中国作者撰写英语论文中的一些常见问题（续）
LetPub美籍编辑结合多年服务于英文科技论文的编辑经验，整理了一些关于中国作者撰写英语论文中的一些常见问题，此前已经与大家探讨过一些STYLE, GRAMMAR, PUNCTUATION方面的问题（点击回顾），今天则就时态，被动语态，翻译，混淆词，冠词，因与果现象方面进行了小结，旨在为中国作者进行英文写作提供指导，希望对您有所帮助。
• Present vs. past tense
一般现在式和一般过去式
Think carefully about the use of present vs. past tense verbs in your writing. Use past tense most of the time, because the events you describe have already happened. Use present tense to describe a current state of affairs (for example, what the current literature shows). Several instances of future tense ("we will do such and such") just sound very, very odd in the context of a report of research already completed.
写作的时候仔细思考一下一般现在式和一般过去式的用法：大多时候使用的是一般过去式，因为你要报道的研究/实验是已经发生过的事件（比如，A inhibited B in a dose-dependent manner）或别人过去发表的结果（比如，John Doe et al reported…）。使用一般现在式描述当前文献中广为接受的理论或现象，（例如：Tobacco use is linked to lung cancer）或写作时刻的动词（例如：Table 1 shows…; This suggests…）；在一篇研究报告中偶尔会使用将来时态 ("我们将会做…")，通常很少。
• PASSIVE VOICE: Avoid passive voice sentence constructions. They typically add words and decrease understanding. Particularly in the abstract, they increase length unnecessarily.
被动语态：很多作者都认为科学论文只能或必须多用被动语态，不能出现“we”, “I”等。但事实并非如此。虽然“I”的使用比较罕见，大多是杂志都是不忌讳适量的“we”的。相反，写作时应避免使用被动语态的句子结构。他们通常会导致字数增加，且加大理解难度。尤其在摘要部分，使用被动语态会增加不必要的字数。很多作者的初稿中都发现有这样的问题，我们修改了很多。
• CONFUSABLE WORDS: The English language contains many words that look alike but are in fact different words with different meanings. They may or may not sound alike, as well. Some words English words, to make this even more difficult, can function as either a noun or a verb ("affect" and "effect" are two notoriously confused words – both can be nouns and both can be verbs). Your spelling checker may not pick these up, because the incorrectly used word might actually be spelled correctly. And grammar checkers are not really set up to pick out incorrectly used words. So the only way to find any such instances is proofreading by eye.
易混淆词：英语中有很多词看起来很相像，但其实是不同的词且有着不同的含义。它们的发音听起来有可能相似，也有可能不同。有些既可以做名词又可以做动词的一类单词区别起来就更加困难了（“affect”和“effect”是两个出了名的易混淆词语 - 既可以是名词，也可以是动词）。你的拼写检查器可能已经检查不出来了，因为不正确使用的词实际上可能是正确的拼写。而语法检查功能尚不能挑出错误使用的单词。因此，唯一的办法只有通过眼睛校对。
• ARTICLES: In English, singular nouns are often preceded by an article ("a," "an," or "the"). The articles "a" and "an" are indefinite, referring to any occurrence. Use "a" for nouns that begin with a consonant and "an" for nouns that begin with a vowel (or sometimes a vowel sound, as in "hour). The article "the" is the definite article, referring to a specific instance. Eastern languages (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, Russian) do not use articles in the same fashion that English does, so native speakers of those languages need to be particularly careful to include appropriate articles in their English-language writing.
冠词：在英语中，单数名词之前往往会有一个冠词（"a," "an," 或者 "the"）。冠词“a”和“an”不是特定的，泛指一类事物。 “a” 用在辅音开头的单词前，“an”用在元音开头的单词前面（或者元音发音的单词前，如 “hour”）。 “the”是定冠词，指的是一个特定的事件。东方语言（例如，中国，日本，俄罗斯）不同于英语，它们不像英语这样使用冠词，以这些语言为母语的写作者在用英语写文章的时候需要格外注意使用合适的冠词。
• CAUSE, PROVE: The words “cause” and “prove” are problem words and need extra caution in scientific writing. Demonstrating causality requires much more than a single statistical test (authors should do some background reading on this issue). Using a null hypothesis testing procedure means that we can never “prove” any hypothesis, because all we get is a probability that the null hypothesis can be rejected. Therefore, there is always a possibility, perhaps small, that we might be rejecting the null hypothesis in error (it might, in fact, be correct – this is known as a Type I error).
“cause”和“prove”是问题单词，在科技论文写作中需要引起格外注意，除非非常确定，否则一定要慎用。证明因果关系（causality）比单一的检验的要求要多的多（在这个问题上作者应该阅读一些相关背景的材料）。使用空的假设检验意味着我们永远不能“证明（prove）”任何假设，因为我们所得到的只是一个可能被拒绝的零假设。概率上说我们总可能会错误地拒绝零假设。（这种可能性或许很小，但可能其实是正确的 - 这就是所谓的I型错误）。
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