David Bowman's Blog (56)

You have two adjectives together. Do you or don’t you put a comma between them? If they are coordinate adjectives, you do. This follows Zen Comma Rule P.

Comma Rule P: Put a Comma between Coordinate Adjectives.

Definition of Coordinate Adjectives. Adjectives are…

Sometimes, things are not as good as you expect. Sometimes, the truth hurts. Sometimes, you are not perfect. And you have to write about it. These three strategies will help you write about bad, or embarrassing, information in a way that makes the bad information sound better than it is. You need to tell the truth; that's a given. But you can tell it in a way that produces a positive, or less, bad reaction from your reader.

Day 146: Put a positive spin on negative…

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…

What are nominalizations?

Nominalizations are the noun forms of action verbs, as seen here:

Sample action verbs - Corresponding nouns

illustrate – illustration

fail – failure

react – reaction

announce – announcement

increase (v.) – increase (n.) 

Why are they bad, and how do I fix them?

Nominalizations have…

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…

Writing style comprises four characteristics:

1.   Formality

2.   Language complexity

3.   Objectivity, and

4.   Information depth.

The purpose you are trying to accomplish, the readers’ needs, your relationship with the reader, and the type of document affect the style in which you…

When I was in college, I worked behind the front desk of a major hotel. Directly across the lobby was the hotel bar, a small, dark lounge with the bar counter on the opposite side and a stage at one end. George Thorogood, when he stayed at the hotel, would sit at the far end of the counter, next to the stage. 

Connie, the bartender, once told me that her job was to…

The basic principal for writing about complex subjects is to do the work necessary so that the reader can understand you easily. Of course, your first task is to make sure you understand your own ideas. As Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” With this in mind, here are three strategies to help you write clearly about complex…

Before I write anything else, let me state that I like Lynn Truss’s book Eats, Shoots and Leaves. It is funny, and it has a few good pointers on…

Since my first article on publishing an e-book to Amazon’s Kindle, some things have changed with the Amazon DTP (Digital Text Platform). Instead of uploading a zip file with an HTML document and other digital files to be included, there is now the option to upload a Word document. This was good news to me because I had already been working with Word documents and uploading them to…

Therefore and Too are conjunctive adverbs, and they cause a lot of problems with commas. Before we look at using commas with therefore and too, we need to understand conjunctive adverbs and what they do.

What Conjunctive Adverbs Do

A conjunctive adverb shows how the idea in one sentence or independent clause…

You have a document, and it has special formatting. Perhaps it has heading styles, block quotes, references, and the like. Maybe you need to use APA style or MLA style. Perhaps your document has special chapter titles. Keeping track of these styles—and using them consistently—can…

Language, and writing, can do one of two things, depending on how it is used: enhance a relationship or damage it. In simple terms, it can help bring people together or push them apart; it can help you accomplish your purposes, or it can hinder you. Language is never neutral.

What does this mean for you as you write? This means you have to think carefully…

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…

1. I think chocolate is tasty too.
2. I think chocolate is tasty, too.

Although paragraph structure challenges writers, it is essential not only to help organize the content logically but also to keep the reader interested to the end of the document. On the other hand, if paragraphs are not structured well, the reader will have difficulty understanding the ideas being presented and will be unlikely to respond as you wish.

You…

Do commas confuse you?

The final stage of the writing and editing process is proofreading: correcting any errors in spelling, punctuation, word usage, and format. Roughly 75% of what I do while proofreading clients’ documents is correct commas.

 

When I teach university writing courses, I ask the students, “What’s the number one thing that confuses you…

1. The toy was red [comma] round [comma] and heavy.

2. I purchased pickles at the store [comma] gas at the convenience store [comma] and flowers at the florist for my beautiful wife.

Series: A series is a string of three or more…

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…