80
A common term is audit
North American - Attend (a class) informally, not for academic credit.
Oxford Dictionaries Online
69
This naming convention extends back to ancient times.
Many of Aristotle's (384–322 BC) works are titled On ---
Lucretius (99 - 55 BC) wrote De rerum natura or On the Nature of Things
In 44 BC Cicero wrote De officiis, or On Obligation
I am not certain whether these writers titled their own works. I'm vaguely remembering that these titles are simply how ...
26
If a student intends to sit in on a course without registering, this is indeed called auditing. Auditing can be formal, in which case it might not even be free and could require arrangement with the university, or it can be informal if the professor agrees to allow it (which they may or may not technically be allowed to do).
Mary wasn't sure whether to ...
24
The phenomenon appears to be a result of translation that dates back to early Greek writings. Early works by Greek writers would introduce a topic with Περὶ, meaning about, which Latin scholars translated to De, and were then translated to English as On. The trend of starting essays with On then stuck with English writers, who adopted it in their own ...
21
While all the other answers are very well thought out, let me point out a case where "On" keeps a title from being misleading.
The paper
On large subsets of 𝔽qn with no three-term arithmetic progression,
gives an upper bound on how large such subsets can be. In other words, it shows that no extremely large subsets exist. If this paper had been titled ...
13
Since there are many row values at each step of the process, one approach we considered was to aggregate all the row values into a single value
Since there are many row values at each step of the process, one approach we contemplated was to aggregate all the row values into a single value
https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/consider
examined or scrutinised ...
11
The best advice is: don't.
Just leave it out.
Readers do not like being constantly (or even repeatedly) reminded to pay attention.
If it is a fact, state it as a fact. If it is an opinion, clarify that it is an opinion. If it is somehow related to other statements, use connectors to clarify or emphasize that relationship, such as however, moreover, ...
9
Britain is still a real place.
British English is still a live, evolving, form of English.
British engineering, scientific and academic accomplishments of the last few decades might only include minor things like the world wide web, but do spare a thought for those who use similar dialects too.
In international use, Oxford English is quite commonly used (...
8
The earliest example I can discover of an academic work whose title included the phrase towards a new is George Berkeley's An essay towards a new theory of vision, published in 1709. However, this seems to be a general instance of 17th–19th century authors who started their publications with the phrase An essay towards.
For example, we have An Essay ...
8
I see no need to eliminate gender from the pronouns, since the gender was already revealed.
There is a reason not to eliminate gender from the pronouns: it makes the text harder to follow.
Why tie yourself up in knots if it's not needed?
On the other hand, if you don't want to reveal a user's gender to the readers, then don't disclose it in the first ...
8
Perhaps equifinality? From Wikipedia,
Equifinality is the principle that in open systems a given end state
can be reached by many potential means. Also meaning that a goal can
be reached by many ways.
And from Merriam-Webster:
the property of allowing or having the same effect or result from
different events
8
Consider practitioner which is defined here as
A person actively engaged in an art, discipline, or profession, especially medicine.
7
It is to be observed that
(/Please/One should/) Observe that
(One should) Bear in mind that
(One should) Keep in mind that
7
The editor is right to object to your phrase, or at least, I wouldn't use it in formal writing either. It might depend on the field but it just doesn't feel "right" to me. I don't, however, agree with the suggested alternative. I would instead suggest you write:
A is ten times the height of B.
That clearly and unambiguously means that the height(A) = 10 ...
6
I think in my neck of the woods it'd be more idiomatic to speak of a (vast) sea of knowledge. But a (great) ocean of knowledge is okay, indeed if you google around you will see many many people using it.
6
The earliest example I can find is the 1668 work by John Wilkins: "An Essay towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language"¹ , where he proposed a universal language and a decimal system of measure not unlike the modern metric system.
Wilkins was well-known and regarded (having headed colleges at both Oxford and Cambridge, and helped found the ...
6
In an academic paper you should not use words interchangeably.
Once you start referring to an experiment or to a study, then you should use the same term throughout the paper.
In the example you give, a study may be part of an experiment and so the words would have different specific meanings in the context of your paper. You should define your use of the ...
6
There is about zero chance of genuine confusion, but depending on the subject and context the allusion or image may be present in the minds of some readers. You have to decide for yourself whether this is liable to be a significant risk with your target audience and whether the worst case outcome of people noting the 'shadow meaning' is liable to be ...
6
In the context of an academic paper, I think you'll be safe. The word should be readily properly understood by your audience, as groundbreaking papers and research are often labeled as seminal works. No one will be "confused."
For what it's worth, NOAD lists as its first meaning:
seminal (adj):
1) (of a work, event, moment, or figure) strongly ...
6
My opinion-
propound a thesis
present a thesis
When you propound an idea, you put it forward.
(vocabulary.com)
6
I would use the word submit:
3.0 [WITH OBJECT] Present (a proposal, application, or other document) to a person or body for consideration or judgement:
the panel’s report was submitted to a parliamentary committee
3.1 [WITH CLAUSE] (Especially in judicial contexts) suggest; argue:
I submit my thesis with compelling arguments for peer review.
6
comment reposted as an answer, extracted and edited for brevity from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_signal :
Signals that indicate support:
[no signal] - a simple citation of another source.
'e.g' (exempli gratia) = 'for example'.
'accord' is used to introduce other supporting sources to follow up previous citations.
'see' indicates that the ...
6
The only way I've ever heard rule used in a scientific context is with various conventions for solving problems — eg. Right-hand rule (for finding cross-product directions), Kirchhoff's Rules, etc. These are human constructs, but I suppose they're based on phenomena in nature that we've repeatedly observed and that seem to hold true. (so perhaps you could ...
6
Can it mean what they described it as?
Sure.
The adjective "business" is qualifying the sense of "optional" which is intended... in their case, allegedly, the ironic sense that the business will call it "optional" but penalize failure to appear.
This is a bog standard aspect of the English language and, indeed, all adjectival use. The adjective describes ...
6
Contra some previous posters I would submit that there is a semantic distinction in using the prepostion 'on' in the title, and that it concerns not the subject of said text, so much as what kind of treatment of the subject, the prospective reader may expect.
Suppose the title was ' The fibration method for zero-cycles and rational points'. And suppose that ...
5
auditor - a university student registered for a course without credit and without obligation to do work assigned to the class.
dictionary.com definition
5
Your concern should be how easy it is for a human reader to parse meaning out of your sentences, not the absolute length of a sentence. Long sentences often induce parsing errors because phrasal heads are separated from their modifiers, and you eventually run into memory limitations. Take an example from Caro's biography of Robert Moses:
Kern believes ...
5
In any type of writing—academic or informal or anything in between—passive voice can be used. As was noted in the posted question, in a number of word processing programs any passive constructions are marked as problematic, but such style advice is not required to be obeyed.
Moreover, again as pointed out above, academic writing has long been viewed as an ...
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