Style: A Makeover Story

YAWN

  • Read your sentences aloud. Do any sentences seem wordy or repetitive?

    "Omit needless words" (E.B. White, Elements of Style)
    Be concise.

Before: The rats found their way through the maze.

After: The rats navigated the maze.

  • Do your sentences have momentum? If not, choose more interesting, precise verbs and eliminate strings of prepositional phrases. Verbs move prose forward and prepositional phrases pile information on a previous noun.

Circle the verbs "is/are" and "have/has": revise a third of them.

Before: The Bible is the product of many writers.

After: Many writers contributed to the Bible.

Circle "of," "in," "at," and "on." Three or more in a row? Revise.

Before: The result of the revolution in Russia in the nineteenth century was the growth of communism.

After: The revolution in nineteenth-century Russia led to the growth of communism.

 

  • Are the sentences heavy and boring? If so, check noun-heaviness.

    Tiny verbs "is/are/have/has" cannot support too many heavy nouns (Joseph Williams, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace).

 Circle the nouns in a sentence that feel heavy. Lighten prose by reducing the number of nouns per sentence.

Before: The objective of this proposal is to describe the opportunities presented by today's global marketplace for e-commerce and suggest directions for Netscape's new product offerings.

After: This proposal analyzes today's global marketplace for e-commerce and uncovers opportunities for expanding Netscape's product offerings.

 

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