Tutorial on Grammar
​in Scientific Writing 

Grammar defines what a sentence is, what it is not, and what it can be. For an engineer or scientist, understanding grammar is important not only to avoid errors that can undermine one's credibility but also to gain a foundation for understanding strategies at the sentence level to connect ideas and emphasize important details. Sadly, around 1970, a flawed educational movement in English-speaking countries persuaded many schools to stop teaching grammar [1-3]. This 2-hour tutorial, which attempts to bridge that gap of knowledge, has the following goals:
  1. give you a grammatical foundation so that you are certain whether a group of words that you have written is a sentence; 
  2. define the essential terms of grammar so that not only can you analyze your own writing but you can also provide valuable comments to colleagues on their documents; and
  3. teach you effective strategies in scientific writing for connecting ideas and emphasizing details at the sentence level.

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Sponsors of This Page:
Rockwell Automation
​ National Science Foundation, NSF EAGER Award 1752096
1. Take Grammar Diagnostic ​(10 minutes)

The following four questions test your practical knowledge of grammar. Answer the four questions and the check your answers in the paragraph below. If you struggle with these questions, then you should consider completing the tutorial.
  1. Identify whether the following group of words is a sentence, a run-on, or a fragment: An oval shape is necessary in the die cavity, otherwise, the flow of metal would be affected.
  2. ​Identify whether the following group of words is a sentence, a run-on, or a fragment: In the family Giraffidae, modern-day giraffes are one of only two remaining species left, the other being the endangered okapi.
  3. ​Identify the grammatical subject of the following sentence: To gather data about our target customers, we examined customer reviews of the product on Amazon.com.
  4. Provide an example of an infinitive phrase.
Recognizing and correcting errors is an important part of understanding grammar. The first two questions test your recognition of whether a group of words is a sentence. The first item is a run-on, while the second is a grammatically correct sentence. In addition to knowing what a sentence is and is not, you should also know grammatical terms so that you can master important strategies in scientific writing such as connecting ideas in paragraphs and relying on active voice, Understanding such terms also allows you to make concrete comments about the documents of your colleagues. One such term is the subject of a sentence, which the third question asked you to identify.  In that question's sentence, the subject is we. The fourth question asks for an example of another important grammatical term in scientific writing: the infinitive phrase. Such an example would be "to measure the velocity." As this tutorial will show, an infinitive phrase is a valuable sentence opener in scientific writing. 
​2. View Films: Writing Sentences, Not Fragments ​(15 minutes)

These films not only help you avoid an embarrassing error in scientific writing but also teach you sophisticated ways to emphasize details. While you do not need to memorize textbook definitions of the following terms [4-6], you should feel comfortable enough with the terms that you could use them in a professional conversation:
Sentence
Subject (of Sentence)
Noun
​Pronoun
Verb (Finite)
Clause
Independent Clause
​Dependent Clause
​Fragment
Phrase

Part I of Grammar: Writing Sentences, Not Fragments

Part I of Grammar: Emphasizing with Phrases and Clauses
3. View Films: Writing Sentences, Not Run-Ons (15 minutes)

These films not only help you avoid an embarrassing error in scientific writing (the run-on), but also help you connect details in sophisticated ways. While you do not need to memorize textbook definitions of the following terms [4-6], you should feel comfortable enough with the terms that you could use them in a professional conversation:
​Conjunction (Coordinating)
Subordinating Conjunction
​Run-On
​Prepositional Phrase
​Infinitive Phrase
Participle​ Phrase

Part II of Grammar: Adding Phrases and Dependent Clauses

Part II of Grammar: Writing Sentences, Not Run-Ons
4. Perform the Following Exercises (25 minutes)

​​a. Phrases and Clauses​
​b. Run-Ons and Fragments (Basic)
​c. Run-Ons and Fragments (Advanced)
5. View Films: Achieving Connections, Proper Placements, and Parallelism (15 minutes)

These films teach important principles to make your ideas connect and to prepare readers for longer sentences. After viewing the films of this portion, you need not have textbook definitions of the following terms [4-6], but you should feel comfortable enough with them that you could use them in professional conversation:
Preposition
Adverb
​Adjective
Misplaced Modifier
​Faulty Parallelism

Part III of Grammar: Making Connections

Part III of Grammar: Properly Placing Modifiers

​Part III of Grammar: Achieving Parallelism
6. Perform the Following Exercises ​(30 minutes)

a. Parts of Speech (Basic)
b. Parts of Speech (Advanced)
c. Modifiers, Pronouns, and Parallelism
d. Advanced Grammar
​References
  1. Peg Tyre, "The Writing Revolution," The Atlantic Monthly (October 2012), pp. 99-100.
  2. Catherine Walker, "Time to Stop Avoiding Grammar Rules," The Guardian (September 2012).
  3. Tessa Schlesinger, "Why Grammar Matters," Owlcation (7 September 2017). 
  4. Michael Alley, The Craft of Scientific Writing, 4th ed. (New York: Springer, 2018).
  5. Cheryl Glenn and Loretta Gray, The Writer's Harbrace Handbook, 5th ed. (Boston: Cengage Learning, 2012).
  6. William A. Sabin, The Gregg Reference Manual: A Manual of Style, Grammar, Usage, and Formatting, 11th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010).