Dr. James A. Bednar

Many grammar books state that a comma is always required after “i.e.” and “e.g.” used in a sentence, as in…

… In Britain and some other less-enlightened countries, the comma is often omitted before an ‘and’ in a list. For…

Writing standards disagree about whether to use “I” and “we” (and their various forms) in academic work. Some argue that…

In American English (and in some cases for British English), punctuation following a bit of quoted text is traditionally placed…

Discussing existing work Whenever you bring up an existing piece of research, whether it is your own or someone else’s,…

Formatting and grammar rules When in doubt about grammar or page format, researchers in psychology and computer science generally follow…

Rules for formal writing are quite strict, though often unstated. Formal writing is used in academic and scientific settings whenever…

Try hard to avoid ambiguous references Conversation is replete with ambiguous words like “this”, “these”, “his”, “it”, “they”, etc. These…