Common English errors at SWS

Word Usage errors

verbs
Allow
Look vs. look like
Offer
Constitute

phrases
Related/prior work(s)
These days

Grammar
Articles (a/an, the)

Discourse
Ambiguous referents

Formatting
Dashes in Latex

Allow

The grammar is allow + object + to + verb

Below are a number of examples sentences with allow from a large corpus:

The judge can allow you to repay the debt

These allow national governments to help struggling families

these wings allow light to pass through them from above

Thatcher did not allow him to go

I never allow myself the luxury

I wouldn't allow my daughter to stand on the bus stop.

He urged the authorities to allow the abortion on humanitarian grounds.

The telescopic handle extends to allow easy access to those hard to reach places

She is afflicted with one of those nameless 19th-century ailments that allow her to faint at will.

Farmers think that the president's credit policy toward the Soviet Union will allow them to sell an additional 12 million tons of corn this year.

When attached to both telephone and television, it will complete the system to allow transactions to occur between the home and the lottery host mainframe computer.

Please allow 15 minutes for questions.

From this data, you can see that the grammar of allow is: allow + object + to + verb. You can also follow allow with a noun, but this is much less common.

I couldn’t find any examples in which allow is used with other prepositions, such as for. There are several other English verbs that have this pattern. An incomplete list includes permit and order.

Semantics/Meaning: I often see allow being used to mean enable, as in This procedure allows you to program more efficiently. This is not a correct meaning of allow, which has the implication of being permitted. A procedure does not give you permission to do something, rather, it makes doing that thing possible or easier. Better verbs to use include for the meaning of make something possible (rather than give permission) are: enable, equip, make it possible.

A list of related words for allow from the Merriam-Webster Thesaurus: Synonyms: have, permit, suffer, Related Words: authorize, commission, license (also licence); accede (to), acquiesce, agree (to), assent (to), consent (to), okay, warrant; accord, concede, grant, sanction, vouchsafe; admit, brook, condone, countenance, endure, support, tolerate

How something looks vs. What something looks like

How + look: asking for a physical description or an opinion

How does the car look? Nice.

(talking about a project report) How does it look? Professional.

In this context, the question for look is formed with how.

What + look like: asking for a physical or content description

What do these programs look like? They’re simple and easy to implement.

Incorrect: How do these programs look like?

The question form for look like is formed with What.

Offer

Offer requires an animate subject. Therefore, a program or a tool cannot "offer" something. Usually, the correct verb would be to have or to be, very simple but useful English verbs.

Examples:

The telescope offers a larger diameter. → The telescope has a larger diameter.
A hiding place offers a viable countermeasure. → A hiding place is a viable countermeasure.
A filter offers protection ... → A filter protects ...
Current analysis techniques only recently offered support → Current analysis techniques only recently supported

Here are a couple of examples of how offer is used from the Collins concordancer program.


  on to a birdkeeper. [p] The best advice I can offer anyone thinking of keeping British Birds is   
 be a full member of NATO, but he's prepared to offer a number of suggestions which he hopes will   
  A BBC TOPICAL TAPES SPECIAL BBC Topical Tapes offer a fascinating special series on the most      
     to get details of the sort of therapy they offer, the training provided, and a list of trained 
 vamp," she complained Great," was all he would offer. `And we'll need to take some serious money.' 
       wing of the business. But Lloyd Webber's offer of 232p, double the flotation price,          
 smoothness of pale chartreuse. Several boatmen offer the jaunt, but look for, though you can't     
 whenever possible. There was plenty of ball on offer, with poor touch-finding attempts from both   
           [p] [p] Service contracts will be on offer at lower prices than the £ 93 charged

This is a specific instance of a general style suggestion, which is to use the simplest language possible that's accurate. See the constitute example below for another example.

Constitute

To be is usually more readable than to constitute. See the following examples.

It constitutes a proof → It is a proof; It proves

X constitutes a challenging task. → X is a challenging task; X is challenging.

Language-based techniques constitute salient tools for reliably analyzing security protocols. → Language-based techniques are ...

These outputs constitute the results of an election. → These outputs are the results...

Here are some examples of constitute from the Collins concordancer.

 of distinguished members of the Society who constitute the Technical Committee.  I do not know     
        of planets, stars and galaxies which constitute our universe on the grand scale. Not a      
          contracts. Public sector contracts constitute a significant market, which, until now, has 
   bonking away with our animated hero, must constitute something of a cinema first.  Brings a      
 in the teaching-learning interaction, which constitute the basic content of microteaching          
   guards known as tsuba, the cream of which constitute the main part of SYZ's exhibition. The      
  investigate this world's mysteries - which constitute almost the entirety of life's experience -

Related/Prior Work(s)

Many writers use the plural noun "works" when discussing related work (i.e. "related works", "prior works", "other works"). Although "works" can in some cases be used as a plural noun (e.g. "public works", "famous works of art"), the plural form is generally not used when discussing related work. Certainly do not title a section in your paper "Related Works"--it should be "Related Work". Constructing sentences without using the plural can be difficult. Soon I will add some examples, selected from actual computer science papers, of how to refer to related work, without creating awkward sentences.

These days

I've heard a number of people use the term "these days" when giving a talk. Although this is an English phrase, it's not used very often, and often sounds awkward. It's difficult to describe exactly how native English speakers the phrase. The sterotypical usage is an older person shaking their head and sighing: "Kids these days are just not responsible/serious/...." Below are a few usage examples from a corpus. Study the list and try to see the usage pattern. If you're not positive that you're using "these days" correctly, I would instead use one of the following: nowadays, recently, in recent times, the past few years/months/days.

                                  Even in these days of healthy eating there's still a place for a
           Portugal is rarely associated, these days, with the Algarve. 
            You can get fanzines anywhere these days. They're written by enthusiastic people. 
 are so many weird types getting ordained these days that you've got to be damned careful if you're
 The electronic world is so much in tune, these days, with the living one, it is not surprising we
      designer clothes, polo and parties. These days they do not make many chaps like this who can
   So much commercial flying is automated these days that this would present no problem [p] Gerry
   CORPORATE love affairs don't last long these days. Germany's Gehe Group yesterday threatened to
 quickest way to make a buck in Hollywood these days.
            I have often said that one of these days a plane would drop out of the sky. 
  because you don't see them much in town these days doesn't mean they're drinking. Mary Fred
   countries--what--what do you call them these days.
 Most children get taken to school by car these days.

Formatting dashes in LaTeX

There are three standard hyphens/dashes in classic typesetting: the hyphen, the en-dash, and the em-dash, distinguished by length. The hyphen is the shortest, and it is used to join words into compounds (such as time-sensitive). The en-dash, generated in LaTeX by two adjacent hyphens, is used for numerical ranges, such as "pages 9–17". The en-dash and the em-dash (three adjacent hyphens in LaTeX) can both be used as an intra-sentence separator.

The comma, the dash, and parenthesis all serve as intra-sentence separators. John Trimble described them eloquently. The comma, he said, is the workhorse separator. It handles all the routine chores. The parenthesis is used to slip some additional information into the sentence in the form of a "low-voiced aside." The dash, on the other hand, is used when drama or strong emphasis is desired.

When used as inter-sentence punctuation, dashes are frequently mis-formatted. There are three commonly accepted formatting styles.

spaced en-dash: Use an en-dash (two adjacent hyphens in LaTeX), with whitespace on both sides. For example, this would be written in LaTeX as follows:
```
Just as we finished finished testing our system -- it had taken us nearly two years -- we discovered that our algorithm had already been published.
```
and would appear like this:
Just as we finished finished testing our system – it had taken us nearly two years – we discovered that our algorithm had already been published.
spaced em-dash: Use an em-dash (three adjacent spaces in LaTeX), with whitespace on both sides. For example, this would be written in LaTeX as follow:
```
Just as we finished finished testing our system --- it had taken us nearly two years --- we discovered that our algorithm had already been published.
```
and would appear like this:
Just as we finished finished testing our system ― it had taken us nearly two years ― we discovered that our algorithm had already been published.
unspaced em-dash: Use an em-dash (three adjacent spaces in LaTeX), with no whitespace on either side. For example, this would be written in LaTeX as follow:
```
Just as we finished finished testing our system---it had taken us nearly two years---we discovered that our algorithm had already been published.
```
and would appear like this:
Just as we finished finished testing our system―it had taken us nearly two years―we discovered that our algorithm had already been published.

Use whichever option you prefer, but be consistent. Make sure you use whitespace on both sides, or on neither side, but never on only one side. If you use an en-dash you must leave space on either side. Whichever option you choose, do not use a hyphen, for it is meeker and more unassuming than even a comma.