Proofreading of English Academic Papers

Due to the differences in expression between Chinese and English, articles written by Chinese scholars may contain grammatical errors or vague logic, making it difficult to accurately convey the authors' ideas. It is truly regrettable if research results that scholars have worked hard on are rejected by foreign journals solely due to language barriers, which is a cause for deep regret and disappointment. Therefore, proofreading English papers is an essential step.

Firstly, proofreading English academic papers includes four aspects: tense, voice, person, and sentence structure. Firstly, different tenses can clearly and explicitly show the chronological order of research activities among various objects and their connections and influences. The present tense is often used to describe the purpose, content, methods, steps, and results of research, representing objective facts, universal truths, or current states. The past tense is commonly used to refer to the past, indicating actions or states that occurred at a specific time in the past, such as research findings, processes, or results that occurred before the writing of the paper. The present perfect tense is generally used to introduce completed actions, connecting past events with the present situation and emphasizing the impact and influence of the past on the present. Secondly, Chinese tends to use the active voice, while in English academic papers, especially in scientific and technical papers, the passive voice is more common. For example, "A diode can be used as a rectifier because in it the current flows in one direction." The passive voice does not need to specify the doer of the action, which aligns well with the professionalism and objectivity of academic papers, facilitating the description of objective research processes and results and making the research more universal. Additionally, its sentence structure allows for flexible filling of sentence components. Thirdly, English academic papers use the third person more often than the first person ("I" or "we"), especially in methods and results sections. Fourth, postnominal attributives are widely used in English academic papers, with common elements such as prepositional phrases, relative clauses, participial phrases, adjective phrases, infinitive phrases, and noun phrases acting as postnominal attributives, e.g., "Most of countries of Middle America have experienced earthquakes of magnitudes M <8.0."

Secondly, proofreading should also focus on the content of English academic papers. The title of the paper should be innovative, concise, and informative. When writing an abstract, it should be concise, clear, and predominantly in the third person or passive voice. Informational abstracts are commonly used in scientific journals, typically including objectives, methods, results, and conclusions; indicative abstracts only provide a summary of the content of the document and are suitable for review articles. Furthermore, the structure of the paper should be clear and organized, with materials being authentic and reliable.

Lastly, all proofreading of English academic papers should be based on the original article, respecting the original content and structure, avoiding making changes that may confuse the text further or even contradict the author's intentions.

◀️：Formatting of English Academic Papers

▶️： The Use of Parallel Texts