End focus describes the heightened attention we give to information placed at the end of a clause or sentence. In sentences of common word order, the information at the end of a sentence is usually new information, which is why it is marked by stress or special emphasis The most common word order in an English sentence […]

There’s no shortage of good books about writing style, but a few lay above the rest for their depth and authority, and for their enduring value to writers.  Here are five books every writer should know about. 1. Style:  Lessons in Clarity and Grace Joseph M. Williams and Joseph BizupNo book teaches practical style (also called plain […]

You can make a big step toward better writing by understanding how and when to edit nominalizations. Nominalizations, or what Helen Sword calls zombie nouns, occur when a word that is not a noun (usually a verb or an adjective) is made to act like one by changing its form. Let’s see some examples: The verb decide […]

In this post, I’ll show you how to improve your writing by trimming unnecessary prepositional phrases. Prepositional phrases are so common that it can be difficult to notice when they’ve been overused.  In fact, it’s easy to string a whole bunch of them together, creating what Martha Kolln calls proliferating prepositional phrases. Here’s an example […]