Use personal pronouns (I, we, our) when they are appropriate
and especially when they clarify your text:
Faulty: It has been found experimentally that
genetically altered strawberries are frost-resistant.
Better: In this experiment, we found that genetically altered
strawberries are frost-resistant.
Write sentences that have people doing things:
Faulty: It was decided that company policy be
changed to allow employee selection of personal leave days.
Better: The personnel committee decided to change company policy
and allow employees to select their own personal leave days.
Avoid nominalizing (transforming verbs and adjectives into
nouns):
Faulty: We conducted an investigation of the
accident.
Better: We investigated the accident.
Avoid stringing nouns together and creating what scientist
Peter Medawar describes as "one huge noun-like monster in constant danger
of falling apart." The following examples are from Commerce Business
Daily:
"fluidized bed waste heat recovery system demonstration"
and "roof rock bolt bond integrity tester development."
The examples below are from Joseph Williams:
Faulty: Early childhood thought disorders misdiagnosis often
occurs as a result of unfamiliarity with recent research literature
describing such conditions.
Better: Physicians unfamiliar with the literature on recent
research often misdiagnose disordered thought in young children.
Maintain parallelism:
Faulty: The new regulations could cause problems
for both the winners and for those who lose.
Better: The new regulations could cause problems for both winners
and losers.
Emphasize important words by placing them where they receive
natural stress, either at the beginning or, for even greater emphasis,
at the end of a sentence:
Faulty: Rather than being a judge who pronounces
the verdict, the teacher becomes an editor who guides students' writing
with this method.
Better: With this method, the teacher becomes an editor who
guides students' writing, rather than a judge who pronounces the verdict.
Place subordinate ideas in subordinate constructions:
Faulty: The value is 50 watts and is best determined
by actual test.
Better: The value, which is best determined by actual test,
is 50 watts.
Substitute descriptive verbs for vague verbs:
Faulty: He went to the island.
Better: He sailed to the island.
Substitute lean words for ponderous expressions:
Faulty: Align the tubes in such a manner that
they all heat at the same time.
Better: Align the tubes so they all heat at the same time.
Substitute familiar for
unfamiliar words:
Faulty: Everyone should be cognizant of the danger
of explosion.
Better: Everyone should be aware of the danger of explosion.
Avoid overused expressions common to the business world:
Faulty: Utilization of crystal clear goals and
objectives will optimize our capacity to prioritize our concerns so
that we will impact upon the major thrust of our company's future
plans and prospects.
Better: If we clarify our goals and objectives, we will be
better able to concentrate on what is most important for our company's
future.
Cut unnecessary words:
Faulty: After a time interval of one to two minutes,
the tone usually stops.
Better: After one to two minutes, the tone usually stops.
Be precise:
Faulty: The cost must not be prohibitive.
Better: The cost should not exceed $100 per thousand gallons.
Avoid confusing pronouns:
Faulty: As the temperature falls, a compressive
stress is exerted by the bezel on the glass because of its greater
temperature coefficient.
Better: As the temperature falls, the bezel, because of its
greater temperature coefficient, exerts a compressive stress on the
glass.
Keep sentence elements in their proper order:
Faulty: The sample to be analyzed first must
be put into solution.
Better: The sample to be analyzed must first be put into solution.
Avoid dangling modifiers:
Faulty: Walking up the hill, my umbrella was
blown away by the wind.
Better: While I was walking up the hill, the wind blew away
my umbrella.
Reduce strings of prepositional phrases:
Faulty: The October 31 deadline for submission
of proposals in response to an invitation from
the National Science Foundation also applies to unsolicited
proposals.
Better: The deadline for both solicited and unsolicited
proposals to the National Science Foundation is October 31.