Writing Tip #2

From June 23:

I wish to be taken out to the ball game

I wish to be taken out to the crowd

I would like to be bought some peanuts and Cracker Jack

I don’t care if anyone ever gets me back….

Not very powerful, is it? To mark our office's foray to Nationals Park today to see pitching phenomenon Stephen Strasburg lead our home team to certain victory, let’s vow today to use active verbs in all our writing.

Bad: The curveball was missed by the batter.

Good: Strasburg smoked a 103-mph fastball past the dazed batter, dazzling the capacity crowd.

Go, Nats!

Writing Tip #1

I've been sending these out to the staff here at work to help them address some of the more vexing problems they have with putting together their reports. I thought I'd share them with a much narrower audience by posting them here. This first tip is dated June 16.

In honor of Bloomsday (June 16, the day James Joyce’s epic—and ponderous—novel Ulysses takes place), the Publications staff is offering the following tip on making your writing more succinct:

Writing Tip #1

Avoid overusing prepositional phrases. They weigh a sentence down and lead the reader through a syntactic maze, when all you really want is to make your point.

Example: The report of the Committee stressed the points of view of several of the measure stewards in attendance at the meeting.

Wow. How about:

The Committee’s report stressed the attending measure stewards’ point of view.

OR

In its report, the Committee stressed the opinions of the measure stewards attending the meeting.

Happy Bloomsday!