Basic Principles and

Common Errors in
Research Writing
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RESEARCH PROPOSAL

Before a student can start his experimental study, he must be able to pass the
proposal before the panel of evaluators. They will scrutinize the research
proposal as to the reliability and validity of the study and give
recommendations whether the said proposal will be changed or terminated.
 
 Title Page

The title of the research report answers the question: “What IS study?”. It is
a brief statement of the topic that clearly identifies the variables investigated.
This includes the following:

 Research Title
 Submission Statement
 Full Name(s) of the researcher(s)
 Date submitted
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1 Review of Literature
1.2 Theoretical/Conceptual
Framework (optional)
1.3 Statement of the Problem (s)
1.4 Hypothesis (es) (if applicable)
1.5 Significance of the study (for
proposal include in INTRODUCTION; for
final paper, integrate in DISCUSSION)
1.6 Definition of Terms
1.7 Scope and Limitations (can
also be included in Chapter II)
CHAPTER III RESULTS
CHAPTER V SUMMARY AND
CONCLUSIONS
(OPTIONAL)
REFERENCES
APPENDICES
CHAPTER II METHODOLOGY
2.1 Research Design
2.2 Setting (if applicable)
2.3 Participants (if applicable)
2.4 Research Procedure (summary
only, stepwise procedure should be
included in the APPENDICES)
2.5 Statistical Treatment
2.6 Scope and Limitations (can
also be included in Chapter I but in final
paper integrate in DISCUSSION)
CHAPTER IV DISCUSSION
(The subsections in this chapter may be
organized and integrated in flexible ways,
depending on the nature of the topic,
study design, writing style, etc.)
Research writing is…
 the product of careful writing and
revising (evaluation of early attempts
at organizing and expressing ideas)

 essentially re-writing
Basic Principles in Research Writing
1. Know your readers
 scientific or research paper
 review paper
 notes, short communications
(excludes letters to the editor)
 conference paper
 poster paper
2. Write simply and
accurately
 use words that say precisely what
you mean
 use simple and familiar words
 conceal - hide
 conflagration - fire
 increment - increase
 laceration – wound
 repudiate – refuse
 avoid slang words
 slang – informal vocabulary of a particular
group of people

 slang
Lim’s (1980) statement is merely a “cop out”
because he refuses to acknowledge that
there are major morphological differences
between the two groups.

 standard
Lim’s (1980) statement fails to address this
issue because he refuses to acknowledge
that there are major morphological
differences between the two groups.
 Regulate use of which and of
 wordy
… a method which was known to be
dangerous
 Concise
… a dangerous method
 wordy
…characteristics of this species of
fish
 concise
… characteristics of this fish species
 Be concise
 some words that are often used
incorrectly
adopt – to make suitable, to adjust
adapt – to take as one’s own
affect – to influence
effect – to cause
imply – to imply or suggest indirectly
infer – to draw conclusions from the
evidence
 Be concise WORDY CONCISE
- say what you A second point is Second, secondly
that
mean clearly
and avoid More often than not Usually
embellishment An additional piece Further evidence
of evidence that supporting this
with
helps to support hypothesis
unnecessary this hypothesis
words or phrase
 Be concise WORDY CONCISE
- say what you In spite of that fact Although our
that our knowledge knowledge is
mean clearly at this point is far incomplete
and avoid from complete
embellishment At the present time Now
with
Owing to that fact Because
unnecessary that, in light of the
words or phrase fact that, because
of the fact that
3. Make sentences and
paragraphs short
 avoid putting too many ideas in a
sentence
 have a topic sentence for a
paragraph
 four to six sentences per paragraph
4. Use active voice
 excessive use of passive verbs (is,
was, has, have, had) is deadly read;
it results in more words than
necessary to say the same thing
 subject receives the action in the
passive voice while it does the
action in the active voice
 use passive voice sparingly

Passive Nearly half the seedlings were

eaten by snails.
Active Snails ate nearly half the
seedlings.
Passive Oxygen was consumed by
the mouse at a higher rate than…
Active The mouse consumed oxygen at
a higher rate than …
5. Be consistent
 carelessness is often shown in the
use of punctuation, handling of
numbers, and spelling
 Punctuation
A comma is placed before the conjunctions and and
or in a series
Ex: The infested tomato plants were sprayed,
burned, or buried.

Place periods and commas inside the quotation

marks; semicolons and colons go outside.
Ex: Jones (1997) calls Davidson’s explanation “the
most exciting model of this century.”

Apostrophe and s (‘s) or s and apostrophe (s’) fpr

expression of time and value.
Ex: ten peso’s worth of vegetables
five years’ cultivation of Bt corn
late 1970s but not late 1970’s
 Handling of numbers

 Spell out all numbers below 11 and

use figures for 11 and upward.
 When the numbers are used with
measures (which should be
abbreviated), these are all in figures
Ex: Ten students, nine days
1 km, 96 t/ha
 Two numbers coming together
Ex: ninety 10-m bamboo poles or ninety
10-meter bamboo poles
 Spelling AMERICAN BRITISH
-With words traveler traveller
having two hemoglobin haemoglobin
acceptable rationalize rationalise
spellings, center centre
choose one and program programme
use it honor honour
throughout color colour
-Words in ei or
ie
-Chief, weight
-Leisure, seize
 Compound words
 Some compound words
- airborne, cutworm, blackberry, childlike,
freshwater, glasshouse, hedgerows,
homemade, offtype, schoolchildren,
threefold
 Hyphenated words
- Fraction: three-fourths
- Technical compound unit: kilowatt-hour
- Adjective forms: fine-grained wood
Common Errors in
Research Working

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Dangling participles
 Participial phrase Present Past Past
should be placed Participle
close to the word
use used used
being modified
 Example
harvest harvested harvested
Poor: The farmer plowed
the field using a
tractor. break broke broken
Revised: The farmer,
using a tractor, write wrote written
plowed the field.
Vague pronoun reference
 Antecedent – the word to which a pronoun refers
to
 Vague:
The peanut sheller is equipped with a blower, but it
is inadequate.
(Which is inadequate, the sheller or the blower?)
 Clear:
 The peanut sheller, which is inadequate, is
equipped with a blower.
(Place the modifier, which is inadequate, near the
noun modified - sheller)
Comparisons
 Add words if necessary to make comparisons
 Comparisons should be between two or more
logical words or concepts.
Example:
Ambiguous - Average body length in
Libellula pulchella is
longer than Plathemis lydia.

Unambiguous - Average body length in

Libellula pulchella is longer than that
in Plathemis lydia.
Misplaced modifiers
 Faulty - After mating, the sperm
are stored in a sac within the
damselfly’s body.
 Revised - After mating, the female
damselfly stores sperm in a
sac within her body.

Who is actually mating, the sperm or the

dragonfly?
Lumped compound modifiers
 Poor - traditional subsistence
white potato products
practices

 Revised - traditional subsistence

practices for white potato
products
Pairs that are often confused
Among – shows relationship of more than two objects,
persons, etc.
Between – shows a relationship of two objects, persons etc.

Compare to – for unlike things

Compare with – for like things

Results in instead of results to

Superior to instead of superior than

Regardless – without regard to

Irregardless – a substandard word, unacceptable
Avoid repetition
Poor - In Kim’s study in 1997, she
failed to account for
temperature fluctuations (Kim, 1997).

Revised - Kim (1997) failed to account

for temperature fluctuations.
Verb tense
 Past tense is used when reporting your present findings.

 Present tense is used when discussing the published work

of others ( as part of existing theoretical framework)

- Example:
D. minutus was dominant in the zooplankton of Lake Mibaha
uring both years of study. This species is common in the
region (Minal and Sy, 1998).
Exceptions:
Ladera (1990) found that. . . .
Table 3 shows that . . . .
Parallelism
 When linking two or more word, phrases
or clauses in a sentence, put them in the
same grammatical form.

Faulty - These two species differ in color,

wingspan, and there they typically occur.

Parallel - These two species differ in color,

wingspan, and habitat.
Parallelism

Faulty - They introduced new ways of

planting corn and control of pests.

Parallel - They introduced new ways of

planting corn and controlling pests.
Use of jargon

Jargon
- technical language of a specialized
group
- often long-winded, confusing

Writers of jargon rely on long sentences, big

words, and sentences in the passive voice
Subject-verb agreement

Examples:
The size of all territories was (not were)
reduced at high population densities.
The zygote of the Ascomycetes develops
(not develop) into ascospores.
The color and shape of the beak are (not is)
important taxonomic features (not feature)
 Singular Plural

datum (rarely used) Data

 Singular
and index indices ( for numerical
expressions), indexes (in
plural books)
forms of testis testes
some
equipment equipment
words
medium media, mediums

syllabus syllabuses, syllabi

phenomenon phenomenons,
phenomena
It is worthwhile to. .

 Use a dictionary
 Consult a form and style guide
 Discuss your paper with your
classmates or your professors

 Also do not assume that to really sound

like a scientist you must write dry, stilted
prose or that complex ideas must be
couched in equally complex sentences
Practice makes perfect

 Practice writing and thinking within

the recommended form and style
 Writing is re-writing
 Proofread
 Spell-check