Have you ever done a Google search to check if your writing is correct? Many of us do it all the time – especially when writing in our second language. The idea behind this approach is simple: The more results Google gives us (i.e. the more often our chunk is found on the Internet), the more ‘accepted’ it apparently is. For example, if we are not sure if the correct form is ‘looking forward to seeing you’ or ‘looking forward to see you’, Google will tell us it might be better to use the first (148,000,000 versus 15,800,000 results). This way, Google can serve as an incredibly useful tool to help us in our (academic) writing. Continue reading
