Basic issues of grammar and style students get wrong

This is a list of issues of grammar and style our students consistently get wrong. It could provide the basis for a supportive discussion of good style.

• Arbitrary changing of tense

“it was found that those who were a year into their training were higher in prejudices than those who are newly recruited”

• Anthropomorphism

This area remains ambiguous and difficult to empirically test

research also displays that prejudice exists

The theory of socialization believes

• apostrophe use.

• Not knowing the difference between clauses and sentences. Which is annoying.

• ...theories as to why the police...

• Unsure of word meaning: e.g.

implemeting versus implicating

affect versus effect

• Connectives: with, from, through

“Although there is evidence that the police hold certain prejudices through selection and socialisation effects it is important to see how these differ with the general public.”

• et al. is short for et alia (‘and others’ in Latin), so it’s et al. not et all or et al

• Explanations versus descriptions

“Implicit bias explains bias that we have against certain groups of people which are at an unconscious level.”

• Word endings:

“Police officers in the UK are racially bias towards ethnic minorities”

“Police officers’ prejudice behaviour towards ethnic minorities…”

“not following up on a good lead about the suspects quick enough”

• Superfluous ‘as to’

“The reason as to why this is such an important question…”

• Superfluous capitalisation

“the police may be Implicitly racist”

• Arbitrary/inaccurate word splitting and combining:

“performance improves overtime”

“the diet of the urban goat could include any thing from crisps to shoes”

• Theories are not causes

“Gender bias is due to Social Identity Theory”

• Thesaurus rash (replacing a simply understood word with a synonym, adding nothing and making the sentence harder to follow:

“Research also displays that, after two years of police training,…” – the word is ‘shows’. Also note that this is anthropomorphism. Researchers, not research, show things.

• Avoid the passive voice

“It is argued” -> “I argue”, “We argue”, “They argue”

Standards of evidence

• It’s not enough to report the conclusions of others. You must also give some sense of the specific evidence (method, results) upon which their conclusions are based.

• News outlets are not high-reliability sources. Use only to demonstrate presence of media coverage, not to support arguments concerning data/statistics

Standards of criticism

“This study was completed in France, so may not apply to the UK population”

“researchers have not studied every single police force worldwide so it would be inaccurate to generalise this to every police institution.”

This is not a good criticism. Every study has to be conducted somewhere, and the criticism does not go on to establish whether or not similar results are found in other countries. Unless you have conducted (or found) a systematic review and it’s the case that there’s no relevant evidence outside a restricted population, don’t make this point. You may also wish to consider how likely cultural differences are a priori, depending on the question you are examining. For example, if shooting someone in the head causes brain damage in France, we can probably conclude it also does so in the UK, without conducting the experiment.