Writing a research paper? Use other papers as examples!

For many of us, grammar isn’t the hardest part of writing an academic paper - word use is. Sometimes we simply don’t know if we’re choosing the right words, or using them correctly. For example, is it ‘with regard to’ or ‘with regards to’? And can we use ‘distinct’ instead of ‘different’, or are these two not used in the same way?

Good news: You can now use Writefull’s database to explore how words and phrase are used in scientific publications. Writefull’s database covers millions of journal articles from different fields. By searching for a word or phrase, you get to see how authors normally use this word/phrase in their articles. You can do different types of searches: from a simple search to see how often a word or phrase occurs and how it is used, to more advanced searches to see how you can complete your own phrases. Watch this video to learn more:

You can access the database from within the Writefull editor. This makes switching between your text and the database easy. Completely stuck? Then use Writefull’s Sentence Palette, a browsable library of ready-made phrases to paste directly into your text.

Sign up to get free access on writefull.com.

We’re always looking for ways to improve Writefull. Any ideas on search options we could add? Please get in touch with us at help@writefull.com.

About the author
Hilde is Chief Applied Linguist at Writefull.