How can I quickly check if a word or phrase is correct scientific English?

You try to write your papers clearly, precisely and correctly. You go to English lessons; you regularly read articles from well-edited journals* — not just for the science but for the language too. But sometimes you’re not sure what’s correct and you need the right word or phrase immediately. So what can you do?

Here’s a way you can quickly search well-edited journals to find the correct word or phrase. In this example, let’s imagine that you’re not sure if “ultrasound disintegration” or “ultrasonic disintegration” is correct.

1) Direct your web browser to Google.
2) Type in “site:nature.com ultrasound disintegration”. (Note that there’s no space in “site:nature.com”.)
3) You see that only one article uses this term.
4) Type in “site:nature.com ultrasonic disintegration”.
5) You see that many articles use this term, so you can feel confident that it’s correct. If you want to be extra sure, click on the links and check to be sure that the phrase appears in a journal that has the word “Nature” in its title.

I recommend that most scientists search the Nature Publishing Group website (nature.com). The big journals published by this group are well-edited, such as Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Physics, Nature Biotechnology, etc. However, you do have to be careful with some of the smaller journals that they publish. In particular, Scientific Reports has many language errors.

Doctors of human and veterinary medicine have another option: the British Medical Journal (now called the BMJ). The editing at bmj.com is superb. In this example, let’s imagine that you’re wondering if the phrase “diagnostic parameters” is correct.
1) Direct your web browser to Google.
2) Type in “site:bmj.com diagnostic parameters” (again, no space).
3) On the first page of results, you can’t even find the phrase “diagnostic parameters”! Instead, “diagnostic criteria” is in bold.
4) You click on one of the links, and see that they are using the phrase in the context that you want. Now you are sure that “diagnostic criteria” is the phrase you want.

Of course, this kind of searching has the potential to be abused. To avoid plagiarism, you should check if words and phrases are correct, not look for sentences that you can use. But keeping this in mind, you now have a useful tool to help improve your writing. Good luck!

[*Update 2014.11.06: The second sentence was originally written as “…you read articles from big, well-edited journals…” I’ve deleted “big” because, although I think that the editing is often better in higher-impact journals, I don’t want to suggest that it is always bad in smaller journals. Nor do I want to suggest that the editors at smaller journals are not hard-working and competent scientists. However, some have limited English skills and many work part-time with little support. They may also have trouble attracting good reviewers. As a result, the editing in bigger journals is often better, so I suggest that you search those journals to find correct words and phrases. My thanks to the scientist who pointed out to me how my words could be interpreted.]

(This post is part of a monthly series. Next month, I’ll write about a specific word or phrase that’s commonly misused.)