This article illustrates how faculty and students can use the ACS Journals Search to examine assumptions about writing in chemistry. We examined common writing practices in chemistry including (i) the use of nominalizations, active and passive voice, and personal pronouns, (ii) words to avoid (e.g., researcher, very), (iii) words to use (e.g., hedging words, linking words), (iv) confusing word pairs (e.g., affect–effect, since–because), and (v) confusing plurals (e.g., data). To facilitate our analysis, we first used our own chemistry-writing database (comprising 200 chemistry journal articles) and then used the ACS Journals Search. The results are presented as activities that can be easily incorporated into a wide variety of chemistry courses. The goals of the proposed activities are to improve students' awareness of common writing practices in chemistry and to teach students to use the ACS Journals Search for their own continued writing development.
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Sample exercises involving nominalizations, voice, personal pronouns (we), words to avoid and to use, and confusing word pairs and plurals
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