Has anybody ever suggested that your writing is wordy? Learning to avoid, or at least not overdo, certain grammatical structures will automatically make your writing more concise and easier to read. One such structure is nominalization. Nominalization turns a strong verb into a noun and uses the noun with a weak verb when the original … More Words: Don’t Exceed the Recommended Dosage
Several years ago the following passage appeared on an academic nursing site. It has since been taken down “The Self Observation methodology incorporates the Self-Observation technique, which is comprised of the three actions of deep relaxation with introspection, self-observation, and transcendence, all occurring within a specific time and space; resulting in transcended reflection to discover … More Really, Really Bad Writing
GENDER-NEUTRAL LANGUAGE Anyone who writes these days eventually confronts the issue of gender-neutral language. The trickiest aspect of using gender-neutral language is pronoun/antecedent agreement. The antecedent is simply the word or words a pronoun refers to. Look at these sentences: John loves his dog. (The singular masculine pronoun his refers to its antecedent, the singular … More Gender-Neutral Language
While I was dropping off to sleep last night, it suddenly came to me that I used a cliché in my blog post about the supposed health benefits of saunas “Sweat Your Way the Radiant Health.” I wrote that the Internet is a “double-edged sword” thus breaking one of George Orwell’s six rules of good … More Clichés
The following sentences all illustrate the dreaded dangling or misplaced modifier. A dangling modifier sounds like something you could be arrested for, but it’s just a minor stylistic mistake. A modifier is a word or group of words that modifies (describes or limits) another word or group of words. In the sentence, “I have a blue … More Dangling and Misplaced Modifiers
Try rewriting this passage using fewer words while retaining the original meaning: “This limit is surpassed in productive imagination: self-intuition, the immediate relation to oneself such as it was formed in reproductive imagination, then becomes a being; it is exteriorized, produced in the world as a thing. This singular thing is the sign; it is … More An Exercise in Reducing Wordiness
The verbs lie and lay are often confused, and if you can learn to use them correctly once and for all, you’ll be part of a small, elite minority. It may well be that these verbs are so often confused, even by educated speakers, that maintaining the difference doesn’t make sense. But if you want … More Lie, Lay, and Snobbery
Less/Fewer Nothing whips grammar purists into a frothing frenzy more than supposed errors in the use of “less” and “fewer.” The rule is pretty simple: use “less” with non-count nouns: less sugar; use “fewer: with count nouns: fewer cups of sugar. It’s an easy rule to follow. But little complications crop up. One can have … More Less/Fewer
Here are three important ways to reduce wordiness in your writing: Avoid expletive constructions such as “there is” and “there are.” Prefer active to passive voice. “A wordy bureaucrat strangled three grammarians last night” is a better sentence than “There were three grammarians who were strangled by a wordy bureaucrat last night.” Avoid nominalizations. … More The Plague of Wordiness
Here are some questions about grammar I got from readers of my grammar column together with my answers: Q. Which of these is correct: “cannot” or “can not”? A. Both are acceptable, but “cannot” is more common. The two-word version can be used for emphasis: No, you can not eat the salamander. Q. Which … More Questions About Grammar and Usage
No Harm Spilt 