Sentence of the Week #2

[From Michelle Yeoman:]

Editing Solution: Last Week’s Sentence

Special thanks to those of you posted comments last week. As a reminder, below is Sentence of the Week #1:

We studied how a transcription factor affect the inflammation response. 

As some of you noted, the sentence contains an error in subject-verb agreement. If the subject is in the singular form, then the verb should also be in the singular form. The singular form of affect is affects. Below is the corrected sentence:

We studied how a transcription factor affects the inflammation response.

Some commenters changed the sentence into passive voice. Historically, researchers were encouraged to use passive voice in order to appear objective. However, active voice now tends to be preferred, and first person (“I” or “we”) generally is acceptable. Sometimes active voice and first person are necessary for clarity. 

Passive voice is often acceptable in the methods section of a paper, because the subject performing the action tends to be unimportant to specify there.

Now, onward to this week’s sentence …

Sentence of the Week #2

The sentence below has 1 definite error:

These researchers challenged the traditionally idea that women cannot do such work.

Please correct the error, and submit the corrected sentence and any remarks as a comment on this post. I plan to post and discuss the solution next week.

Do you have a sentence that you would like us to consider using as the Sentence of the Week? Please e-mail submissions to Michelle at msyeoman@gmail.com with the subject line “Sentence of the Week”.  Submissions should be your own work—don’t nominate a colleague’s writing :). 

Please also feel free to e-mail suggestions relating to this series.