Professional Editor's Corner: Articles

The British Council (2006) found that 375 million individuals speak English as a first language, another 375 million as a second language, and 750 million as a foreign language. That amounts to about 1.5 billion, or one-fifth of the world’s population. Clearly proficiency in English is of increasing importance.

In the course of our work at Polished Paper, we see a lot of writing from non-native speakers of English. In fact, we have regular customers on every continent! Well, except for Antarctica. That has allowed us to note a few common problem areas. In this blog entry and others to come, we’ll look at some basics, important aspects of English to get right so that you don’t immediately stand out as a non-native English speaker.

We’ll start with definite and indefinite articles. They are important in English, but a great many languages use neither (198 to be exact). A couple of major examples are Chinese and Russian. For native speakers of such languages, understanding the difference between definite and indefinite articles can pose a challenge.

Let’s start with the difference between abstract and concrete nouns.

Abstract nouns are general. They refer to ideas, feelings, or qualities. Examples include peace, civilization, society, love, communism, democracy, beauty, and Manifest Destiny.  

Concrete nouns are specific. They refer to a person, place, or thing that you can ‘perceive’ with one of the five senses. You can see them, smell them, touch them, hear them, and/or taste them. Examples include sneeze, planet, curry, city, Pyramids, soil, and vice-president.

So what are the kinds of articles and which do we use with abstract and concrete nouns?
Nouns in English appear 1) with NO article, 2) with the INDEFINITE article (‘a’ before nouns starting with a consonant, ‘an” before nouns starting with a vowel), or 3) with the DEFINITE article (‘the’)

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Basic Rules
1. Abstract nouns (in their most basic form) do not require an article at all.
 Society is a collection of individuals who have common goals and values.
 Civilizations come and go.

2. Concrete nouns can take either “a/an” or “the” in different circumstances. It depends HOW SPECIFIC the noun is. That is, it depends whether you are talking about ONE OF MANY or JUST ONE (no other exists).

Can I have AN apple? (Any apple is fine.)
Can I have THE apple on the counter? (I want one specific apple: the apple on the counter. No other apple will do.)

3. We sometimes make abstract nouns less general by adding detail. When we do that, we use either “a/an” or “the” depending on how specific we are.

ONE OF MANY
A love that has no conditions is the best.
An idea I like is getting kids to do creative writing in first grade.

JUST ONE
The ancient civilization of Egypt emerged about five thousand years ago.
The democracy of the United States is much different from the democracy that the Athenians practiced.

Rules for Plural Ideas
1. When you would use ‘a/an’ for a noun in the singular, drop it in the plural.
I want a black horse. (Any black horse is okay.)
With the plural, we still have this idea of ONE OF MANY. But instead of one member of a single group, we have one group within a larger group.
Black horses are my favorite kind. (Out of all horses—white, grey, brown, and black—black horses are my favorite.)
2. When you would not use an article or when you would use ‘the’ for a noun in the singular, do the same for the plural.

Friendship is more important than work.
Friendships are more important than work.
In both cases, these are general, abstracts.

For ‘the’ in the plural, we are still talking about JUST ONE (only now, we mean just one group).
The girl who lives next door is pretty. (Of all the girls in the world, there is only one girl that lives next door.)
The girls who live on my street are pretty. (Of all the groups of girls in the world, there is only one group of girls on my street.)

Blog source: https://polishedpaper.com/blog/professional-editors-corner-articles

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Voice and Person in APA Style

 

Imagine you are writing a dissertation or journal article in the social sciences. You want to sound objective and professional. For that purpose, which person should you use: first (I/we) or third (he/she/they)? Which voice: active or passive? Once upon a time, you would have said third and passive without even blinking. Not so now.

If you start with the first question, asking whether the first person (I, we) is appropriate for writing in the social sciences, you will find people on both sides of the fence. The choice of whether to use this ultimately depends on the institution to which you belong or the journal to which you are submitting. However, as far as APA style is concerned, the first person is not only appropriate but perhaps also ideal. Why? Quite simply, for clarity and ethical considerations.

Clarity

The APA style manual indicates in 2.04, the section on writing abstracts, that abstracts should be “coherent and readable,” which, for the style manual authors, means using the active rather than the passive voice (26). Moreover, in 3.18, the section on verbs, the authors recommend using the active voice everywhere except possibly the Method section, where “the passive voice is acceptable . . . when you want to focus on the object or recipient of the action rather than the actor” (emphasis mine, 77). The examples in these sections use “the authors” or “we” to demonstrate use of the active. In fact, more often than not, the style manual uses “I” or “we” in examples of correct usage.

Therefore, unless precluded by other standards (i.e., those of your institution or a specific journal), you want, as much as possible, to use the active vs. the passive voice.

Why is the active rather than the passive clearer? And why does using the active often mean using the first person?

First, the active voice is direct. When action occurs, the subject is doing the action. Moreover, when you are describing your own actions in the active, the most direct way, the clearest way, is to use “I” or “we.”

Take, for example, the following sentence: “I conducted interviews with the 29 participants.”

“I,” the subject, is doing the action, “conducting interviews.”

The passive is indirect. In such language, the subject is the receiver of the action. We can put the example above into the passive using “be” and the past participle (and switching the subject and object).

“The interviews were conducted by me.”

Notice, we can construct the passive without ever telling who is doing the action simply by leaving out the prepositional phrase (“by me”). That is to say, the passive allows us to obscure or omit important details.

Let’s look at another example to see where confusion can occur.

“The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed.”

Here, you are not explaining who is doing what, which could cause confusion. Did the interviewer audio-record and then transcribe the audio-recording him or herself, or did the interviewer use a third party? This could be important for someone especially concerned with confidentiality. Even with steps not at all involving confidentiality, a fellow researcher may want to replicate the study and knowing who did what, how, and when will then be important.

 

Ethical Considerations

Let’s look at another example to see where ethical considerations enter the picture.

“The surveys were given to the respondents.”

This sentence raises all the concerns about clarity and one more: agency. When you use the passive to talk about people who are participating in a study, you are treating them like objects because they have action done TO them rather than doing the action themselves. This is problematic.

In recent decades, social scientists have worked hard to protect research participants’ privacy and mental and physical well-being (through informed consent, among other measures). Therefore, when you discuss study participants, you want to give them as much agency as possible. The APA style manual explains this in greater detail in Guideline 3 (Acknowledge Participation) of the Guidelines for Reducing Bias (73).

For example, instead of writing, “The listening task was administered to the participants,” you should say, “The participants completed the listening task.”

What does all this mean? What should you do?

1. In all sections, except perhaps the Method section, use the active voice and the first person (I/we) to describe your own actions and the third to describe the actions of other researchers (e.g., in the Literature Review section).

2. If you use the passive voice in the Method section, do so as little as possible and do not do so when you are talking about participants’ actions.

3. If you are not comfortable using the first person for yourself (or your research team) or if other standards conflict, consider using the third person for you or your research team (“the present researcher(s)”).

4. Finally, whichever choice you make, let us know so that we can edit accordingly.

Blog source: https://polishedpaper.com/blog/voice-and-person-apa-style

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Capitalization in APA Style

In APA style, you will most likely need to describe a number of tests, measures, and theories, among other things. Your first impulse might be to capitalize everything because you will use specific names, but capitalization is not always acceptable. Here’s a brief guide to capitalization in APA.

Theories

In general, do not capitalize the words in names of theories. Capitalize only people's names, for example, Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences and the cognitive learning theory. 

Tests

Capitalize only exact, complete titles of tests. Do NOT capitalize shortened or inexact forms, for example, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory vs. the Minnesota inventory and the Stroop Color-Word Interference Test vs. the Stroop color test

Note: You should always capitalize place and people names (when they appear in names of theories, tests, or anything else).

Scales

Many tests in the social sciences contain subsections called scales. Do not capitalize the words “test” or “scale” if they refer to subsections of tests but do capitalize the actual name of the scale, for example, the MMPI Aggressiveness scale and the MVPI Aversions scale.

Conditions

For an experiment, you will

 likely need to discuss different groups of participants. One group will be the control, for which you do not apply “treatment.” Then you'll have one or more groups that do receive “treatment.” You may refer to these treatments as “conditions.” So when do you capitalize group and/or condition names?

In general, almost never.

ex: the experimental and control groups

ex: the lecture condition group and the

 self-learning condition group

The only time you do capitalize is if you assigned them letters or numbers (e.g., Groups 1 and 2 and Conditions A and B).

Factors, Components, Trials, and Items

Capitalize factors, components, trials, and items when they precede a number or letter (not a variable) but not otherwise, for example, Factors 1 and 2 vs. Big Five personality factors and Trial 2 vs. trial n (where n is a variable indicating how many trials there are).

Medicines

Only capitalize brand names, not generics. For example, you do not capitalize sertraline (the generic name), but you do capitalize Zoloft (the brand name for that generic).

Health Conditions

In names of health conditions, only capitalize people words, for example, Crohn’s disease and diabetes.

Courses and Departments

Capitalize the names of specific departments within specific universities or companies not uses that are more general, for example, Cornell University’s Department of Linguistics vs. a department of linguistics.

Capitalize the names of specific courses (exact titles) not uses that are more general, for example, Linear Algebra 1 vs. mathematics courses.

Titles of Books, Articles, and Journals

In the text (the body of a paper), capitalize the first word, the first word after a colon, and all major words (not “a,” “an,” “the,” or prepositions or conjunctions of 3 or fewer letters).

ex. The Journey Toward Reconciliation (“toward” is capitalized even though it’s a preposition because it has more than three letters)

In the reference list, use the same rule for journals only. Articles and books take all lowercase except for proper nouns (e.g., United States), the first word, and the first word after a colon.

Book/Paper Sections

Capitalize the name of the section but not the word “section,” for example, the Method section.

Do not capitalize other words referring to other common parts of books, papers, or tables, for example, page 13 and row 7.

There you have it, a brief overview of capitalization in APA style!

Blog source: https://polishedpaper.com/blog/capitalization-apa-style 

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