Your professional help to improve your written English

Month: March 2019

Effective or efficient?

Have you ever thought about the difference between effective and efficient?

EFFECTIVE

Use effective when you want to say that something gives the result that was intended. Effective tells us whether something has been done, not how it was done. The focus is on the result.

Those pills are really effective – my headache disappeared in less than twenty minutes.
The manager’s speech was short but remarkably effective.

Being effective can also mean officially start.

The new regulation is effective from 1 October.

EFFICIENT

Use efficient to say that somebody or something works well without wasting time, money or energy. Efficient tells us how something was achieved. The focus is on the process, on minimising cost or waste.

We are installing a much more efficient cooling system.
She is a very efficient salesperson.

To sum up, effective is goal-oriented and focuses on the ability to produce a wanted result; efficient focuses on how little was wasted to produce the result. Or, to quote Peter Drucker, being effective means doing the right things, being efficient means doing things right.

An efficient company will do things at a lower cost (with higher profit), but it must also meet the customers’ requirements by being effective.

The corresponding nouns are effectiveness and efficiency.

If you have seven minutes to spare, here is a video explaining the difference between effective and efficient. And here you can read about affect and effect.

A man is lying on his back on a sun chair
Efficient use of a sun chair

Structure your text

As a non-native writer of English you are naturally influenced by your own language and culture. When you write in English for an academic or scientific journal, you should bear in mind the Anglo-American style. It is especially important how you structure your text.

The text should have a clear structure with a linear presentation of the main idea and sub-ideas. Scientific journal articles are usually structured according to what is abbreviated as IMRAD, referring to Introduction, Material and Methods, Results and Discussion. To facilitate understanding, each paragraph deals with one issue, and a set of paragraphs form a logical unit.

Sentences, too, must be clearly structured. The subject comes before the verb, and adverbs and adverb phrases begin or end a sentence.

Construction worker doing restoration work in the Forum Romanum, Rome, Italy
Structure

Writers from other cultures may be used to a different way of expanding on an idea; they may deviate from the topic, giving further examples and explanations, often in complicated sentences.

In some languages, adverb phrases can be inserted in the middle of a sentence, often breaking up verb forms or a verb and its object. This is not done in English, where the adverb phrase instead is put at the beginning or the end of the sentence.

Don’t write:
*The company has in Sweden 600 employees. (For the use of the asterisk * read at the end of this page.)
Write instead:
In Sweden the company has 600 employees.
Or:
The company has 600 employees in Sweden.

Don’t write:
*The technology is by some manufacturers expected to be dominant on the market within five years.
Write instead:
Some manufacturers expect the technology to be dominant on the market within five years.
This example also shows that it is better to change passive voice to active.

Some other Latin abbreviations in English

There are many abbreviations of Latin words in English, but most of the words behind those abbreviations are not used in English in their full form.

The following are some Latin abbreviations used in English:

a.m.ante meridiembefore noon
ca.circaabout
cf.confer(bring together) compare
c.p.caeteris paribusother things being equal
e.g.exempli gratiafor example
et al.et alia, et aliae, et aliiand others
etc.et caeteraand so on
f., ff.folium, foliapage(s)
i.a.inter aliaamong other things
ibid.ibidemin the same place
i.e.id estthat is
lb.librapound (weight)
nem.con.nemine contradicenteno one dissenting
op.cit.opera citatothe work cited
p.a.per annumper year
p.m.post meridiemafter noon
p.p.per procurationemthrough the agency of
q.v.quod videon this matter see
rein rein the matter of
sicsic erat scriptumthus it was written
vs. (in legal text v.)versusagainst
viz.videlicetnamely, that is to say

You can use sic to indicate a mistake in a cited text to show that the mistake was in the original text and is not yours. It is usually put inside square brackets: [sic]

The following are capitalised:

ADanno Dominiin the year of the Lord
C.V.curriculum vitaecourse of life
M.O.modus operandimethod of operating
N.B.nota benenote well
P.S.post scriptumafter what has been written

Even if Latin words often are italicised in English text, you should write their abbreviations in normal font.

Read more about e.g. and i.e. and about et al.

Graffiti showing the abbreviations OK and K.O.
No, no, these are not Latin abbreviations!

What is the correct way of writing et al.?

The Latin abbreviation et al. is short for et alia (et aliae, et alii), meaning and others (alia is masculine plural, aliae is feminine plural and alii neuter plural).

When referring to literature, the abbreviation is used to replace author or editor names when there are more than two (in some cases more than three) authors or editors:

Simon et al. (2000) showed the importance of R&D for production.
This has been pointed out in previous research (e.g., Eriksson et al., 2016; Palm et al., 2016; Platts et al., 1996).

Make sure you put the full stop in the right place! The word et is not abbreviated but alia is, so the full stop must be after al.

When you write et al., the verb must of course have its plural form:
Simon et al. (2000) have pointed out that …

In the possessive form, et al. is followed by an apostrophe and an s:
Simon et al.’s (2000) contribution to research …

Latin words are sometimes italicised in English text, but abbreviations should not be in italics, unless the publisher requires it.

You will find some common Latin abbreviations in English here.

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