Diet and Exercise Plan for Your Writing

Does your writing have that bloated, overstuffed feeling? Do you have the habit of packing in more words than needed for clear communication? Are your readers easily fatigued by your writing? Do you send out your documents without first subjecting them to rigorous and strenuous editing? Do you run out of breath when reading aloud?

If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, you may have “fat writing.” It’s time to put your writing on a diet and exercise program. Most fat writing can be solved through “diet and exercise.” Dieting refers to removing unnecessary text. Exercise refers to revising for direct and clear communication.

Characteristics of Fat Writing

1. Redundancy

Redundant writing communicates the same information more than once, whether using words that mean the same thing or communicating the same concept in multiple ways.

Example redundant words: “The office was large and roomy.”

Example redundant concepts: “The company engaged in conservative spending. Company officers introduced a plan to achieve equal results with fewer expenditure.”

Prevention: Use an outline; keep common topics together; say it once well; remove generalities and focus on specifics.

After diet and exercise: “The office was roomy.” “Company officers introduced a plan to achieve equal results with fewer expenditures.”

Rule of thumb: If two expressions communicate the same information, one of them needs to go.

Good Subjects for Writing

boxing tiger

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.

• Creatures (e.g., people and animals) are the natural choice for subjects because they can do something.
  Example: The committee members convened at 10:00 a.m.
• Things (e.g., inanimate objects and places) can do something, but in many cases they are acted upon.
  Example: The projector began smoking.
• Ideas (e.g., abstractions, concepts, and processes) cannot act other than by influencing actions by creatures.. They exist and can be acted upon, but not being physical, they cannot act themselves.
  Example: Disagreement with committee decisions is not welcome.

With every sentence, the readers want to know, “Who did what to whom?” This question implies that the subject is able to do something. For this reason, creatures make better subjects than things, and things make better subjects than ideas.

With a subject that can perform an action, and with that action described by the sentence, the sentence will be more interesting and will communicate more clearly. This gives you the opportunity to keep sharing your information. More importantly, the reader will be able to visualize the subject performing the action, increasing both understanding and remembrance.

Use concluding words to state your main point.

When you are writing a document to persuade your reader about an idea, you present your supporting ideas or evidence leading up to the main point. If you do this well, your reader will come to the same conclusion that you are trying to make.

To show that you have finished making your argument (i.e., completed writing about the reasons for your idea) and are about to state the main idea, you use a concluding word. A concluding word tells the reader, “Based on this information, I conclude that . . . .” Sample concluding words and phrases are thus, therefore, in conclusion, and as a consequence.

These concluding words provide a signpost for the reader. They say, “I’m done giving the evidence, and now I’m going to tell you the idea that I want you to believe.”

You may be able to make your main point without them. However, they are very effective for helping the reader identify what it is you want them to understand.

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This is the strategy for day 81 in 300 Days of Better Writing, available at Hostile Editing in PDF, Kindle, and paperback formats.

For a sample of 300 Days of Better Writing and other books by Precise Edit, download the free ebook.

Irony and Poetic Justice

Situational irony – A picnic gone terribly wrong

Is It Ironic? Case 1. You’re walking down the street with a friend. Ahead of you, you see a man stumble on a crack in the sidewalk. Your friend laughs at the man. A moment later, your friend trips on the same crack. “Oh,” you say, “that’s so ironic!” No, it isn’t. That’s not ironic.

Case 2. Later, you go home and turn on the television. You see a news story about a politician getting hauled into court for lying under oath. That same politician had recently accused fellow politicians of being deceitful. “Oh, that’s ironic,” you say, laughing. No, that isn’t irony either.

Case 3. Finally, just before going to bed, you walk through your house, turning off the lights and complaining about your family members who left them on. However, when you turn off the last light, you realize that you have to walk back through the house in the dark. While doing so, you knock your shins on a chair. You rub your shins and say “It’s so ironic that I turned off the lights and made myself walk in the dark!” No, that isn’t ironic either.

In fact, the only thing ironic about these three events is the fact that you thought they were ironic! 

Commas with That and Which

I’ll answer two questions at the same time. Do you use that or which? Do you need commas with that and which?

To answer both questions, you need to understand restrictive and non-restrictive phrases and clauses. Here are the answers in brief.

1. Use which and commas with non-restrictive phrases and clauses.
2. Use that and no commas with restrictive phrases and clauses.

Now, let find out why.

Restrictive phrases and clauses: A restrictive phrase or clause points out which thing you are writing about.

Let’s say you have four filing cabinets in your office and that all but one cabinet is locked. The unlocked cabinet is the one next to the window. You need someone to come and lock the cabinet because you don’t have a key.

You decide to send an e-mail to the maintenance office. You need to tell the maintenance officer which cabinet is unlocked. You correctly write this statement:

“Please come to my office as soon as possible and lock the cabinet that is next to the window.” (The restrictive phrase is underlined.) 

Subject–Verb Agreement

The basics of subject–verb agreement. The number of the subject determines the number of the verb. In other words, if the subject is plural, the verb, too, must be appropriate for plural subjects. Table 1 lists sample singular and subject verbs.

Table 1: Sample Singular and Plural Subjects

Singular	Plural
cat	cats
I	we
John	John and Bob
flower	flowers

Subject–Verb agreement causes problems only in the present tense. Unlike verbs in other tenses (e.g., past tense, future tense), present tense verbs change according to whether the subject is singular or plural.

12 Major Comma Uses Explained

Commas are confusing because they are used in many ways. However, the basic principle to using commas is simple: Use commas to separate clauses and phrases within sentences that have their own meaning.

The “rules” for commas below are broadly, but not universally, accepted. However, a careful writer considers two central issues:

• Reader understanding and
• Consistency.

The comma guidelines below will help readers understand your message in many cases. However, even if they are not necessary to improve reader understanding, follow them for consistency. Consistency is a characteristic of professional technical writing.

1. Series

The commas help the reader find each unique item (or group of items) in a series by separating them.

Example: School officials are dismayed by poor grades, low attendance, and high drug use.

2. Joining Sentences

You can join two complete sentences with coordinating conjunctions. (The entire set of coordinating conjunctions is for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so. Together, these create the acronym FANBOYS.) The comma lets the reader know when one point is complete and the next will begin. This comma use only applies when you have complete sentences on either side of the conjunction.

Example: The screen inverter stopped working, and the motherboard began to smoke.

3. Introductory Descriptions

An introductory description is before the subject and describes the main verb in some way, such as when, where, how, and why. The comma at the end of the description signals the reader that the main point of the sentence is about to begin. For consistency, do this with even short introductory descriptions. In the following example, the introductory description is underlined.

Example: Following the symposium, participants collaborated on projects.