Common Problems and How to Avoid Them
Academic writing requires accurate grammar. The following sections address the most common problematic areas of English grammar in writing, supplying rules and examples.
Introduction
Ideally, writing at university can be described as being formally correct. This means that while other grammatical possibilities are possibly acceptable in informal writing or speech, the formally (and prescriptively) correct option would be most recommended for academic writing. Therefore, there are certain rules that must be followed in your writing.
A difference is made between descriptive and prescriptive approaches to grammar. When you write academically, it may be wise to devote more attention to the grammarians' prescriptive rules than you normally do when you speak or write in English.
This section of AWELU contains the following subsections, some of which deal with problems that anyone might encounter when writing in English, while others are more typical of Swedish writers:
- Many or much? On the use of quantifiers
- Adjectives and adverbs
- Capitalisation
- Sentence fragment
- Run-on sentences
- What or which?
- Subject-Verb agreement
- Atypical nouns