This guide is based on a study of referees' reports and letters from journal editors on the reasons why papers written by non-native researchers are rejected due to problems with English usage, style and grammar. It draws on English-related errors from around 5000 papers written by non-native authors, 500 abstracts by PhD students, and over 1000 hours of teaching researchers how to write and present research papers.

Introduction.- 1. Nouns: plurals, countable vs uncountable.- 2. Genitive: the possessive form of nouns.- 3. Indefinite article: a / an.- 4. Definite article: the.- 5. Zero article: no article.- 6. Quantifiers: any, some, much, many, each, every etc.- 7. Relative pronouns: that, which, who, whose.- 8. Tenses: present, past, future.- 9. Conditional forms: zero, first, second, third.- 10. Passive vs active: impersonal vs personal forms.- 11. Imperative, infinitive, gerund (-ing form).- 12. Modal verbs: can, may, could, should, must etc.- 13. Link words (adverbs and conjunctions): also, although, but etc.- 14. Adverbs and prepositions: already, yet, at, in, of etc.- 15. Sentence length, conciseness, clarity and ambiguity.- 16. Word order: nouns and verbs.- 17. Word order: adverbs.- 18. Word order: adjectives and past participles.- 19. Comparative and superlative: -er, -est, irregular forms.- 20. Measurements: abbreviations, symbols, use of articles.- 21. Numbers: words vs numerals, plurals, use of articles etc.- 22. Acronyms: usage, grammar, plurals, punctuation.- 23. Abbreviations and Latin words: usage, meaning, punctuation.- 24. Capitalization: headings, dates, figures etc.- 25. Punctuation: apostrophes, colons, commas etc.- 26. Referring to the literature.- 27. Figures and tables: making reference, writing captions and legends.- 28. Spelling: rules, US vs GB, typical typos.- Appendix 1 - Verbs, nouns and adjectives + prepositions.- Appendix 2 - Glossary of terms used in this book.- Index.