What is Vagueness

Error-free scientific research articles are more likely to be accepted for publication than those permeated with errors. This chapter identifies, describes, and explains how to avoid 22 common language errors. Scientists need to master the genre of scientific writing to conform to the generic expectations of the community of practice. Based on a systematic analysis of the pedagogic literature, five categories of errors were identified in scientific research articles namely accuracy, brevity, clarity, objectivity, and formality. To gain a more in-depth understanding of the errors, a corpus investigation of scientific articles was conducted. A corpus of 200 draft research articles submitted for internal review at a research institute with university status was compiled, annotated, and analyzed. This investigation showed empirically the types of errors within these categories that may impinge on publication success. In total, 22 specific types of language errors were identified. These errors are explained, and ways for overcoming each of them are described.