"Publish and prosper" is a series of posts about tips for researchers whose first language is not English but who submit papers to journals published in English.The series touches upon not only writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and style) but everything else relevant to publishing research papers that journal editors wish their authors knew.

1. Phrases that appear in pairs

2. Some phrases are always used in pairs ; it is grammatically wrong to leave out any one member of the pair. As with different kinds of brackets used in equations -- like ( ) or [ ] -- an opening or a right-hand member is always paired with its closing or left-hand member.

3. The moment you use from in a sentence to introduce a range, you must pair it with a to , as in "The average daily temperature ranged from 12 °C to 35 °C." If you use between , you must pair it with and , as in "The temperature at noon varied between 14 °C in winter and 45 °C in summer." These pairs should not be intermixed. To write, for example, that "the value varied between 10 to 100" is a grammatical error. When using the en dash to represent a range, neither from/to nor between/and should be used, for example, "The annual rainfall was 10-15 mm." Constructions like "the value ranged from 10-100" or "the value fell between 10-100" are incorrect.

4. The combination not only/but also is used when you want to emphasize one in a pair of properties, actions, features, etc., as in "Variety A not only yields more grain but also produces grain of superior quality." Typically, a comma is not placed before "but also."

5. Strictly speaking, either/or and neither/nor are also used only with two -- and no more than two -- alternatives, as in "The recording can be either digital or analog" and "Neither heat nor pressure can affect the result." Constructions like "The study can be either cross-sectional, longitudinal, or clinical" should be avoided.

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