Editing Guide to technical writing (section)

===Formal versus informal word usage===

In scientific writing for journals and your thesis, you need to avoid informal words and use a formal equivalent. If you are writing a popular magazine article, then these requirements can be ignored.  Here is a list of words to watch out for:

* Remove all contractions, as they are informal. For example, don't → do not, doesn't → does not, can't → cannot
* Avoid the use of the first person, "I" in technical writing, or "my."   "We" and "our" is okay. The first person is considered a little too informal by many reviewers and examiners. The objective is not to annoy the reader.
* Avoid the possessive form for technical words:  "the voltage's magnitude" → "the magnitude of the voltage"
* Amazing → significant
* Beautiful → elegant
* Big → large
* Bigger → larger
* Cheap → low cost
* Do → carry out; perform; conduct
* Done → carried out; performed; conducted
* Enormous → very large
* Fantastic → significant
* Get → obtain
* Great → significant
* Happen → occur
* Help → assist
* Huge → very large
* Humungous → extremely large
* Like → such as
* Marvelous → significant
* Seems  →  appears
* Some → a number of
* Splendid → significant
* Tiny → small
* Try  → attempt
* Wonderful → significant

Note: Whilst we should avoid the above informal words there are some rare exceptions.  From example the word "big" is informal, but it has now become a special scientific phrase when we talk about ''big data''.  In a specific case such as this "big data" has become an acceptable phrase in the literature.