Frequent Mistakes in Writing English

1. Be aware that the British and American spellings of a word may differ (e.g. behaviour vs. behavior, organise vs. organize). Choose for either of the two spellings and be consistent throughout your report. As the American influence in our field of science is stronger, it may be preferable to join the main stream and use American spelling.

2. The perfect tense of the passive voice (de voltooid verleden tijd van de lijdende vorm): Use has/have/had been instead of is/are/was/were when referring to some action that has finished. Example: A program consisting of more than 1000 lines of code has been written during the project. And not: ... is written ...

3. Different words in English for one Dutch word:
   • The use of an adjective as an adverb (het bijwoordelijk gebruik van een bijvoeglijk naamwoord): Do not forget that the adverb is constructed most of the time by adding the suffix -ly behind the adjective. Example: an easy task; and: The task is easy; but: The task can be performed easily.

   • Dan is then when referring to a moment in time (it happened then) but than in the comparative (vergelijkende trap; the results were worse than expected).

   • Veel is much when referring to something uncountable (there is much work to do) and many otherwise (there are many things to do). Similarly, the words little, less, and amount, that are used for uncountable things, have the counterparts few, fewer, and number for countable things.

4. Words often confused:
   • Paragraph in English means alinea in Dutch. The English translation of paragraaf is section.

   • Eventual(ly) in English means uiteindelijk in Dutch. The meaning of eventueel can be approximated in English by possible/possibly.

   • Do not interchange to (Dutch: te/aan/tot/naar/...) with too (Dutch: te/ook). Examples: I am going to walk to the city. He drinks a lot and smokes too much too.

5. Past forms of some irregular verbs: To send has sent for its past tense and past participle (As soon as the message has been sent, ...). In the same way, to build becomes built and spend becomes spent.

6. The use of the apostrophe: The use of an apostrophe in contractions like in shouldn't, won't, can't can better be avoided in technical texts (use: should not, will not, cannot). It is a serious mistake to interchange it's (a contraction of it is) and its (the possessive pronoun). Example: It is (It's) important that the component performs its main task.

7. The use of a and an: an is only used when the word that follows starts with a vowel sound. So, it is an uncle but a univeristy, because ``university'' is pronounced as ``you-niversity''. The rule also holds for abbreviations: it is an FU, because ``FU'' is pronounced as ``eff you'', although the unabbreviated form is ``functional unit''.