4 tips for trimming extra words
Bryan Garner offers four tips for trimming extra words in his chapter “Waste no Words” in his HBR Guide to Better Business Writing. They include, when possible: Deleting prepositions Replacing nouns ending with -ion with verbs Replacing forms of the verb “to be” with stronger verbs, as I discuss in The “Be” test for writers […]
No brevity without substance, please
“Brevity without substance is useless.” This statement in Bryan Garner’s HBR Guide to Better Business Writing spoke to me. If you regularly read this blog, you know I’m a big fan of writing concisely, and observing the rule of 42-14-2. However, sometimes a longer sentence is easier to understand than a shorter sentence. And, a […]
Writing to understand
I agree with Japanese novelist Haruki Marukami who says, I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them. Writing things down forces me to clarify what I think. It forces me to learn as I fill in the missing links between different parts of what I’m saying. This learning process is one […]
MISTAKE MONDAY for November 25: Can YOU spot what’s wrong?
Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment. This mistake made me laugh when I caught it. I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.