Terms you meet writing work English as a second language

Register is the level of formality a piece of writing signals through word choice, sentence length, and directness. The same message shifts register depending on whether you're emailing a manager, texting a teammate, or posting on LinkedIn. Getting register wrong reads as stiff or too casual, even when the grammar is correct.

Tone is the emotional color of a message — warm, blunt, apologetic, confident — layered on top of register. Two emails can share the same formal register and still land differently: one tone reassures a client, another makes the same request sound like an accusation. Non-native writers often get register right but tone wrong.

Direct communication states the point first and explicitly: 'This is late — can you send it today?' Indirect communication leads with context or softens the ask: 'I noticed the deadline passed — is everything okay with getting this over?' English workplace writing sits closer to direct than many cultures, but rarely as blunt as some non-native writers assume.

Hedging is softening a statement with words like 'might,' 'could,' 'it seems,' or 'perhaps' to sound less absolute — common in English workplace writing to avoid sounding blunt or overconfident. Writers from more direct-communication cultures often skip hedging entirely, which can make a routine request read as a demand.

Passive voice puts the receiver of an action first and the doer last or omitted entirely — 'the report was delayed' instead of 'I delayed the report.' English business writing uses passive voice deliberately to soften blame or stay neutral, which is different from using it because the active form feels unnatural to translate.

A calque is a phrase translated word-for-word from another language that sounds grammatically plausible in English but isn't something a native speaker would actually say — like 'make a photo' instead of 'take a photo,' carried over directly from languages that use 'make.' Calques are harder to catch than grammar mistakes because nothing is technically wrong.

A false friend is a word that looks or sounds like a word in your first language but means something different in English — like Spanish 'actualmente' (currently) versus English 'actually,' or German 'eventuell' (possibly) versus English 'eventually.' They're a common source of small, confusing errors that spell-check won't catch.

L1 transfer, also called interference, is when a rule from your first language — word order, article use, preposition choice — carries over into English where it doesn't belong. It's why speakers of article-less languages like Russian or Japanese often drop 'a' and 'the,' even at advanced fluency: the gap is systemic, not carelessness.

Code-switching is moving between two languages — or between a formal and informal register — within the same conversation or document, often to fill a vocabulary gap or match who you're talking to. At work this shows up as dropping in an English technical term mid-sentence in your first language, or the reverse.

Native-like fluency means writing that a native speaker wouldn't flag as written by a non-native speaker — not just grammatically correct, but idiomatic in word choice, rhythm, and register. It's a specific, achievable target distinct from 'fluent,' which only means comfortable and functional; native-like is a higher, narrower bar.