Paraphrasing and plagiarism in mathematical equations

A student in my research writing skills class asked a great question last week about plagiarism. It is clear that copying another writer’s sentence and presenting it as your own work (i.e. without quotation marks), even if you include the correct citation, is not acceptable and would be considered plagiarism by most academics in the U.S. (see my video for more on this).

However, what do you about mathematical equations? You can’t paraphrase an equation, right? (Genuine question: the last math class I took was … many years ago!) And you don’t use quotation marks with an equation. So, what can you do?

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Sample accepted NIH proposals

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (part of the NIH) has made available several accepted RO1 grant applications. These would be very useful for you to study if you have questions about the format and requirements of grant proposals.

What do you notice? Leave a comment below!

(Thanks to UNC’s Research Support newsletter for sharing this great resource.)

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Another grammar blog to follow

I came across this blog – Grammar Gang – from Purdue University in the U.S. and the University of South Australia. There are some very interesting discussions here!

The Univeristy of South Australia also has a Writing in the Sciences blog, which includes some advice for second-language writers. It’s worth checking out!

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New video: Proofreading and Editing!

Now you can watch a 10-minute video presentation of Nigel explaining his favorite proofreading (editing) techniques, from any computer anywhere in the world! Check out all the new ELAC Online presentations. Also on this blog, I’ve made a page with recommended websites, dictionaries, grammar books, and other resources for proofreading.

Over 200 people have watched the videos, but no-one’s left me a comment! What do you think about them? What works? What doesn’t? And what other presentations would you like to see? Click “leave a comment” below!

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New video: Introduction to ELAC Services

I’ve just finished the third ELAC Online video presentation. This one is an Introduction to ELAC Services for new students and scholars at UNC. You can watch it here.

If you’ve seen it, do leave a comment below!

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Grammar Time News

I received the latest issue of my favorite online newsletter this morning, GrammarTime News, published (in English!) from Sweden. You might be interested in their answers to these usage questions. One question concerns commas in lists (X, Y, and Z) and another is about the choice between “their life” and “their lives.”

Fascinating … if you find English grammar as fascinating as we do, of course!

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New Writing Center handouts

The UNC Writing Center has a great series of free online handouts on many useful topics. Two new ones went up today: CV/Resume Writing and Email Communication.

All our handouts are written mainly for native speaking audience. If there’s a topic you’d like see, or a handout you’d like to see in an ESL version, please leave a comment below, and I’ll see what I can do …!

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One million words in English! (maybe)

I came across this story about a group which claims to have counted 1 million “words or phrases” in English. Number 1,000,000, by the way, is “Web 2.0“.

I wouldn’t take this too seriously — it’s very hard to count words in English, and it’s impossible to count phrases (here’s a good explanation why). What exactly do they mean by a phrase? The most common 2-word sequence in spoken English is “you know” — is this a phrase?

If you count words from a dictionary, you get a bit than more half a million. And if you want to know how to learn some of those 500-600,000 words, check out my latest online video presention, Vocabulary Development.

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Vocabulary Strategies video

The second in our new series of online video presentations is now available: Vocabulary Development. Learn how to increase your English vocabulary through reading, research, and learning strategies.

What do you think? Do you have any other strategies to suggest? Please click on the “comments” link under this post, or click on the title of the post and scroll down to add your ideas!

Hope you enjoy the video.

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English is Tough Stuff

Here’s an end-of-year challenge — a very silly poem about English pronunciation. I’ve seen different versions, but this one is the longest (and toughest) yet!

The way to read it is to remember that every pair of lines must RHYME (end in the same sound). So, “verse” will rhyme with “worse”, and “dizzy” rhymes with “busy” — even though they are spelled very differently!

Enjoy! And do post a question if you can’t work out a rhyme.

PS — here’s the same poem with a different author. Hmmm …

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