English Editing for Indian Researchers in Australia: Writing Patterns and How to Address Them

Indian students and researchers form one of the largest international academic communities in Australian universities. India has become one of the two dominant source countries for international enrolments in Australian higher education, with Indian students concentrated at research-intensive universities across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth. Many of these researchers are working in English they have spoken, read, and studied throughout their entire academic careers. The writing challenges they encounter in Australian universities are not the result of limited English ability. They arise from something more specific: the gap between Indian English, which is a fully developed and internally consistent variety of English, and the international academic English that high-impact journals expect.

This distinction matters. Indian researchers often have a stronger foundation in English grammar and academic vocabulary than researchers from many other language backgrounds. The writing problems that affect their manuscripts are not basic grammatical errors. They are more subtle: differences in register, formality, sentence length conventions, preposition patterns, and rhetorical organization that reflect the Indian English variety rather than the international journal standard. Understanding what these differences are and where they come from is the first step toward addressing them systematically in your own writing.

Indian English and International Academic English

English editing for Indian researchers in Australia starts with understanding that Indian English is not a deficient form of British or American English. It is a nativized variety of English with its own established conventions, developed across more than 150 years of English use in India as a language of education, government, law, and literature. India has produced some of the most distinguished English-language writers, scholars, and scientists in the world. The issue for Indian researchers writing for international journals is not that their English is wrong in absolute terms. It is that international journal conventions were largely shaped by British and American academic writing traditions, and Indian English diverges from those traditions in specific, addressable ways.

India is also one of the world's most linguistically diverse countries. Researchers whose home languages include Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, Gujarati, Malayalam, Punjabi, or any of the other major Indian languages bring different structural backgrounds to their English writing. Some patterns described below apply broadly across Indian English regardless of home language. Others are more specific to particular language families. Where the distinction matters, it is noted.

Register and Formality: When Formal Becomes Over-Formal

One of the most consistent features of Indian English academic writing is a register that is more formal, more elaborate, and more deferential than the international journal standard. This is not a flaw in the writing. It reflects a genuine cultural orientation toward respect, hierarchy, and careful expression that is deeply embedded in Indian academic and professional communication. In Indian academic culture, demonstrating respect for the reader, for the field, and for prior scholars through elevated and careful language is a mark of seriousness. The problem is that international English academic journals have moved toward a register that is precise and direct, where elaborate formality reads as imprecision rather than respect.

This over-formality manifests in several specific ways in academic manuscripts.

Elaborate introductory phrases

Indian academic writing frequently opens sentences and paragraphs with extended introductory phrases that establish the writer's awareness of the complexity of the topic before making the point. Phrases like "It is humbly submitted that," "It is pertinent to note in this context that," "With due deference to the seminal work of," and "It goes without saying that" are markers of Indian academic register that signal respect and intellectual care in Indian writing contexts. In international journal manuscripts, they read as filler that delays the point and adds words without adding meaning. International journal reviewers are reading for the claim. Anything that precedes the claim without contributing to it creates friction.

"It is pertinent to observe, in this context, that the extant literature on emotional labor in healthcare settings has, by and large, focused predominantly on Western institutional contexts, thereby leaving a significant lacuna with respect to the Indian primary healthcare setting."

The observation here is genuinely useful. The gap in the literature is real and worth stating. But the sentence takes 44 words to say what 20 words could say more effectively:

"Research on emotional labor in healthcare has focused predominantly on Western settings, leaving the Indian primary healthcare context largely unexplored."

The second version is not blunt or disrespectful. It is direct. That is what international journal writing expects.

Redundant qualification

Indian academic English frequently stacks qualifications in ways that are intended to demonstrate intellectual rigor but that read in international journal contexts as hedging beyond what the evidence requires. Phrases like "it may perhaps be suggested," "to some extent at least," "broadly speaking, in general terms," and "it would not be entirely incorrect to state" are intended to signal appropriate epistemic caution. In international academic English, appropriate caution is expressed through established hedging conventions ("may suggest," "appears to," "indicates that") rather than stacked qualifiers. Multiple qualification markers in a single claim produce a sentence that is harder to read and that actually conveys less precision, not more, because the accumulation of qualifications makes it difficult for the reader to identify what the writer is committing to.

Preposition Patterns

Preposition errors are one of the most reliable markers of Indian English in academic manuscripts, and they are among the most difficult errors for Indian researchers to self-identify because the prepositions that feel natural in Indian English are genuinely correct within that variety. The problem is that they differ from the conventions of international academic English in ways that peer reviewers notice.

Several of the most common Indian English preposition patterns differ from standard academic English because Indian languages handle the grammatical functions that English prepositions express through different mechanisms. Hindi, for example, uses postpositions rather than prepositions: the relational word follows the noun rather than preceding it. When the postposition system is mapped onto English, the result is preposition choices that feel right to a Hindi speaker but that deviate from standard English conventions.

Common preposition patterns to check

"Discuss about" is one of the most frequent and most immediately visible Indian English preposition patterns in academic writing. "Discuss" in standard English is a transitive verb that takes a direct object without a preposition: "This paper discusses the relationship between X and Y." "Discuss about" is standard in Indian English but non-standard in international academic English. Check every instance of "discuss" in your manuscript and remove "about" where it follows it.

"Return back," "revert back," and "refer back" are redundant constructions common in Indian academic English where "return," "revert," and "refer" already carry the directional meaning that "back" is intended to add. "The participants were asked to return the completed questionnaires" is correct. "The participants were asked to return back the completed questionnaires" is redundant. Scan your manuscript for "back" following a verb and check whether it adds meaning or simply repeats it.

"As per" is a standard Indian English construction meaning "according to" or "in accordance with," used routinely in Indian academic, legal, and government writing. "As per the methodology described above" and "as per the guidelines of the ethics committee" are natural Indian English. In international academic English, "according to," "in accordance with," and "following" are the expected constructions. Replace "as per" throughout your manuscript.

Preposition choice with institutions and locations is another consistent difference. Indian English frequently uses "in" where standard academic English uses "at" for institutional locations: "She is currently working in the University of Melbourne" versus "She is currently working at the University of Melbourne." Similarly, "studying in" a university rather than "studying at" a university is standard Indian English but non-standard in international academic contexts. Check every institutional affiliation statement in your manuscript.

"Doubt" as a verb is used in Indian English with the meaning "to suspect" or "to think it probable": "The researchers doubted that the intervention would produce significant effects" in Indian English means they suspected it would, which is the opposite of what "doubt" means in standard English. In standard English, "doubt" means to be uncertain or skeptical. This semantic difference is one of the most consequential Indian English patterns in academic writing because it can invert the meaning of a claim about the study's hypotheses or findings.

Sentence Length and Complexity

Indian academic writing has a tradition of long, elaborately constructed sentences that demonstrate the writer's command of the topic through syntactic complexity. This tradition is visible in Indian legal writing, in formal Indian academic prose, and in the English writing of many Indian scholars working across disciplines. The long sentence as a demonstration of sophistication is a genuine convention of Indian academic English that is valued within that tradition.

International academic journals, and particularly journals in the sciences, social sciences, and health disciplines, have moved toward shorter sentences in which each sentence carries one main claim and its supporting qualification. The expectation is that complex ideas are expressed through precise individual sentences organized into coherent paragraphs, rather than through single sentences that carry multiple coordinated or subordinated clauses. A sentence that runs to 60 or 80 words and carries four or five distinct ideas joined by semicolons, conjunctions, and relative clauses is not unusual in Indian academic writing. In international journal manuscripts, it creates reading difficulty that reviewers associate with unclear thinking rather than sophisticated expression.

How to check for sentence length in your manuscript

Count the words in each sentence in your discussion section. Any sentence that exceeds 35 words is a candidate for splitting. Look for sentences with multiple semicolons, multiple relative clauses introduced by "which" or "that," or multiple instances of "and" joining main clauses. Each of these is a point where the sentence can usually be divided without losing the logical relationship between the ideas. The relationship between a 25-word sentence and the 25-word sentence that follows it is often clearer to a reader than a single 50-word sentence that tries to express both ideas simultaneously.

Rhetorical Organization: The Introduction Section

The organizational pattern of the introduction section differs between Indian academic writing conventions and international journal conventions in a way that affects how reviewers assess the manuscript's contribution. Indian academic introductions frequently open with broad philosophical or historical context, establish the significance of the general field at length, and arrive at the specific research gap and the study's contribution relatively late. This pattern reflects an Indian academic writing tradition that values comprehensive contextualization as a demonstration of the researcher's depth of understanding.

International journal introductions are expected to follow a different structure, sometimes described as the Create a Research Space (CARS) model. The introduction should establish the research territory briefly, identify the research gap or problem specifically, and announce the study's contribution to addressing that gap, all within the first two to three paragraphs. The background and literature review that follows the gap statement provides the evidence for why the gap matters, not the other way around.

An Indian academic introduction that opens with two paragraphs on the history of the field, two paragraphs on the importance of the general topic, and then a paragraph introducing the specific gap has an effective introduction buried within it. It needs to be reorganized so the gap appears first and the history and context follow as the explanation of why the gap is significant. This is a structural revision, not a language revision, and it is one of the most impactful changes an Indian researcher can make to improve their manuscripts' reception at international journals.

Article Use

Most major Indian languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, and Gujarati, do not have grammatical articles. There is no equivalent of "a," "an," or "the" in these languages. Noun reference is conveyed through context, word order, and demonstrative pronouns rather than through an article system. When Indian researchers write in English, they must apply an article system that has no structural equivalent in their home language, which produces article errors that appear throughout the manuscript.

For Indian researchers with high English proficiency who have read extensively in English, article errors are often less frequent and less systematic than for researchers from Chinese or Korean language backgrounds, because exposure to written English over many years builds implicit article intuitions. But they remain a consistent source of error, particularly in the use of "the" before specific concepts introduced earlier in the manuscript, and in the omission of "a" before singular countable nouns introduced for the first time.

The practical check is the same as for any researcher working without an article system in their home language. Stop at every noun. Ask whether it refers to something specific that the reader can identify (needs "the"), something being introduced for the first time as one of a category (needs "a" or "an"), or a general category or concept (no article needed). This three-question check catches the majority of article errors in Indian-authored manuscripts and takes less time than a complete grammar review.

Tense Conventions

Indian academic English uses present tense more broadly than international journal conventions permit. The tendency to use present tense to describe completed study procedures, past data collection, and historical findings is common in Indian-authored manuscripts. "We recruit participants from three universities" instead of "We recruited participants from three universities" in the methods section, and "The study of Smith and Jones (2019) finds that" instead of "Smith and Jones (2019) found that" in the literature review are typical patterns.

This present tense preference in Indian academic writing may reflect the influence of Indian languages that handle tense differently from English, or it may reflect a convention in Indian academic writing where present tense signals the ongoing relevance of described procedures and findings. In international academic journals, past tense is required in the methods and results sections for completed procedures and findings, and past tense is required when referring to specific previous studies. Present tense is reserved for general claims about established facts, for the discussion section when interpreting results, and for statements of implications.

Review your methods and results sections and change any present tense verb describing a completed action or observation to past tense. Review your literature review section and change any present tense verb describing a specific study's findings to past tense. "This study demonstrates" refers to the current study and can remain in present tense in the conclusion. "Smith and Jones (2019) demonstrate" refers to a completed study and should be past tense: "Smith and Jones (2019) demonstrated."

Vocabulary: Formal Synonyms and Latinate Preference

Indian academic English has a marked preference for Latinate and formal vocabulary over shorter, plainer English equivalents. This preference is consistent across Indian academic writing in English regardless of home language background, and it reflects the tradition of formal English education in India that emphasizes elevated vocabulary as a marker of educated expression. Words like "utilise" rather than "use," "commence" rather than "begin," "endeavour" rather than "try," "ascertain" rather than "find out," "optimum" rather than "best," and "ameliorate" rather than "improve" appear at much higher rates in Indian academic English than in international journal writing.

This is not a grammatical error. Each of the longer words is correct. But international academic English has moved toward plain language principles in which the simpler word is preferred when it carries the same meaning. A methods section that uses "utilise" where "use" would do, "subsequent to" where "after" would do, and "in the event that" where "if" would do is harder to read than a methods section written in plainer English, and it creates an impression of verbosity that reviewers associate with poor writing.

Read through your manuscript and look for any word that is longer than it needs to be to carry the meaning. Ask whether a shorter, plainer word would say the same thing. If it would, use the shorter word. Plain language in academic writing is not less academic. It is more professional, because it demonstrates that the writer is confident enough in their ideas to express them directly.

Hedging: Too Much and in the Wrong Places

Academic English uses hedging language to signal appropriate epistemic caution about claims. Words and phrases like "may," "might," "appears to," "suggests," "indicates," and "it is possible that" are conventions of academic English that distinguish established facts from interpretations, strong evidence from preliminary findings, and direct conclusions from reasonable inferences. Indian academic writing uses hedging extensively, which is broadly appropriate for academic English.

The problem is placement and density. Indian academic manuscripts sometimes hedge in places where international journal conventions expect confident assertion, and they sometimes hedge so densely that the hedged claim becomes difficult to extract. A results section that hedges every finding, or a conclusion that hedges every contribution, produces a manuscript that appears to lack confidence in its own findings. International journals want to publish research that advances knowledge. A conclusion that hedges every finding into uncertainty makes it difficult for the reviewer to assess what the study has contributed.

The principle for hedging in international academic English is to hedge where the evidence genuinely requires it and to assert confidently where it does not. Established findings from your own data, clearly replicated results, and well-supported interpretations should be stated directly. Inferences that go beyond the data, generalizations beyond the study sample, and claims that conflict with some prior evidence should be hedged. Hedging everything equally signals that you have not distinguished between what your study establishes and what it suggests.

Indian Researcher Strengths in Academic English Writing

Any honest article on writing patterns needs to acknowledge what Indian researchers typically do well in English academic writing, because the patterns that need addressing sit alongside genuine strengths.

Indian researchers who have been educated in English-medium institutions for their entire academic careers typically have strong academic vocabulary, a solid understanding of English grammar at the sentence level, and comfort with the formal register of academic writing. They are often more confident writers in English than researchers from Chinese, Korean, or Japanese language backgrounds at the same career stage, because English has been a primary language of academic instruction and reading throughout their education.

The adjustments described in this article are largely adjustments of degree and convention rather than foundational structural corrections. They involve writing more directly than Indian academic convention requires, using simpler words than Indian academic register favors, organizing the introduction differently from Indian academic tradition, and adopting preposition choices that differ from those of Indian English. These are real adjustments that require attention, but they are not as structurally deep as the adjustments required for researchers whose home language lacks articles entirely or whose sentence structure patterns differ fundamentally from English. An Indian researcher making these adjustments is fine-tuning an already capable English academic writing practice, not rebuilding it from the foundation.

Using Professional Editing to Address These Patterns

The patterns described in this article are difficult to identify through self-review for the same reason they developed in the first place: they feel natural within the Indian academic English variety that most Indian researchers have read and written for their entire academic careers. A sentence that is 60 words long and elaborately qualified does not feel long and over-qualified when you have been reading sentences structured that way in Indian academic journals and textbooks. A preposition choice that is standard in Indian English does not feel wrong when you have been using it correctly within that variety your entire life.

A native British or American English editor reads your manuscript with different conventions. They identify the elaborate introductory phrases that delay the point. They replace "as per" with "according to" and "discuss about" with "discuss." They split the 65-word sentence into two sentences each with one main claim. They move the research gap to the second paragraph of the introduction. They adjust the hedging density so that the study's contributions are stated with the confidence the evidence supports. These changes are made in Track Changes so you can review, accept, or question each one individually, and so you can see the pattern across the full manuscript rather than correcting isolated instances.

Editor World's academic editing service connects Indian researchers with native English editors whose academic background matches their discipline. You choose your editor by subject area before submitting. Browse profiles at editorworld.com/editors by discipline and read verified ratings from previous clients who have submitted work in your field. A certificate of editing is available on request at no additional charge, confirming native English editing with no AI tools used at any stage. Many Australian and international journals require this certificate for submissions from non-native English-speaking country institutions.

For Indian researchers submitting manuscripts to high-impact journals and wanting to understand the full editing process before committing, our journal article editing service page covers the complete workflow. For ESL editing that addresses language patterns at the word and sentence level, visit our ESL editing service page. For Indian researchers studying or working at Australian universities, our English editing services in Australia page covers the full range of services available across Australian institutions.

Content reviewed by Editor World editorial staff. Editor World provides professional English editing and proofreading services for Indian academic researchers, graduate students, and professionals in Australia and worldwide.