Authors, Writers, Publishers, and Book Readers
“Your writing bores me.” “I am bored by your writing.”
Not only do these two sentences demonstrate the difference between the active and passive voice but also they communicate a central reason for avoiding the passive voice.
In the active voice, the subject of the sentence does the action described by the main verb. Thus, the subject is active. In the passive voice, the action is done to the subject. Thus, the subject is passive. Passive voice is a problem for direct writing…
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Added by David Bowman on October 8, 2013 at 11:52pm —
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Choosing the Right Type of Subject
When deciding what the subject of your sentence will be, you have three types of nouns from which to choose: creatures, things, and ideas.…
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Added by David Bowman on October 3, 2012 at 11:40pm —
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Paragraph quality is not determined by its length, long or short. Rather, quality is determined by how well the paragraph communicates a single idea. Long paragraphs, however, can be difficult simply because they are long.
The following 2 strategies will help you write long paragraphs that work.
Day 137: Use topic chains to create cohesive…
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Added by David Bowman on April 19, 2012 at 10:44pm —
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Every well-written paragraph needs three parts: context, content, and conclusion. These three parts are known collectively as the 3 Cs. When you use the 3 Cs, you present information logically, you help the reader understand your message, and you demonstrate the relevance of your idea.
Context. The first sentence…
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Added by David Bowman on April 3, 2012 at 11:26pm —
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An expert academic or technical writer needs only a few basic sentence patterns to produce easy-to-understand writing. Each of the sentence patterns below will result in clear academic or technical writing. However, do not use any one pattern more than twice in a row to prevent the writing from sounding repetitive and boring. Also,…
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Added by David Bowman on March 28, 2012 at 10:01pm —
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Concise writing is clear writing. By definition, concise writing communicates in as few words as necessary. Everything in a sentence other than the subject, verb, and object is description. Descriptions cause most of the “fluff” in sentences, but, fortunately, some simple strategies will help you write concise descriptions.
Simplifying…
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Added by David Bowman on February 1, 2012 at 9:02pm —
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Active and Passive Voice: When you are active, you do something. When you are passive, things happen to you. This is the same concept as the active and passive voice in sentences.
In the active voice, the subject performs the action described by the main verb. In the passive voice, the action…
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Added by David Bowman on January 3, 2012 at 8:50pm —
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You have two connected ideas, two ideas that together make a complete message. In fact, the connection is so close that you want to join them into one long sentence. For example, let’s say you want to communicate these two ideas:
1. The man entered with a gun.
2. Bank personnel were not amused.
You want to write them in one longer…
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Added by David Bowman on June 21, 2011 at 10:00pm —
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For nearly 20 years, I have helped graduate students edit essays, research papers, dissertations, and other graduate-level papers. Some papers only need basic proofreading to correct spelling errors, grammar errors, punctuation errors, and problems with word choice. Other papers need help with APA format, reference lists, and citations. However, most papers need substantial revising.
The most common problem I have found when editing graduate papers is the lack of…
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Added by David Bowman on February 17, 2011 at 12:43am —
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