Style

Preposition Overuse

György Chityil - George's picture

Some grammar experts claim that the fewer prepositions the better, and this check warns you if the ratio of prepositions is more than 1 preposition per 5 words.
Abundant prepositions: The data from the participants of younger age in this study were compared with those of subjects of older age by an analysis of variance.

Gender Bias

György Chityil - George's picture

A phrase like “a good congressman knows his duty” excludes women, and it may show good style to rewrite such a sentence in a gender neutral form, like "good representatives know their duty". Check the references for more info on techniques to avoid gender bias in your wriitng.

Nominalization

György Chityil - George's picture

Abstract nouns, such as "decision", often have verb forms, "decide", and several experts urge you to use verbs when possible rather than noun forms known as nominalizations. Sentences with many nominalizations usually have weak verbs such as have, make, give and forms of be as the main verbs. Using the action verbs disguised in nominalizations as the main verbs--instead of forms of be--can help to create engaging rather than dull prose. This check aims to identify abstract nouns, but not all will have a verb form.

Stacked Modifiers and Nouns

György Chityil - George's picture

Avoid using long strings of modifiers or nouns. These stacked modifiers and nouns can be hard to read and sometimes create ambiguity. Add a few words (especially prepositions and conjunctions) to make the relationships between nouns clear to the reader.

Weak Example

Previous work has shown that a purified pro-oxidant, vitamin E-deficient fish oil diet protects mice against malaria parasites.

Improved Example

Adverbs ending in ly

György Chityil - George's picture

While an adverb ending with -ly has no grammatical problem, many consider it as bad style. Straight from "On Writing Well, 5th Edition" by William Zinsser: "Most adverbs are unnecessary. You will clutter your sentence and annoy the reader if you choose a verb that has a specific meaning and then add an adverb that carries the same meaning. Don't tell us that the radio blared loudly - "blare" connotes loudness. Don't write that someone clenched his teeth tightly - there's no other way to clench teeth. Again and again in careless writing, strong verbs are weakened by redundant adverbs."

Circumlocutions

György Chityil - George's picture

We commonly use roundabout expressions, circumlocutions, that take several words to say what could be said more succinctly. We often overlook them because many such expressions are habitual figures of speech. In writing, though, they should be avoided since they add extra words without extra meaning. 

Expletive Constructs

György Chityil - George's picture

Expletive constructions begin with "there is / are" or "it is", and their variations. These do not add any meaning, and can be easily replaced for example: There are twenty-five students who have already expressed a desire... can be easily rewritten to Twenty-five students already expressed a desire...

Intensifiers

György Chityil - George's picture

Avoid using words such as really, very, quite, extremely, severely when they are not necessary. It is probably enough to say that the salary increase is inadequate. Does saying that it is severely inadequate introduce anything more than a tone of hysteria?

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