Library Subject Guides
Grammar is the system and structure of language, with syntax being the arrangement of words and how they are used in sentences. Good grammar and syntax will make your writing clear, precise, and engaging.
Language is based on convention and there are a number of conventions at play in the structure of words and sentences. If English is your first language you will have picked many of these principles up as a child without ever consciously thinking about them. For the rest of us we have to learn them more explicitly, which is not always straightforward: in English sometimes the conventions are logical, but sometimes they are contradictory (and sometimes they change as the language evolves). Still, having some understanding of these fundamental conventions will help us to write in a clear and meaningful way.
Nominalisation involves transforming other words, like verbs and adjectives, into nouns.
This technique allows for more concise expressions, enabling you to convey more information with fewer words.
It's particularly suited to academic writing, which often focuses on precise discussion of concepts and entities through the use of nouns and noun phrases (multiple words that are effectively a noun).
We analysed the data from the experiment and discovered that these plants react differently when they are exposed to too much light.
The analysis of the data from the experiment revealed the plants’ different reactions to exposure to too much light.
The action verb 'analysed' is transformed into the noun 'analysis', and 'discovered' becomes 'revelation' (implied through 'revealed').
World temperatures are increasing rapidly and scientists are becoming concerned.
The rapid increase in world temperatures is causing concern among scientists.
The adjective 'rapid' and the verb 'increasing' are combined into the noun phrase 'the rapid increase.'
Nominalisations often need some extra words to make them fit into a sentence, which can add to your wordcount and also gets in the way of the point you're making. It may be better to use the verb or adjective instead:
This study was an investigation into speech intelligibility in noise, with the aim of…
This study investigated speech intelligibility in noise, aiming to…
Reading accuracy was found to increase after the intervention.
Reading accuracy increased after the intervention.
Central to good, clear writing is good, clear sentences. So let's take a look at sentence structure in a bit more detail, starting with clauses.
A clause is a group of words with both a subject and a predicate. Every complete sentence is made up of at least one clause.
There are two types of clauses:
Dependent clauses rely on another part of a sentence to make complete sense; without that they're just a fragment — for instance:
What does the "although" refer to? And "one" what? Without the independent clause, this dependent clause is just a sentence fragment that lacks vital information. There's just not enough information there for us to understand what's going on.
A dependent clause usually begins with a subordinating conjunction, a relative pronoun, or some other word that causes it to become dependent. It will only tend to make sense when attached to an independent clause:
Now we know what the "one" was, and what the "although referred to.
Dependent clauses can come after or before the independent clause, so...
...also works.
Here's another example using the same independent clause but a different dependent one:
A sentence is a unit of grammar. It must contain at least one main clause. It can contain more than one clause. In writing, a sentence typically begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop:
A sentence fragment is a group of words that looks like a sentence, but actually isn’t a complete sentence. Sentence fragments are usually missing a subject or verb, or they do not express a complete thought. While it may be punctuated to look like a complete sentence, a fragment cannot stand on its own, like the dependent clause:
It's not a full sentence because it's missing whatever the 'because' bit refers to.
A sentence can have multiple clauses, but the more clauses you add to a sentence, the more confusing things are likely to get, and that's not going to help in terms of readability, as this sentence perhaps goes some way to demonstrating. Keeping your sentences relatively short will help readability.
Abbreviations are shortened forms of words or phrases, typically achieved by omitting letters from the original term. (e.g. "Uni" for "University")
Acronyms are words from the first letters of the words that make up the name of something (e.g. "e.g." for "exempli gratia", or "UOY" for "University of York").
Using acronyms and abbreviations effectively can enhance the flow of your writing, helping with clarity and readability. It can also really help with keeping to a wordcount!
Introduce acronyms and abbreviations only if they genuinely simplify your text.
You would generally only use an abbreviated term if it's going to appear at least three times in your paper (or if it's the most commonly accepted way of using that term). If it will be used less frequently than three times, you would generally write the term out in full each time.
Always write out the full term (with the acronym or abbreviation in brackets) when you first mention it in your work. That way you clearly define the abbreviated form for anyone who is unfamiliar with it. After that, you can use the acronym or abbreviation alone, safe in the knowledge that anyone who's read from the beginning will know what you're talking about.
For example:
There are many established Latin abbreviations such as 'N.B.' (nota bene), 'et al.' (and others), and 'etc.' (et cetera). You would generally want to avoid these in the main text of any academic writing — they are more suited to asides such as notes or parenthetical remarks (e.g. they are often used in citations because they are conveniently succinct). Acronym forms like 'N.B.' and 'e.g.' break up the flow of the text (when full words would be more readable) while the likes of 'etc.', 'et al.', et al. are vague and tend to suggest that you couldn't be bothered to think of any additional examples to support your point properly!
Commonly abbreviated words like: 'professor' (shortened to 'prof.') and "department" (shortened to 'dept.') will often be written in full in academic texts. This helps readability (and the abbreviated forms don't really gain anything in terms of wordcount so abbreviating in this way just looks like you couldn't be bothered to type).
Subject-verb agreement is essential in writing clear and grammatically correct sentences. You'll need to ensure that the verb in a sentence matches the subject in terms of number and person; for instance:
Verbs must agree with their subjects in number (singular or plural) and person (first, second, or third). Use singular verbs with singular subjects and plural verbs with plural subjects; for example...
...or...
The verb should be plural when the subject consists of two or more nouns or pronouns connected by ‘and’:
If the nouns or pronouns that constitute the subject are connected by ‘or’, ’nor’, ’either…or’, or ’neither…nor’, the verb will agree with the noun or pronoun closest to the verb; for instance:
Be careful when using noun phrases with post-modifiers. An example of such a phrase is a one that contains the word 'of'...
In this sentence, the subject is essentially the word ‘box’ (from the noun phrase "box of samples" — it's a box that we're talking about (that just happens to contain samples)). However, you may easily be misdirected by the plural ‘samples’, which is closer to the verb.
You should also be careful when one or more clauses appear between the subject and the verb. For example:
Of course, English being English and grammar being somewhat fluid, there may be cases where the the noun can assume plurality even when it's singular. Earlier on this page we talked about a sentence fragment being "a group of words that looks like a sentence" but we might equally have said "a group of words that look like a sentence" because "group" itself suggests a number of items. Both are justifiable. Grammar is a curious mix of logic and convention, and a guide like this can never hope to perfectly capture every aspect of academic language. But hopefully these pages have given you a general understanding of some of the conventions used.
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