... that a NNES may be told he/she is wrong even if is not. If the very same text were written by a native English speaker (NES), he/she would not be told this. This is somehow sad, but I know I have to live with this till the end of my days.
No, you don't. That's why we have so many style guides, Nyggus. Choose the ones for your area (e.g., English, science, math, etc), find the one that your colleagues or classmates or other writers are using, and use it as your reference, and state that in your paper, article, etc. If you do that, you
will be covered. A style guide is a writer's bible.
nyggus said:
... the editor asked him to evaluate the piece because "there are serious problems with the language". So you see this NES co-author was acknowledged to be an expert in the language (of course in this particular field). The editor simply didn't know he was the co-author of this piece.
From what I gather, you seem to believe that native English speaker means expert, and that's just not true. Moreover, "serious problem with the language", to me, means expression, not style. That is, the authors weren't able to clearly express their intended meaning. That's something that pertains to all writers, not just second-language learners. Furthermore, you can be an excellent writer, irrespective of your first language, and yet not know the first thing about how to structure an proper argument. Scientific writing has guidelines. In fact, when I was in school, I spent more than several years reading the work of past and present day scholars to learn how to structure an argument. It's an art, and language doesn't buy you that skill. It's learned.
nyggus said:
I don't want to attack anyone, I just try to share my thoughts with all of you: that NNESs' live is not that easy when it comes to writing. And actually I do understand it, I really do. Our language is far too often unacceptable, but sometimes - see the example below - those who evaluate us are biased if they know an author is a NNES.
I don't live in Poland, so I can't relate, sorry. But I can tell you that most journals I read are housed with papers written by non-native speakers. Their work is published. ;-)
nyggus said:
...I think strict rules would be of help to many, but there are no strict rules in the language, with which we all have, more or less, agreed.
Choose a style guide, Nyggus, and choose it wisely.