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while the parts constitute the whole:
The word compose is often used in place of comprise, though like constitute, the parts compose the whole, not visa versa. But by using the “is composed of” construction, the roles of the subject and object are reversed:
In my experience, this idiom is more common, especially in spoken English; probably due to the confusion about the proper use of comprise.
[Edit: due to broken CSS, wrong sentences were not properly marked wrong. Fixed.]
]]>Initialisms comprise a subset of abbreviations where the first letter of each word (more or less) of a phrase are combined. Some examples include the “Food and Drug Administration” = “FDA,” “adenosine di-phosphate” = “ADP”, and “4-(2-hydroxyethyl)-1-piperazineethanesulfonic acid” = “HEPES.”
In physical science manuscripts, nearly all initialisms should be written in all capital letters without spaces or periods. (There are some exceptions, such as “a.m.,” “r.m.s.d.,” etc.) This is certainly the case if you introduce new initialisms for brevity or clarity. When introducing an initialism, write it out first, followed by the abbrevation in parentheses: e.g. “structural genomics (SG).” Don’t underline or otherwise highlight the letters used in the initialism.* Don’t introduce new or uncommon initialisms unless you will be using the term several times.
Technically, not all initialisms are acronyms, even though in common spoken English the terms are largely used interchangeably. Acronyms comprise the subset of initialisms that are pronounced as a word rather than a spelled list of letters. For example, “AIDS” and “laser” are acronyms, while “ADP” and “NIH” are initialisms.
* Yes, I know I did that in the prior paragraph. Hey! What’s that over there! <runs away>
]]>There is some debate as to how “bioinformatics” should be used as an adjective. In English, some nouns may be used to modify other nouns in the same way as an adjective:
However, many nouns also have adjective forms, which are preferred in most contexts. For example, the adjective form of “biology” is “biological":
While the former is grammatically correct, to my ear the latter sounds more natural and idiomatic. For the noun “bioinformatics,” the Merriam Webster dictionary identifies “bioinformatic” as the adjective form:
Like the previous example, while I can’t definitively say that the former (noun modifier) form is grammatically incorrect, I prefer the adjective form “bioinformatic” when an adjective is called for.
]]>Articles are a subset of the group of words that modify nouns called determiners. The use of determiners is sophisticated and complex, and there are many rules that describe when they should be used, which should be used, and what nuances of meaning they convey. I meant to write a whole series of tips about their proper use, but then I came across an excellent page that beat me to it:
]]>The only exception to this rule is the use of degree, minutes, and seconds for angles and longitude:
Note that other uses of the degree symbol do not fall under this exception. In particular, when specifying degrees Celsius, put the degree symbol next to the “C”, not the numeral:
Some examples, using the adverb also:
(There is one extension to rule #2: if there is a modifier on the verb, the adverb goes between the modifier and the verb (underlined): “I have also processed the data.”)
These are all grammatically correct (though they do convey subtly different meanings). In contrast, there is one place where adverbs cannot go, and that is between the verb and the direct object:
In general, adverbs are never after the verb, save only in cases of intransitive verbs:
Here we are following rule #3, placing the adverb after the (nonexistent) direct object.
Today’s tip is dedicated to Maks, who was its inspiration.
]]>Why is this so confusing? It is probably due to the similarity of “to lead” to the verb to read: namely, both the present tenses and the past tenses of the two verbos rhyme when spoken aloud. However, while the present tense “read” and “lead” are spoken (with a long “ee” vowel) and spelled similarly, the past tense “read” and “led” sound alike (with a short “eh” vowel) but are spelled differently.
This, I am sad to say, is one of the many examples of the very complex relationship between the way English words are spelled and spoken. However, the good news is that this behavior, at least for verbs, is limited to irregular verbs like “read” and “lead.”
]]>However, if the verb contains a derivative of to be, the adverb comes after the to be (and before the main verb):
However, the verb forms of the terms do not have an ending “t”:
In which contexts does one use constraint vs. restraint ? Some scientists maintain that the two terms differ in meaning: namely, that a constraint fixes a term in a refinement process to an absolute value, while a restraint maintains a term around a correct value via some sort of energy or weighting function (as used for example by AMBER). However, if you’re not (say) the developer of a refinement program, the terms can be used more or less interchangeably.
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