OnLine English proofreading and editorial service - about the OnLine English phrase checker

The International Online Medical Conference (IOMC 2009) is the second Online Conference on Medicine and will take place on March 14 and 15, 2009. It aims to provide a forum for discussing and presenting research findings, studies, and experiences in the field of medicine; to create an opportunity for medical, nursing, and pharmaceutical/pharmacology researchers, students, professors, physicians, practitioners, researchers, executives, scientists, specialists, and activists to meet each other online and share their research papers; and to provide the prospect of finding new research colleagues and partners for future research work.

An International Advisory Committee (IAC), comprising international experts and Medical Professors, guide the development of the conference program and agenda.

All accepted conference papers will be published in the conference proceeding electronically by a well-known international publisher under a US ISBN. In addition, the printed Proceedings Book will also be available.

There are several awards, including Best Paper Award, Best Student Paper Award, and Best Presentation Award.

The conference has a Students’ Board that welcomes more involvement from medical students, and encourages them to submit their research work, reports, and papers to the conference. The Conference Students Board (CSB) will oversee the increased involvement of students in this unique event, and will guide them with paper submissions and other inquiries.

OnLine English is a Golden Sponsor of IOMC 2009. The Best Paper and Best Student Paper and the conference final report text will be edited by OnLine English.

about the OnLine English phrase checker

The OnLine English phrase checker assists writers of English by providing multiple, real-world examples of how any English phrase (or word) is used.

The WWW provides the world's largest searchable sample of English language text. Any person, anywhere on the globe with access to the Internet, can check this huge database of English language at no cost. The OnLine English phrase checker enables writers to check the usage of any English phrase with one of the world's largest and fastest Internet search engines.

create your own link to the phrase checker

If you wish to create a link directly to the phrase checker, use the following address. http://www.oleng.com.au/indexpc.html

how the phrase checker works

The OnLine English phrase checker uses the alltheweb search engine(Registered trademark of 'Fast Search and Transfer ASA'). alltheweb has indexed over 575 million web pages (July 2001). That number is growing by millions of pages each week. The phrase checker is configured to search the WWW and return only exact matches of your phrase.

This feature distinguishes it from most other searches, which are configured to select pages with terms that are merely similar to the search term(s).

When the goal of your research is to identify how a precise phrase is used, only exact matches are relevant. The OnLine English phrase checker is designed to do this.

the alltheweb search window

When working directly in the alltheweb search window (not via the phrase checker) you must select the option, the exact phrase, to obtain the exact match required for phrase checking.

The alltheweb search window can be accessed directly at http://www.alltheweb.com.

what the phrase checker provides

Frequency of occurrence (e.g., 23,794 documents found)
By providing a count of only exact matches, the phrase checker tells you how often a phrase is used on the WWW.

You can use this function to compare the frequencies of several phrases. If your intention is to use standard forms of English, rather than less common variations, you can quickly see if the phrase is used commonly, rarely or perhaps not at all.

Examples of usage
By providing links to all the pages in the alltheweb Search index that include this exact phrase, the phrase checker provides multiple examples of how the phrase is used in English.

These pages will demonstrate not only the contexts in which the phrase is used but also the sentence structure, which might precede or follow the phrase.

some punctuation marks ignored

The phrase checker is strictly a text checker. It ignores punctuation marks that occur between words (e.g., hyphens, commas, inverted commas, brackets). However, it responds to punctuation marks within a word.

Example: it provides the same results for 'consultants contract' and 'consultants' contract'. However, for 'consultant's contract', where the apostrophe falls within the word, it produces a different set of results.

locating your phrase within a page

Once you have downloaded a page from your search results, the fastest way to find the phrase within that page is to use the Find command in your browser.

If Find does not locate the phrase it is likely to be because, the phrase occurs only in the title of the page, the page has not fully downloaded or because of punctuation marks within the phrase.

While the phrase checker ignores punctuation marks between words, the browser's own Find command will not find the target phrase within a page if, for example, a comma or a hyphen has been added to the phrase.

Example: if you search the WWW for 'electron tunnelling microscope' your results will include examples of 'electron-tunnelling microscope'. If you then use your browser's Find command to locate 'electron tunnelling microscope' within a page, it will not find the phrase with the hyphen.

In such cases you will need to find the phrase by typing just one of the words into the Find window.

language issues

English is spoken in countries around the world by diverse peoples and cultures. As the pace of change accelerates and knowledge grows exponentially, the English language grows and changes. Like all languages, it is dynamic.

Linguistics is the study of how language is used. Those who wish to learn English and use it fluently, are likely to be most interested in how the English language is actually used in a particular context.

If you wish to check how a particular phrase is used, you can look at examples of how that phrase is used. The OnLine English phrase checker is the quickest way to access multiple, real-world examples of any phrase you choose.

Judgement is required in deciding which of these examples are of higher or lower relevance. If you obtain a large number of examples when you are searching for a scientific term, you might need to give priority to selected sites.

If, for example, you are writing for an international, academic audience you might look at academic and research sites in countries where English is most often used.

sample size

In June 2002, Fast Search & Transfer(FAST) reported that alltheweb delivers comprehensive search results from over two billion Web pages.