How to Build a Great
Sentence
NECA Women’s Peer Group Summit
Pittsburg, PA
By
Maria Granone
Chapter Manager
New Mexico Chapter
May 12, 2011
The Quick Fix
Words to Avoid When You Write
Am, Are
Be, Being,Been
Is, Was
that
The Art of the Written Word
Great writing begins – and ends – with the
written sentence.
Sentences have the power to captivate,
entertain, motivate, educate and most
importantly, inform.
How you write a sentence can also cause
confusion.
E Prime As A Way to Write
What is E Prime?
A modified form of English used to eliminate the
verb “to be” and avoid the passive voice.
It tends to eliminate confusion in the writer’s
thinking, forces the writer to think about the
ideas to convey and eliminates the likelihood of
misunderstanding and conflict.
Difficult to implement but well worth the result.
Confusion Caused By The Verb
TO BE
I am depressed
Who am I?
He is a criminal
It is clear that we should take action
‘Is’ and ‘are’ imply no time, no space and absolute truth.
They imply things are:
•Permanent
•Always true
•Unchanging
•Look, sound, feel smell, etc. the same to everyone.
•Final
I am depressed.
Abbreviates what happened in the past. Maybe it means:
I felt sad on many occasions in the past and I feel sad now. (ePrime)
He is a criminal.
Implies that he does, always did, always will do some unstated bad thing. We
confuse what we know about the word with the person. It could mean:
During his teenage years, he stole one thing for a dare and has regretted it
ever since. (ePrime)
It is clear that we should take action.
“Clear to Whom.”
“What is clear?”
It appears to me we should take action. (ePrime)
I am going to the meeting.
I plan to attend the NWPG meeting in Pittsburg.
They are working on the presentation.
Marilyn and Rose worked on the presentation today.
The weather is good.
Pittsburg residents expect a sunny day on Thursday.
We have been planning this meeting for a long time.
We began to plan this meeting last year in November.
There was a great interest in attending this meeting.
The interest to attend this meeting increased with NECA’s email blasts.
It will be 10:00 pm in five minutes.
In five minutes, we will have only two hours until midnight.
He stated that he hired the account executive.
He told me he hired the account executive.
I was working toward the resolution of that problem.
I worked on resolving the problem.
Why Should We Consider Using
E-Prime?
Removes useless self-talk
I am
They are
It is
I have been
I was
I will be
Minimizes using meaningless ‘to be’ abbreviations.
“This is why…”
Eliminates the passive voice.
Makes the statement clearer by identifying the agent.
Punctuation
With the use of cell phone text messaging, have we
forgotten the use of punctuation?
“Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of
language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take
a detour, or stop.”
Eats Shoots and Leaves – Why commas really do make a
difference by Lynne Truss
The Difference a Comma Makes
Slow, children crossing.
Slow children crossing.
Everyday, Anthony turns, slides and swings.
Every day, Anthony turns slides and swings.
Becky teased the boy with the fluffy duck.
Becky teased the boy, with the fluffy duck.
Eat here, and get gas.
Eat here and get gas.
Eats Shoots and Leaves
Say What You Mean
Don’t Apologize
For a Difficult Message
In business, the difficulty to state exactly what you mean increases
when you lack time to think about what you want to say.
“This letter requests payment of NMADC fund
monies of $100 due from the January 15, 2011
report.”
“I do apologize that this comes after the work
performed, but I am sure you realize my
position that these dues should have been
paid then, and thanks to my investigation, we
can redress the original error with payment of
them now. Please call me if you have any
further questions.”
I Think. . .
“I think that because the economy is down and many
people have cut their budgets, we have sat down with the
different department to define a plan to implement the
projects which have a lower budget impact on the
organization and we can implement on July 2, 2011.”
“We met with the different departments, discussed the
budget shortfalls and identified the programs with an
implementation date of Jul 1, 2011.”
Back to Basics
• The recipient of your message can
misinterpret the tone of your message.
• Have some one review your draft.
• What you say and how a person interprets
it may result in two different messages.
Say “please” and “thank you”.
New Mexico Chapter
Contact Information
Maria Granone
Albuquerque, NM
meg@cnmneca.org
(505) 883-6677