Grammar Mistakes that get your Manuscript Desk Rejected!

Extremely long sentences. Probably the least acknowledged but most commonly found problem is long sentences. You might assume that writing long sentences makes you sound more intelligent or makes the paper seem cooler, but most readers just find long sentences difficult to understand, especially if it has multiple variables or abbreviations. Since you are writing the paper for readers, it’s better if you take their reading perspective into account; don’t throw together too many technical terms in one sentence, break down long sentences, and use semi-colons when writing related sentences.

Separating what could be two complete sentence with a comma instead of a full stop. For example, this is wrong- “Each participant completed their survey and were debriefed, all interview transcripts were analyzed”. This mistake is called a comma splice. Sentence clauses that are complete/independent on their own should instead be combined with a semicolon.

Apostrophe error. This is when you use an apostrophe incorrectly or forget to use it. Keep this in mind when working with plurals. For example, this is wrong- “The participant’s responses were compared across groups” because participants are many. Correct version is- “The participants’ responses were compared across groups.” Its and it’s are one of the most common errors. The apostrophe in it’s signals that letters have been omitted from it is or it has.

Informal wording. This can make your paper look vague or unprofessional. Examples include “kind of / sort of”, “nowadays”, “stuff,” or sentences like “Kids these days spend a lot of time gaming”, “Participants talked about stuff that made them leave the community”, or “A lot of gamers deal with other’s bad behaviors online”.

Subject–verb disagreement. This occurs when a singular subject takes a plural verb or a plural subject takes a singular verb. For example, “The effects of harassment was significant” should be “The effects of harassment were significant.”

What Should You Capitalize? Reading Randomly capitalized words Can be very Annoying for The Reader, even if you want to do it to Emphasize Something. Don’t capitalize variable names throughout the manuscript simply because it’s your variable of focus. Instead, capitalize proper nouns, i.e., names. This can include names of places, persons, scale/inventory name, country, language, and institute.

Plural forms of words. There are words called zero-plural nouns: nouns whose singular and plural forms are the same. Examples of words commonly used in papers include ‘software’, and ‘headquarters’. There are some other words too, whose plural form is less obvious. For example ‘criterion’ —> ‘criteria’, ‘datum’ —> ‘data’, ‘hypothesis’ —> ‘hypotheses’, ‘phenomenon’ —> ‘phenomena’, and ‘axis’ —> ‘axes’.

Mixing American and British English (behavior versus behaviour). Most journals accept either, but not a mix of both. Make sure to cross-check what the journal prefers.

Don’t switch between tense within the same section unless required. For example, describe completed procedures and findings in the past tense (“Participants completed the survey”), but use the present tense for established knowledge or to refer to tables and figures (“Table 1 shows the sample characteristics”).

Wordiness. This means using more words than necessary to communicate an idea. You might want to throw in extra words to fulfill some word quota but wordiness makes the paper look bloated and not to-the-point. You might even be doing it unintentionally. One way to catch wordiness is to reread your paper after a few days away from it. Some common examples of wordiness include-