Below is a collection of notes and tips on writing English research papers. Some of the hints are taken from "Bugs in Writing" by Lyn Dupre, which I highly recommend. The lists are unordered. I only list things that can be searched for in a last pass through the paper or thesis before submitting. Also, the issues listed here are sometimes particular to authors of German mother-tongue.

• will: Can be removed without substitution in almost all instances, except when explicitly talking about the future.
• like: Probably you mean "such as". Remember commas before "such as"
• which/that: "That" identifies an object; "which" adds a remark to an object. Removing the "that"-clause destroys the sentence, removing the "which"-clause leaves the sentence intact.
• whole: Usually "entire" is better.
• very: Avoid it.
• bad: You probably mean "poor".
• seems to be: Avoid it.
• in order to: Usually can be replaced simply with "to".
• this: Should always be followed by the referenced noun. "This works well." vs. "This technique works well."
• a/an: according to pronunciation:
  • "an" is not used before any vowel: "A used book", but "an unintelligible book".
  • "an" is used not only before a vowel: "An XML book".
• only: Place it right before the thing you want to modify. Usually not a verb. "We only consider trees." vs. "We consider only trees."
• send vs. sent, build vs built, etc.: We have built a prototype.
• get: is quite colloquial. Try "obtain", "yield", "receive", etc.
• apply: "apply to", not "apply on" (this is a typical mistake for Germans)

• Consistency: Make sure that same conferences or same journals are referenced in the same way. A useful tool are bibtex macros, such as: @string{jgg1 = "Journal of Gnats and Gnus, Series~1"}
• Year: Make sure that the publication year appears only once, not twice or even three times, as I often observe.
• Page numbers: If you include page numbers, you need to do this for all references, not just the ones where you happened to have them. For journals, page numbers are more important.
• I usually do not care if some conference was the "23rd" in a row. 

• Use \@ after capitalized abbreviations at the end of sentences: We now describe our PDMS\@. The tool lacheck.exe finds those instances in LaTeX documents.
  • Another tip: \usepackage{xspace} and \newcommand{\ourModel}{NameOfOurModel\xspace}
• Use tilde (~) instead of a space before citations and references: This evidence was presented by Ullmann~\cite{Ullmann90}.
• Use the utility lacheck.exe on your .tex file to find get some hints.
• Use correct quotation marks: ``quoted''.
• In .bib file be sure to put curly brackets around capitalized abbreviations, such as {SQL}, {XML}, and {Garlic}.

• Jennifer Widom's Tips for Writing Technical Papers

• Jennifer Widom's Tips for a Good Conference Talk

Further items are welcome:
Felix Naumann