academic-writing-refiner

Installation
SKILL.md

Academic Writing Refiner

Overview

Academic papers are judged not only on their scientific merit but also on the quality of their English. Grammatical errors, awkward phrasing, and non-native patterns (commonly called "Chinglish" when originating from Chinese-English interference) can distract reviewers and undermine credibility.

This skill provides a systematic checklist for identifying and correcting common academic English issues. It draws from the academic-writing-guide repository (327+ stars) maintained by SYSUSELab, which catalogs frequent mistakes observed in student and researcher manuscripts across STEM disciplines.

The approach is checklist-driven: rather than relying solely on automated tools, researchers learn to recognize error patterns and self-edit effectively. This skill is especially useful for non-native English speakers preparing manuscripts for international journals and conferences.

Common Error Categories

Grammar and Syntax Errors

Error Type Example (Wrong) Correction
Article misuse "We propose a novel the method" "We propose a novel method"
Subject-verb disagreement "The results shows that..." "The results show that..."
Tense inconsistency "We train the model and evaluated it" "We trained the model and evaluated it"
Related skills
Installs
34
GitHub Stars
217
First Seen
Mar 10, 2026