Invited-rejected: the perils of superficiality

you will be noticed. Do not publish and you will not even exist. In other words, publish or perish. We all make mistakes, but some mistakes are just too silly for words. The effect of smoking and excessive alcohol consumption on patients with a previous history of heart disease were examined. In this example, the distance between the subject of the sentence 'effect' and the verb 'were' creates confusion in the mind of the writer, and a basic error occurs. Of course, the correct form of the verb is 'was'. Using our percu-taneous technique, patients required shorter post-operative hospitalization. The so-called dangling participle 'using' makes it unclear as to who actually did perform the technique in question. It might, theoretically but not logically, have been the patients themselves. Of course, it is often difficult to write clearly in one's own language. It seems that people have stopped reading as much as they once did. Read more write better, of course. Nowadays, it is difficult to see someone engrossed in a book. Indeed, looking around tube-train carriages you will generally see people pounding out messages on their smartphones (an interesting term for a device that possibly makes people less smart), or consulting Facebook. Need I say more? King Cnut (more commonly known as Ca-nute, c. 985 or 995 – 1035) was the lord of all Denmark, of all England, of all Norway, and also of Scotland. " You are part of my Superficiality is all around us. Unfortunately. Attempting to polish the English of innumerable papers from each and every kind of specialty, I see things that confirm this point all the time. Don't get me wrong, the superficiality I am talking about in no way refers to the quality of a person's, or more likely a team's, research or clinical procedure. I am talking about that irritating tendency not to pay the slightest attention to grammar, syntax, uniformity , or even spelling. Of course, when peer reviewers have the misfortune to run into work written in this way, should the manuscript get past the in-house editors and make it to the peer-review stage, they will automatically put 2+2 together and think that if the authors could not be bothered to check such basic necessities then what guarantees exist regarding the content within this work asking to be published. Indeed, publication has to be looked upon as completion of your experimental …