction of the Latin "plus quam perfectum" (more than perfect), cf. the French "plusqueparfait". It is used to refer to an event that has completed before another past action. ("I had just finished breakfast when he called.") The past continuous is used narratively to describe something you were/one was in the process of doing. ("As I was walking by the post office, I saw her standing in line.")
Q: What is the difference between "1964 AD" and "1964 CE", or "753 BC" and "753 BCE"?
A: They both refer to the same year :-) "AD", being a Latin acronym for "anno domini" --- i.e., "the year of our Lord" --- implies that one recognizes the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, which non-Christians who are aware of the meaning of AD are (understandably) loath to do. "CE/BCE" can be rendered "(Before the) Christian Era" by Christians, and "(Before the) Common Era" by others. I personally always use BCE/CE.
A little note of non-chemical interest: sometimes, in books about history (including the history of science),
you may see a date with a suffix like "OS", "o.s.", "NS", or "n.s.". (For example, Isaac Newton was born
on 25 December 1642, o.s.)
The "o.s." and "n.s." stands for "old style" and "new style", respectively, and are needed to resolve an ambiguity
if the date was near the time the relevant country switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar.
See more
here.
Q: Is it "10 molecules or less" or "10 molecules or fewer"?
A: "Less" applies to mass nouns (see below), "fewer" to countable nouns. The sign commonly seen above express checkout lanes in American supermarkets, "10 items or less", is (strictly speaking) grammatically incorrect.
Conversely, "me'at" translates as "little" when used with mass nouns (me'at kesef=little money), and "few" when used with count nouns (me`at chatulim=few cats). "Harbe" translates as "much" with mass
nouns (harbe `avoda=much work) and as "many" with count nouns (harbe mekhoniyot=many cars).
What about "amount" and other continuous words of quantity versus "number"
A: One can only have "numbers" of count nouns and collective nouns, and "amounts" of mass nouns.
A number of cars, a number of people, but an amount of money. Compare "kamut deleq" and "skhum kesef" with "mispar anashim" in Hebrew. (The Hebrew grammar "mavens" all tell me "kamut anashim" is bad Hebrew.)
Q: What is the difference between countable and uncountable nouns, i.e., between count nouns and mass nouns?
A: Actually, English has
three types of nouns:
(1) Count nouns (a.k.a. "countable nouns"): one dog, two or more dogs. With regular countable nouns, the plural is formed by adding the suffix "-s". A few exceptions: "sheep" (one sheep, two sheep), "deer" (one deer, two deer),... Note that these are not mass nouns, just count nouns with irregular plurals.
(2) Collective nouns, that define groups of objects, people, animals, concepts,... Examples: pack (as in "a pack of dogs"), herd (of sheep etc.), team (of programmers etc.), government, ... Collective nouns are actually a subset of count nouns, but often confused with mass nouns. Unlike mass nouns, collective nouns do have plurals themselves (two packs of dogs, three herds of sheep, the A and B teams, the British and Israeli governments,...). With collective nouns, the verb number is ambiguous: does one write "the team is ready" or "the team are ready"? In American English, singular collective nouns usually take singular verb forms, while in British English the number depends on whether one refers to the collective or to individual members of it: "the soccer team is in the dressing room" but "the team are fighting among themselves". (Note that this latter sentence can also be read an an ellipsis: "The [members of the] team are fighting..."
(3) Mass nouns (a.k.a. "uncountable nouns"): refer to continuous entities such as water, earth,... or to classes of indeterminate number such as fruit, cattle, ... Mass nouns have neither plurals nor number: one cannot say "four waters" (four water molecules?) or "five cattles" (the correct expression is "five heads of cattle"). Mass nouns also do not take the indefinite article.
Some nouns have both "count" and "mass" senses. For example, in the phrase "I am applying a lick of paint", the word "paint" [the general concept of paint] is a mass noun, but in the phrase "There are several paints that are waterproof", "paint" [a specific type of paint] is a count noun. Likewise, "fire" in "I am making fire" is a mass noun, but "Forest fires are burning near Portland and Seattle" is grammatically quite correct, since one refers here to specific conflagrations (tav`eirot) rather than the abstract concept of fire (esh):
Q: I am confused by the indefinite article. When do I use "a" vs. "an" vs. nothing?
I know neither Hebrew nor Russian has them :-) Simple rules:
Mass nouns: no indefinite article.
Count nouns: take "a" or "an". If the first letter following the indefinite article (which may be the first letter of the noun, of any adjective preceding it, or of any adverb preceding the adjective) is a voiced consonant, use "a". If it is a vowel or a silent consonant, use "an".
Acronyms follow the pronunciation of the acronym rather than of its underlying expansion: "a Federal Bureau of Investigations agent", but "
an FBI agent".
Q: Do I write "principle investigator" or "principal investigator"? A matter of principle, or of principal?
The school principal, or the school principle?
A: "Principal investigator", "a matter of principle", and "the school principal", obviously.
If in Hebrew you write "`iqaron", the translation is "principle": "A matter of principle", "a[n un]principled politician", "based on first principles".
In financial matters, "ha-qeren ve-ha-ribit" are "the princi
pal and the interest/das Kapital und die Zinsen/le capital et l'interêt/het kapitaal en de rente".
If in Hebrew you write "r'ashi", it is "princi
pal": "the principal investigator" (on a research
grant, of a research group), "the principal cities of the country",...
As for schools: if you mean "menahel beit ha-sefer", you write "princi
pal" (US English) or "headmaster/headmistress" (UK English, or when referring to posh prep schools in the US ;-)); if you mean "`iqaron/`eqronot beit
ha-sefer", you write "the school's principle/principles", although you might wish to avoid ambiguity by writing
"the school's educational philosophy", or something of the sort.
Note that quite a few native English speakers stumble over principal vs. principle ;-)
Q: How do I know what to put around a subordinate clause?
A: Rule of thumb:
- If you want to emphasize the clause, use em dashes (—), a.k.a. "long dashes".
- If the subordinate clause is of lesser importance than the main sentence, but you still feel it should be written, use parentheses.
- If neither of the above, use commas.
Q: Why is it "The Chemist's English" when there's obviously more than one chemist?
A: As a kind soul on englishforums.com explained to me, this is a possessive form of a "generic noun phrase".
In a "generic noun phrase", a noun is used as a symbol, example, or representative of all members of a group.
Examples (singular): "The lion is endangered", "The inexperienced student may need help". Examples (plural):
"The Republicans/Democrats will meet in NYC USA for their convention." (Which ones? All of them.)
You may thus find magazines on a newsstand with titles like "The Chemist", "Guitar Player [magazine]", "Modern Drummer",
etc.
The possessive may be applied to generic noun phrases, leading to constructions like "The chemist's English",
"The young person's guide to the orchestra" (opus 34 by Benjamin Britten), etc.
Q: What is 'title capitalization', a.k.a., 'headline capitalization'
A: Please refer to Section 8.167 of the Chicago Style Manual (
online here). A useful summary is available
here.
Q: Can one reliably derive the present-day
meaning of a word from its etymology?
A: Those of you who either learned Latin or Greek in high school, or reverse-engineered some of the language from scientific lingo, know that this works fairly reliably for international scientific terminology. For instance, "iatrogenic" literally translates into plain English as: "caused by the doctor" and a "iatrogenic condition" means exactly that: a medical condition caused by present or past medical treatment.
But this works much less reliably for older, "common" vocabulary. To be sure,
the cognates "shalom" and "salaam" mean the same thing in Hebrew and Arabic,
respectively, and I am sure you can all give me many more examples like that.
However, sometimes two languages adopt the same word from a common ancestor or source,
but the meanings diverge with time. Such cognate words pairs are called "false friends"/"faux amis" by linguists.
As an extreme example, the Dutch word "neger" is the accepted term for a black
person in that language, while the English "n*gger" is considered most
offensive (roughly the equivalent of "qushon"), due to its historical use by slaveholders in the antebellum South.
(Both derive from the Latin word for the color black, "niger".) Closer to home, "Yid" is the neutral term for Jew in Yiddish, while its Russian derivative
"Zh*d" is roughly the equivalent of "kike" or "heeb" in English ("yahudon" be-`ivrit). The polite word in Russian (so I am told) is "yevrei" (compare "`ivri"):
see
here for an interesting story about how it entered the Russian language.
A less extreme example: "to bless" translates into French as "bénir", but the French "blesser" means "to hurt". And I used to confuse French-speakers by saying I had to go to a "conférence" (French for "lecture") when I
should have been saying "congrès" instead.
Q: What is the correct way to transliterate Hebrew names and words into "English"?
A: First of all, one does not transliterate into English but into the Roman/Latin script common to all Western languages. A more precise term is actually "romanization".
More to the point, I recommend the Library of Congress system (originally a draft standard of ANSI, the American National Standards Institute). It is relatively language-neutral (in that it will mostly work for speakers of other Western languages), preserves crucial distinctions such as between the "hey" and the "chet", and can be rendered without special symbols. See also
this comparative table.
If you (and your computer) have no problem working with extended Roman characters like those required for Central-European languages, you could consider using the
ISO 259 standard. It was co-authored by Prof. Uzi Ornan (a computer scientist at the Technion). One variant, ISO 259-3,
can be written with just the regular ASCII characters, but employs "$" for "shin", "@" for "tet", and similar
idiosyncratic choices.
An example of why to distinguish between "hey" and "chet": A bank employee wrote an Email in English
to one of my students, and said student came to ask me what is "ribit hariga". I told her it literally means
"manslaughter interest" --- and may well be a correct description of what the bank would charge her ;-) --- but
that the employee probably meant "ribit chariga" (overdraft interest).
Needless to say, I strongly dislike the UN system, which seems to be aimed at the fricative-impaired
("fricatives" is the scholarly term for letters like the Hebrew "chet" and "khaf", the German "ch" as in "Bach",
the Dutch "g" and "ch" as in "gelach", the Scottish "ch" as in "Loch Ness", etc.).
The informal "anglocentric" system ("toov", "mawshoo", "hamoodi", and linguistic abominations like that) is specific towards English to the point of absurdity. Incidentally, there is a group of native English speakers that has no problem with fricatives at all --- they're called Scots :-)
Finally, another solution would be to transliterate into the
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). Sadly, IPA is too unfriendly towards the general user (as opposed to
the amateur or professional linguist). Furthermore, the purpose of the IPA is not transliteration (rendering of one
script into another) but transcription (rendering of a particular
pronunciation).
More to follow.
Final Q: what does the following sentence mean: "I wrote you a long letter because I did not have time to make it shorter"?
Q: This very insightful statement is actually a direct quote from the great French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1629-1662). He wrote it at the end of one of his "Provincial letters". Allow me to paraphrase: "I wrote in a hurry, so I did not have time to edit my prose for clarity and conciseness". I can tell you from my own experience that rewriting a text for clarity and conciseness --- but without loss of information --- is a very time-consuming activity.
If you suddenly see a long and rambling paragraph here replaced by something shorter and hopefully more readable,
it simply means I finally had some time to edit my own prose :-)
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