Word Usage errors
verbs
Allow
Look vs. look like
Offer
Constitute
nouns
Evidence
Doubt
Beamer
phrases
Related/prior work(s)
These days
Grammar
Articles (a/an, the)
Discourse
Ambiguous referents
Punctuation
Comma splice masked by a transitional expression
Commas
Formatting
Dashes in Latex
Write out small numbers
Latin abbreviations
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 familiesthese wings allow light to pass through them from aboveThatcher did not allow him to goI never allow myself the luxuryI 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 placesShe 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.
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 + 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 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. These outputs constitute the results of an election. → These outputs are the results...
Beamer is not an English word. The English word is projector. Come by my office to pick up more information on how to use commas. 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.
Offer
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.
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 - Evidence
The English noun
evidence is a non-countable abstract noun. In English you can't
count evidence; it's used in the same way as the nouns "literature",
"time," and "science". Thus, evidence does not take an indefinite
article. You cannot say "An evidence has been uncovered". If you
really want to talk about a specific piece of evidence you can say: "A
new piece of evidence has been uncovered". Note that you can use an
indefinite article with 'evidence': although you cannot say "An
evidence indicates," it's fine to say "The evidence indicates."
Doubt
In India the noun doubt is often
used to mean a follow-up question. For example, it's common to hear
sentences such as: "I have a small doubt about this week's homework"
or "Do you have time for a doubt?". American English speakers do not
use doubt in this way, and might even misinterpret the sentence "I
have a doubt," to mean something akin to "I don't believe you." In
English, a doubt refers to a status between belief and
disbelief, and indicates uncertainty or distrust of an alleged fact,
action, or decision. In the sentences above, the word question
would be used to indicate a request for more information. In fact, in
America, doubt is rarely used as as a countable noun. Doubt and
question are sometimes used interchangably, but in these cases no
indefinite article is used: "There's no doubt about his competence"
and "There's no question about his competence" mean the same thing.
Notice, however, that both words are used in this sentence to mean
uncertainty, rather than a lack of understanding. For more details,
see this
explanation of the differences in usage.
Beamer
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.
Commas
There should never be exactly one comma between the main subject and
main verb of your sentence. For example, consider this sentence:
Removing both prepositional phrases makes it clear that the comma
separates the sentence's subject (a comparison) from the main verb
(demonstrates). The author became confused because of the large
number of words between the subject and the verb. This is only one of
many good reasons to avoid inserting so many words between the subject
and verb of a sentence.
A systematic empirical comparison of the design choices under conditions that arise in real deployments, demonstrates that there is no single approach that is best in all scenarios.
Formatting dashes in LaTeX
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just as we finished finished testing our system―it had taken us nearly two years―we discovered that our algorithm had already been published.
Spell out integers one through nine
Many style guides suggest writing out all integers up to ten, but
don't explain why. Reading arabic numerals requires different mental
machinery than reading words (citation to come!). Forcing your reader
to switch between words and numerals creates unnecessary mental work.
Of course, writing out very large numbers is impractical—when the
number of words becomes large enough it's actually easier for a
reader to make the context switch and read the arabic numerals. It's unclear where exactly the
dividing line lies, but it is generally agreed that any integer less
than ten should be written in words. This is the policy of the IEEE
computer science style guide, for example. Read the style guide
for common exceptions to this rule.
Latin abbreviations
The abbreviation i.e. means 'that is' or
'in other words'. It cannot be used to introduce
arbitrary extra information or examples, but must introduce a
restatement, clarification, or refinement.
The abbreviation e.g. is used in place of 'for example.' If you start a list with e.g. or for example, do not end it with etc.; This is redundant. You've already established that your list is incomplete.
Both i.e. and e.g. must always be written with two periods. Both abbreviations should be preceded by some sort of punctuation, either a comma, colon, semi-colon, dash, or parenthesis. Neither e.g. nor i.e. is part of the sentence fragment that follows. Thus, most American usage guides require these abbreviations to be followed immediately by a comma. British usage is more flexible, and sometimes the comma is omitted. If you omit the comma, make sure that in your LaTeX document you put a backslash after the second period, to avoid creating a large end-of-sentence white space in the middle of a sentence.
No comma should precede et al. Since et is a full (Latin) word it is not followed by a period, whereas al. is an abbreviation and so is followed by a period.
Some publications italicize all foreign words, but others consider these Latin abbreviations to be common English words, and leave them in Roman font. Choose one style and be consistent.