James Dyer Professor of Geography Common Term Paper Writing Errors

it's & its

• it's is a contraction for "it is"
• its is a possessive adjective (each corridor must be viewed on its own individual merit)

affect & effect

• "affect" is usually a verb meaning "to influence" (individual species are far more affected by broad-scale human disturbance)
• "effect" is usually a noun meaning "result" (proper studies require an understanding of the regional effect of past land use)

data

• The word "data" is plural ("data are," not "data is")

punctuation marks and quotation marks

• In the American style, punctuation marks go inside quotation marks (the proposed approach involves a “risk analysis,” whereby the relative success of conservation with and without corridors should be assessed case-by-case before any conservation plan is implemented.)

• A comma indicates a pause in the sentence. (For instance, there is no pause (and no reason for a comma) in "Whereas, Gleason did not take such a deterministic approach.").  Use commas to link independent and dependent clauses, or to separate items in a list (Given the lack of really rigorous studies, lack of data, and the fact that the effectiveness of corridors may be taxa-specific, they feel that each corridor must be looked at on its own individual merit.)
• "Although" is not a synonym for "therefore" or "however."  Sentences should not start with "Although, ..."
• Semi-colons link two independent clauses with no connecting words (The approach transcends geographic scale; it is able to model both local and continental-scale phenomena.)
• Use a colon after a complete statement in order to introduce directly related ideas, such as a list (vegetation patterns emerge through the interaction of three templates: the physical environment, biotic processes, and disturbance.)

•   If a number starts your sentence, write it out: "Eight sites were located in..." instead of "8 sites were located in..."

• Latin names should be italicized; generally, the genus is capitalized, the species name ("specific epithet") is not: Tsuga canadensis.  You may abbreviate the genus (T. canadensis), but you must first provide its full name earlier in the section.
  

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